[Nimz]

Originally Posted by suresh_gs

Traffic is sparse in Bangalore. Even if you plan to start by 8 AM I would suggest you to take the Hosur route as road widening is going on the AP side if you take the Old Madras Road.

Thanks. I left at 930 and reached home in 5.5 hours. Attibele was not too bad. Hosur RTO was bad. Krishnagiri toll and the one after that was a little messy. But then others were ok. Also Chennai city had sparse traffic so I guess that made up for the time lost earlier. So 930 is not all that bad I guess.

[subbu567]

So, took the Hosur route onward- left at 445 am from Hennur and crossed into Tamil nadu by 605 am. Heavy traffic in Ecity, Attibele and K'Giri tolls. Got slightly better afterwards. However heavy traffic and barricaded road ensured we drove very sedately and reached the destination by 1 pm, after an hour and half break en-route. Took the righ into manimangalam road from Sriperumpudur and drove via- Tambaram Mudichur road, and took the ORR from GST and reached Okkiam Thoraipakkam toll and reached Thiruvanmiyur via Guindy and Adyar. This would have saved us at-least an hour. Well I have driven either way in about 5 hours door to door, that seems to be passe now.

Return: left at 6 am on Sunday and took the usual route to reach the OMR turning. There was heavy corporate bus traffic(Salcomp) until Nokia SEZ after Sriperumpudur. These buses drive in a zig-zag formation forcing you to drive like a video game to get ahead So need to drive with utmost caution. The roads were decently done up upto the turning and into the OMR, was broad and easy until Chittoor. But once you turn towards Bangalore, the road works start, almost all the way up-to the end of the tolled 4 lane high way near Nangali in Karnataka. This is roughly about 100 kms or so. Once you reach the toll gate its a breeze from then.

Reached home by 12 noon.

A note about FastTags- while in general they work, its a kind of hit n miss as you never know which one has hybrid lanes and which one has dedicated lanes. And 50% of the times you need to do back and forth for the sensor to work. This half baked technology achieves the exact opposite of what its supposed to solve. I was more tense and took almost the same time(and more in a few cases) in all the toll gates. Frustrating, end up arguing with the attendant, the drivers behind you or both.

Safe drive folks.

[rki2007]

Is there a route from Chennai to Bangalore to avoid tolls fully or at least partially with reasonably decent roads?

[ravib]

Originally Posted by rki2007

Is there a route from Chennai to Bangalore to avoid tolls fully or at least partially with reasonably decent roads?

Unfortunately, there is no route in which you can avoid tolls completely.
You can only avoid it partially, by skipping just one or two tolls. But frankly its not worth it to save few bucks because if you are missing decent roads or its a long detour and ending up spending more on fuel, more strain to the car that negates the purpose.

People try the other routes for a change or for other personal reasons/purposes or due to proximity to their source/destination. Some of the other routes apart from regular Vellore/KrishnagiriHosur/Attibelle route are :

Some of the routes which avoids tolls partially.
1) Chennai-Tiruvallur-Tiruttani-Nagari-Chittoor-Palamaner-Bangalore
2) Chennai-Vellore-Gudiyattam-V.Kota-Kolar-Bangalore
3) Chennai-Vellore-Krishnagiri outer- Veppanapalli-Bagalur-Sarjapur-Bangalore

Check with suresh_gs and read his posts. His tag line is "toll free suresh"

-Ravi

[gajadonga]

Originally Posted by suresh_gs

Traffic is sparse in Bangalore. Even if you plan to start by 8 AM I would suggest you to take the Hosur route as road widening is going on the AP side if you take the Old Madras Road.

Has anyone tried the Mulbagal - Palamner- Gudiyattam - Vellore stretch.

Planning to travel from Devanahalli so planning to take this route.

Will update once I complete this route

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by gajadonga

Has anyone tried the Mulbagal - Palamner- Gudiyattam - Vellore stretch.

Planning to travel from Devanahalli so planning to take this route.

Will update once I complete this route

My office colleague's home town is Gudiyattam and he usually takes the above mentioned route. From Mulbagal to Palamaner, I believe road work is going on to widen the same. The Palamaner-Gudiyattam stretch is very good to drive both on the AP and TN side. Very less vehicle traffic but you can expect quite a number of monkeys on that route. My friend said that a bridge construction work is going on and there is a deviation for about 100 mts or so. Apart from this, no issues to drive on this route.

[srvm]

Originally Posted by gajadonga

Has anyone tried the Mulbagal - Palamner- Gudiyattam - Vellore stretch.

Planning to travel from Devanahalli so planning to take this route.

Will update once I complete this route

Please refer to my earlier posts here and here.

Road conditions are mostly unchanged. Road up to KA-AP border will be a bliss. After that from border to Palamner is about 20kms which can be difficult due to road widening, lorry traffic, local traffic etc. But after you turn right at Palamner town, the traffic thins down dramatically. This route is NOT recommended for night travel - it gets somewhat lonely in day time itself!
Warnings:
1. Watch out for a bad section about 10-11 kms from Palamner town - there is only a kachcha road for about 50 to 100 meters here. Otherwise fairly decent tarmac.
2. If choose to go via Virinchipuram town, you will have to cross railway line near Vaduganthangal town. A railway overbridge is under construction and hence you will have to take a very narrow road to cross the track here. If you are unlucky, you will have to negotiate a bus or SUV coming from opposite direction in this narrow road.

[gajadonga]

Originally Posted by srvm

Please refer to my earlier posts here and here.


If choose to go via Virinchipuram town, you will have to cross railway line near Vaduganthangal town. A railway overbridge is under construction and hence you will have to take a very narrow road to cross the track here. If you are unlucky, you will have to negotiate a bus or SUV coming from opposite direction in this narrow road.

Thanks for the update .
From Gudiyyatam will proceed to Pallikonda.
Maybe I can skip the toll at Pallikonda in the route you have mentioned.

[srvm]

Originally Posted by gajadonga

Thanks for the update .
From Gudiyyatam will proceed to Pallikonda.
Maybe I can skip the toll at Pallikonda in the route you have mentioned.

If you take Gudiyattam-Pallikonda route then you will have to pay toll at Pallikonda toll plaza. Also, the road through Pallikonda town is not wide. Fairly narrow with lot of local and truck traffic. Be careful in this small stretch.
If you don't wish to pay toll at Pallikonda, then either take the Virinchipuram option I mentioned in my earlier post or proceed from Gudiyattam till Katpadi and join NH at Vellore.

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by gajadonga

Thanks for the update .
From Gudiyyatam will proceed to Pallikonda.
Maybe I can skip the toll at Pallikonda in the route you have mentioned.

If you proceed to Pallikonda from Gudiyattam you will have to pay toll. To avoid this go via Katpadi. Gudiyattam-Katpadi is a very good 2 lane road. I have driven on this route before

[gajadonga]

Traveled this route last weekend

Hoskote - Nagali good four laned road

Nagali -Palamner

Road widening is going on lots of speed breakers to reduce the speeding of vehicle.Have to trail behind vehicles as overtaking is little difficult due to oncoming traffic.

Palamner -Gudiyattam -Pallikonda

Good roads throuhout a small ghat section on the way.Gudiyattam town traffic slows down the progress.It too 45 mins for this stretch.Traffic is sparse but ghat has blind curves need to be careful with up coming traffic.A bridge construction work is going on and there is a deviation for about 100 mts .

Suresh gs and srvm thanks for the inputs.

Started aound 2.30pm reached Sriperambadur by 7 pm with about 20 mins break inbetween.

The Manimangalam option has good roads throughout to Tambaram.

Return via Krishnagiri Hosur.

It took 3.15mins from Sriperambadur to Hosur. Krishnagiri toll had two fastag lanes makes things easy

[binand]

Just got back from a weekend overnighter to Chennai that got extended by a day due to bad planning on my side (completely overlooked the fact that this was second Saturday).

Fastag continues to be a pain. Pretty much all the toll booths have dropped the pretense of maintaining a dedicated lane; it is total free for all now. Attibele at least accepts the tag in all lanes. Elsewhere, you are guaranteed to spend a lot more time if you take the effort to locate and enter the tag-only lane.

Even though my destination was West Mambalam, Google Maps directed me via Mudichur-Tambaram-Ashok Nagar. The reason I figured out on my return (which was from RA Puram and I had taken Kotturpuram-Guindy-Porur-Poonamallee) - what a royal mess the traffic is all the way till Dell at least! Every couple of kilometres there is a jam, at a junction or a major complex entrance or simply a break in median. Little or no police presence, insufficient road space, huge number of buses and trucks... the way some of the school/college buses are driven there reminded me of water tankers in Bangalore.

The only good news is that the flyover at Porur (junction of Mount Poonamallee Road and Arcot Road) that was under construction for many years, is now complete and open to traffic. Getting to Poonamallee itself from the city was a breeze.

[arjithin]

Originally Posted by gajadonga

Traveled this route last weekend

Hoskote - Nagali good four laned road

Nagali -Palamner

Road widening is going on lots of speed breakers to reduce the speeding of vehicle.Have to trail behind vehicles as overtaking is little difficult due to oncoming traffic.

Palamner -Gudiyattam -Pallikonda

Good roads throuhout a small ghat section on the way.Gudiyattam town traffic slows down the progress.It too 45 mins for this stretch.Traffic is sparse but ghat has blind curves need to be careful with up coming traffic.A bridge construction work is going on and there is a deviation for about 100 mts .

I took this route during my return from Chennai yesterday. My additional updates are these

Nagali -Palamner --> There are too many speed breakers...may be every one km or so. Slows down one considerably. It felt like I was driving inside the Bandipur forest

Palamner -Gudiyattam -Pallikonda
Mostly good roads but many places where the top most road layer is gone and road is rough. There are 2-3 places where the rough patches all of a sudden become potholes and one cannot notice it because of tree shadows. This route is not recommended for night drive.

[mpksuhas]

Did Bangalore - Chennai - Bangalore over the weekend.

Bangalore - Chennai - Friday night.

Got late from office and started at 08:00 PM from Haralur road. Crazy traffic till Attibele, Attibele toll booth has all lanes enabled with Fastag reader and surprisingly none of the lanes were crowded as such.

Krishnagiri was bit crowded and also enroute there were many trucks and interstate buses too. Past Krishnagiri things became better, apart from the idiotic barricades. Thankfully, barricades are covered in reflective stickers helping in locating them.

Stopped at Sai Sangeeth just as they were to close, we reached the place around 10.25 PM and they close by 10:30 PM. Ordered dosa's which were good. The place has clean restrooms too.

Started around 10.50 PM and reached Vadapalani around 01:00 PM.

Road conditions on the 2 lane sections are improved greatly, however 6 laning work seems to have stopped.

Return was on Monday afternoon. Due to some other commitment, got late from the regular starting time by around an hour or so. Started from Vadapalani at 03:00 PM, got stuck at bye-pass itself due to heavy traffic. The same continued till Sriperumbadur due to factory shift getting over. Especially the maniac Hyundai company shuttle buses.

Again, stopped at Sai Sangeeth on way back around 06:40 PM till 07:00 PM. Reached Krishnagiri at 07:40 PM. Decided to proceed through Attibelle - Silkboard instead of the usual Sarjapur route.

There was a huge queue at Attibelle, with vehicles backed some half KM from the toll booth. Reached home at 09:30 PM.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by mpksuhas

Road conditions on the 2 lane sections are improved greatly, however 6 laning work seems to have stopped.

I assume you meant the the 2 lanes on either side after Walajah. Is the surface smooth now or its the same patch-up work?