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In my opinion, its a no-brainer to take the Salem - Madurai - Nagercoil route unless you have some work in Coimbatore or Kochi. The only challenge is Nagercoil - Trivandrum which is a 2L.

Another option is Salem - Madurai - Tenkasi route.

No need to think at all. Just take Bangalore-Salem-Tirunelveli-Nagercoil-Trivandrum. Its a driver's paradise road, especially from Karur to Nagercoil. Beyond Madurai/Tirumangalam, the food/restaurant/break options are minimal.
I drove from Tirunelveli to Bangalore yesterday and it was a pleasure. If you have cruise control, it will be a cakewalk.

NO need to take Coimbatore - Kochi route. Even the the Madurai-Rajapalayam-Tenkasi-Kollam route is slow as it is 2L and lot of traffic.

-Ravi

I did the 2-way trip in July.
Kaliyikkavilai - Marthandam was in bad shape
Nagercoil - Kavalkinar new bypass is unofficially in service and cuts short the time
Watch out for the speed indicators between Virudhunagar - Karur, especially along the Madurai bypass stretch. A few were active and reading out the instant speed. Above 80 was displayed in red. I do not know if they have started penalising.

One of my colleagues commutes daily from Marthandam to Tvm in his sedan along the full stretch of nearing completion Karode - Kazhakootam NH, except for 3 locations where one has to take the service road. He takes the left turn at Kaliyikkavilai jn from Marthandam and reaches the NH in a few km (? About 5). Better to enquire about this personally and if okay, saves at least 30 min

Apart from this minor stretch the NH (especially if you are starting from Trivandrum say before 7 AM) is any day the best route out. I travelled 2 weekends back and door to door with breakfast, lunch included was 12 hours. Lunch was an elaborate buffet at Trident Salem for reference.

Hi all,

I am planning on hiring a car (Revv maybe) & driving from Trivandrum to Kanyakumari & back (October last week) How are are road conditions ? I heard some major repairs are going on NH 66. Is the road scenic ?

I am planning to cover Thirparappu Falls too, are there good roads which will connect there while going to Kanyakumari or on the return ?

I am from Andhra & am venturing this way for the first time, so any help is really appreciated.

Thank you!

Its a very congested road through heavily built up land-almost a continuous urban area.
I suggest hire a car and driver rather than driving yourself.
Doing the same journey by train is scenic.

Has anyone travelled along the Nedumangad- Vellarada - Aralvaimozhi route anytime recently ? I had done way back, which was after the floods and found it in a terrible shape between Kulasekharam and Bhootapandi. Construction activity too was going on. Those days the Parvathipuram / Marthandam constructions and the road conditions made regular NH even messier and we thought of exploring this route and the Thengapatanam- Poovar roads. Currently, even if the surface is good, it may not result in time savings. But just to know if it is a viable alternative.

On Oct 5th 2022, i travelled from Bangalore to Trivandrum.

Nothing new to add from Bangalore till Kavalkinaru in old NH7/new NH44. As usual excellent roads and a driver's paradise, especially after Namakkal/Karur. :thumbs up

Once we take right and exit NH, the 2L roads all the way till AralvaiMozhi are good, but traffic is there. Once i reached Aralvaimozhi, due to some local function/festival, police asked us to take diversion towards right instead of driving further towards Nagercoil. So i had to take right towards Boothapandi and just followed google maps suggested route, because it was already 7 pm and was dark.

I took NH45 Nedumangad highway from Aralvaimozhi-Boothapandi-Thadikarankonam and exited NH45 before Surulakode and drove further straight towards Aalambilawadi-Verkilambi-Samiyar Madam-Marthandam-Kaliyakavilai- and then took left in Parassala to join towards new under construction NH66 that goes all the way till Trivandrum and up north.

Gmaps link: https://goo.gl/maps/K8DrVkhzDWNDAh9m9

From the road condition update, i would say 98% of the roads are good from Aralvaimozhi till Parsalla, in village roads except for few small/bad patches then and there. But still it is worth to take this route instead of going towards Nagercoil and drive in very heavy traffic between Nagercoil to Kaliyakavilai via Thucklay. Even that side, some of the road conditions are not good, so better to avoid Nagercoil as the problem still remains the same.


Once exiting Parassala, and drive towards narrow roads to join under construction NH66, its mostly via service roads and then in & out of joining NH and exiting diversions, except for last few kms before the toll plaza. Whichever part of NH main drive way we can drive is excellent, but it is still not ready for all vehicles. Low GC sedans will have great difficulties.

Though google shows as if the roads are drivable, but it is not fully true. Google is showing as if this is a drivable route, probably because cab drivers are driving in this heavily and Google AI self-learns and thinks it is good, but not really true. For 50% of the stretch, we have to drive in service road and diversions in under-construction road to 4L highway is risky and can be easily lost, especially in the dark. So i won't recommend this NH66 route now until it is fully complete and operational.

So better to continue to drive straight from Kaliyakavilai/Kaliyakavila and driver further straight towards Neyyattinkara towards Trivandrum in old NH47.

In my return journey, i took straight NH47 via Neyyanttinkara towards Kanyakumari, instead of driving in NH66. Its heavy in traffic, but road surface is excellent all the way.

HTH

-Ravi

The 4 lane between Aralvaimozhi - Nagercoil is almost done. I took this route once a few months back and there were some tricky diversions. Had a Bangalore tvm bangalore trip last month and the bus took this route both times. Overall a better option now than the earlier route.

There is no diversions now. So, we can take this bypass without any second thoughts.

Hi,

Planning to drive BLR to TVM in this month and like to know recent update on road conditions ( First time driving to TVM )
Do not want to drive at night and planning to start from Bangalore at 5AM.

Is Salem - Madurai - Nagercoil -Trivandrum the best route compared to Coimbatore-Kochi-TVM?
Have read in this thread that Nagercoil-Tvm stretch is bad. Is the road work completed and good condition now?

You can blindly take Salem-Madurai-Nagercoil route which is the fastest and you get 90% good roads.
Please refer to my post below on 11th Oct to avoid bad roads and heavy traffic in Nagercoil to Marthandam stretch. You can easily take that which gives maximum good roads.
From Kaliyakavila, you better continue in NH47 via Neyyattinkara route instead of going through under construction new NH which i ended up with as directed by Google.

Of course, can't avoid the heavy traffic between Parsalla, Neyyattinkara to Trivandrum and watch out for rash driving vehicles, because the roads are not that broad.

-Ravi

Cross posting from All roads to Kerala here

Did a Bangalore Trivandrum drive today. Noticed speed traps with cameras placed at 10 locations - after Madurai to Tirunelveli, over a rectangular arch with 2 cameras, 2 speed display screens and a speed detector.

On two of those speed traps my speed was 100 kmph and 104 kmph respectively, and they came up on speed display screen with red background.

Then watched out for rest of the speed traps and slowed down below <80 kmph (about 200 m far from them) before passing through them and the speed on display was with green background.

My question is whether they have started giving out challans for speeding above 80kmph on that stretch? Are they functional?

Couple of the speed traps weren't working, guessing by their speed display being off and all these might be newly installed too? (Driving through here after an year)

Noticed there are speed traps on the return direction too.

They have been there for a while (it was there during my Deepavali trip as well ) and I haven’t received any challans so far as I remember seeing red too once or twice while I was driving too.

I drove around dasara holidays in first week of October and obviously i was around 100 to 110, and those display were in RED detecting accurate speed.
But till date no challans.
To me it looks like, for now they are cautioning and not penalizing.

-Ravi