[Rahul Bhalgat]

Originally Posted by sunny13

Thanks for the updates and detailed information. Any special precautions or documents we need to carry for COVID checks?

I observed that there were no covid checks anywhere. If possible, you can carry a simple fitness certificate from your family doctor stating that you have no symptoms of covid.

But do carry the car related documents like PUC and insurance. Police is likely to stop you if they observe any of the following:
No Seat belt
Films on the windshield / windows / any of the glasses
Not wearing the masks properly.
Fancy fonts on the number plates (or stickers etc.)
Speed more than 80 km/h.

Do not take chance on these matters. By the time you have noticed the police, they would have already noticed you. The barricades help them to have these few seconds to observe you. To detect over-speeding, they have cars fitted with radars patrolling the highway, as reported by the other members.

[Scarlet_Rider]

Originally Posted by Rahul Bhalgat

Did Pune - Hyderabad - Pune trip on 04 - 08 December 2020. Here are the details:

Thanks for the detailed write up! Very helpful! Will be traveling with family from Hyderabad to Pune this week. Any feedback on the washroom facilities at the hotels (Gujarat, Swagat and Vasudev) you mentioned?

[Rahul Bhalgat]

Washrooms at Hotel Gujarat were satisfactory.

Washrooms at the other two hotels are also expected to be satisfactory; these are reasonably good hotels. I hadn't halted there.

[ramanan.skr]

Due to personal work, I would be traveling to Solapur from Chennai next week. I intend to close my day 1 beyond Hyderabad.

Kindly suggest to me a decent place to stay between Hyderabad and Solapur.

The reason for not staying in HYD is the next day morning I have to be in Solapur by 7AM which is not possible if I stay in Hyd.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by ramanan.skr

The reason for not staying in HYD is the next day morning I have to be in Solapur by 7AM which is not possible if I stay in Hyd.

You can dismiss Madras-Solapur in a day, it is a 14 hour drive (add 2 hours for breaks). Start around 3-4 am ish from Madras. You should be able deal all the diversions on Madras-Tada and Gudur-Kavali sector without much traffic. You'll be able to reach Tanguturu N5 for breakfast, Narketapalli Vivera for lunch and reach Solapur for dinner about 8-9 pm.

[PVS]

Did a Hyderabad Pune Hyderabad bike (Bullet 500) trip from the 18th to 20th December. I started off from Vidyanagar Hyderabad at 0430 hours, and was at Viman Nagar Pune by 1450 hours, after taking 4 breaks enroute for tea near Zaheerabad, breakfast (at a Udupi hotel at Omerga), fuel(Before Solapur) and the necessary bio break. Road till Solapur was decent enough, with a couple of bad sections in MH. A couple of flyovers are still under construction. The ghat mini ghat section at Naldurg is scenic enough, with the lake to your left andf the scenic fort to your right. Since it is a two-laned road, traffic does tend to back-up. I however, was able to make brisk progress, as I was on a two wheeler.
Solapur Pune section is decent, with very minimal disruptions. MH registered cars were being driven in quite a spirited manner, however i was able to catch up with many of them as the slowed down at toll gates enroute. I was maintaining a leisurely 80 Kmph, with occassional bursts upto 90 kmph.

On the return journey, I started off from Hyatt Pune at around 1100 hours, and reached home at Vidyanagar, Hyderabad by 2110 hours. Stopped a couple of times near Bhigwan to click pics of the highway and the lake, and after that, stoppd only after Saolapur, a few Kms before Naldurg, to top up the fuel tank. Pulled over again at Hotel Gujurat at Basavakalyan, for a food break. Inspite of being a Sunday evening, the hotel appeared quite deserted. The food was good though, and the rest rooms were also clean.

Traffic Cops were spotted regularly on the highway post KA as I headed towards MH, however i was not pulled over even once.

So, to sum it up, an average of around 10 hours of riding time each way, and around 1800 Rs worth of fuel each way. It was a comfortable ride on the bullet, and i absolutely loved the torquey engine.

Overall it was a very refreshing bike trip for me, a born again biker, who got back on a bike after nearly 11 years. I took some photographs, that I have uploaded here.

[hemant.samtani]

Recently did a Pune - Hyderabad - Pune roadtrip. Took my 8 year old Honda city on the drive and she did really well to get us there safe and sound...the highway is awesome both onward & return...a small patch of road is single lane (around the Naldurg fort). Created a 1 minute video log of the trip and posted on Youtube...for those of you planning this trip, get all that you need from the video.....

https://youtu.be/9_ZrZw7iiP4

[sunny13]

I just did a Pune – Hyderabad – Pune Road trip and returned yesterday.

Pune – Hyderabad took me a 10.5 hrs with 2 breaks of 30 min each. I started from Wakad in Pune at 6 AM and reached Hyderabad SEZ, Gachibowli. Followed NH65 all through with Solapur-Omerga- Humnabad-Zaheerabad along the route.

Hyderabad – Pune took a little long with 11 hours with 3 breaks totalling 1.15 hrs., some delay primarily due to heavy traffic while entering Pune at Hadapsar, Fatima nagar and nearby areas. There was also some block while reaching Solapur city where the highway makes a sharp right. Cops had halted trucks on 2 lanes for close to a km.

Road condition: Road was super smooth and as posted by many here, this was one of the best drives I have experienced. Pretty disciplined drivers with no honking or flashing lights such as Pune-Mumbai or Indore roads. Except for a 4-5 kms two way drive without divider near Naldurg and a few fly over diversions, the entire stretch was a breeze on my Renault Duster (85PS opt). As recommended, I had maintained the speedo at 80 kmph all through. It did take me a while to keep it controlled at this speed. But it yielded good, no sorry, Astounding results! No letup in travel time and the mileage at the end of the trip clocked 24.3 km/l well beyond Renault’s claim!  . And yes, I too find it unbelievable and hence clicked some dashboard snapshots in case they are interested.

Clearly, the road condition on the AP and Karnataka part was far superior than the Maharashtra one. Especially on the stretch between Basavakalyan and Solapur the road is rather uneven especially on the high-speed lane where the heavy vehicles ply mostly. The wheel tracks have sunk to lower level. It is a sort of mound along the centre. So, when you ride that stretch on your car wheels of smaller width, the steering tends to sway giving you an impression of rather deflated tyre or even imbalanced wheel. As soon as you turn to the left on the low speed lane, it’s all stable. It took me a while to realize the reason. Surprisingly I did not notice this issue on the same stretch going toward Hyderabad.

I saw cops close Solapur mainly at the Toll Plazas and few at Telangana side. But did not get stopped. There were checking for Number plates, masks and speed limits. Be in control of these and you may not be stopped.

There are not too many eateries between Solapur – Hyderabad. Hotel Gujrat was just ok with washrooms. Between Solapur and Pune, there are quite a few with prominent boards, but I stopped mainly for tea as I was not too sure of the food quality. May be better to carry your own stuff of your own if possible.

[Bigzero]

I too completed a Pune-Hyderabad-Pune roundtrip - Traveled to Hyderabad last Sunday, and returned yesterday.

I don't have a lot to add on the road conditions, the previous posters have captured them nicely. However let me share some quick observations:

1. Ran into a massive mess in the first toll plaza before Kurkumbh, on the Pune-Hyderabad journey - lost around 15-20 minutes, trying to negotiate between the long line of trucks and cars, and everyone trying to move to the left, right and everywhere where they thought they needed to be to progress in the queue. As we reached very close to the toll gate ( about where the lanes are separated ), we finally managed to talk to a couple of toll plaza employees who were frantically waving vehicles to the left and right, and asked them if they indeed have fastag lanes, or are all the lanes fastag enabled. Thats when they told us to move to the right extreme lanes ( about 50% of vehicles were trying to get into the cash lanes, and all of this resulted in crazy criss-crossing near the toll plaza).

2. As we moved forward, we realised that all toll plazas have fastag only lanes to the right, and we keep to the right lanes ( it also helped that there was considerably less backed-up traffic in toll plazas ). Fastag worked like a charm from that point onwards. In fact, after Solapur, some toll plazas were unmanned in the lanes. we just carried on to the lane of our choice, and moved forward as the boom opened.

3. All toll plazas have displayed stickers prominently that fastag will become mandatory by february( or some date soon )- but we found many vehicles still using the cash open.

4. We left our home in Viman Nagar, Pune at 6.20 or so, and realised soon that we were already late- as the traffic was quite heavy upto around halfway to Solapur or so. Perhaps we should have started earlier. We had further kept a sedate pace, and reached Hyderabad ( Begumpet ) at around 5.15 or so.

5. On the return journey, I had some office meetings in the afternoon, so I had to plan to reach home a bit earlier. So we left our hotel at around 5.20 am, and had only two stops on the way . Hotel Gujarat for breakfast, and somewhere after Solapur for a tea break. We managed to reach our home in Viman nagar for a late lunch, at 2.30 pm.

6. We had an AP ( now Telangana, but old AP before the state was formed )regd car ( which we had to take to Hyderabad for hypothecation release and NOC process - that was the whole purpose of the trip ). We were flagged down by Cops immediately after the Solapur bypass on both ways. We had all papers, so we were allowed to proceed. I think they are pretty much catching all out of state vehicles.

7. As we approached Solapur from Pune, we saw at least one Speed gun, and thankfully we wern't very fast at that time. We also saw that everyone was moving at a sedate 80-90 kph for the last 20 or so km into Solapur. Experiences from the past?

8. Nasty humps in many places between Solapur and Pune on the highway! some of those places need flyovers. I hope they build them soon.

9. Sugarcane tractors coming in the opposite direction etc.. Well nothing new there I guess, I have just given up to those now and am no longer surprised by the odd bike or tractor happily coming down the fast lane in the opposite direction.....

[AutoB]

My first road trip after the lockdown... enjoyed every bit of it.

Hyderabad to Mumbai

• took about 15 hours in all
• included a 1.5 hour stopover at Bhigwan - saw some birds but no flamingoes which requred a boat trip ... saved for another time
• heavy downpour in Pune slowed things down by at least 45 minutes - water logging in several places resulting in the usual traffic
• road in great condition except a few bad patches
• Kept a steady 80 kmph and skipped at least 3 speed checks ... and the best part was it didn't make too much of a difference in the time taken as the guys who speed end up taking more breaks
• my Honda City returned a superb 22.5 kmpl

Mumbai to Hyderabad

• On the way back it took exactly 13 hours with 3 stops totaling 45 minutes
• This included a traffic jam on the Lonavala ghat, and a steady 80 kmph all along - thank you cruise control
• On the way back got about 20 kmpl - possibly because of the altitude gain along the way

Mumbai Pune expressway needs a lot of maintenance and a dedicated car lane. How can they let slow climbing trucks take up all 3 lanes??

...

[ranjitp1]

I gave up on driving long distance some years ago, but looking at the notes here, just curious now-is the entire Hyderabad-Solapur stretch 4 laned now?

Reason for my query is, when it was single laned between Hyd and Pune the drive times were 10-11hrs and today also it looks to be taking the same amount of time and that has left me vexed :( Sainikpuri-Pune-Borivali used to take around 15-16hrs with breaks and sadly nothing much seems to have changed.

My drive times used to be in the range of Sainikpuri-Solapur (Pune chowk): 5-5.5hrs (departure around 430am)
Pune Chowk-Hadapsar:4-4.5 hrs
Hadapsar-MPEW Entry: 1.5hrs
MPEW Entry-Panvel: 1.5hrs
Panvel-IC Colony:3hrs (peak hour traffic post 4pm)

Time seems to have stood still on the following points:

-Solapur bypass with the cops even today (after 10yrs) stopping outside state registration cars and fleecing them.
-No worthwhile place to stop and eat between Solapur and Hyderabad.Gujarat still looking like the only place (It was a Reliance A1 in the early days,then became a HP with the Fleur toilets) and now Gujarat.

Thanks for all the updates here,I had always thought to myself as to whether I would ever see the Hyd-Mumbai section fully 4laned and wanted to drive if that ever happened as I was always envious of the Bangaloreans who have always had such a wonderful road to drive on while we the Biryani torch-bearers of the world always have had to negotiate the sugarcane carts and single laned roads forever:(

[sunny13]

Yes, the entire Pune - Hyderabad stretch is 4 laned (2+2) with a median. As mentioned earlier, there is a very small ghat section near Nandugarh of barely 4-5 kms which is single but the road there too is decent. Actual driving time may take anywhere between 9.5 - 10.5 hrs depending on individual driving habits. Running at a constant 80kmph (unlike my other long trips), it took me 10 hrs on both sides, exclusive of the stop overs. And I must admit this was the most stress free drive I had. Mumbai -Hyd seems to be taking a little longer as per the recent posts.

[pickdj]

An important question for everyone here: My wife was planning to come via road from Hyderabad to Pune tomorrow. However the driver has denied saying that they are testing and putting drivers under quarantine in Solapur. Can anyone let me know what's the current situation? Any help will be appreciated.

[abhijeetp]

Originally Posted by pickdj

An important question for everyone here: My wife was planning to come via road from Hyderabad to Pune tomorrow. However the driver has denied saying that they are testing and putting drivers under quarantine in Solapur. Can anyone let me know what's the current situation? Any help will be appreciated.

I travelled Hyderabad-Pune last saturday (3/Apr), I was not stopped anywhere. Started at 9:00 AM and reached Kothrud at 5:50 PM.
Returned next day (4/Apr), started at 10:45 am and reached Hyderabad(kukatpally) at 6:50pm. We were stopped on return journey at Karnataka-Maharashtra border and asked for covid negative report. I was not having any report, told them we are only transiting karnataka and traveling to Hyderabad. So were allowed to continue. They noted phone number, name and car number. Mine is a TS registered car.

[PSOPS]

Hello Everyone,

I am planning to travel this weekend ( 16th May ) from Hyderabad to Pune. I have a MH14 number plate car. Does anyone know if new lockdown restrictions are there? Do we need an ePass ?