[W@SIM]

Any news on the inauguration of Samruddhi expressway, i had heard that phase 1 which is about 300 kms from Nagpur was to be inaugurated in May

[W@SIM]

Originally Posted by siddhant

I want to avoid riding during 1-3 pm in this sweltering heat and by my estimates, I will most likely be in or around Jalna/Aurangabad at 1 pm depending on my start time. Any suggestions on decent places to eat and relax a little bit around Jalna?
.

i will suggest to avoid 12 to 430, the heat wave(Loo in local lingo) is pretty dangerous and can upset health for couple of days. i will suggest some good AC restaurant in Jalna for a long break

[antz.bin]

Originally Posted by W@SIM

Any news on the inauguration of Samruddhi expressway, i had heard that phase 1 which is about 300 kms from Nagpur was to be inaugurated in May

Here is something that I saw yesterday.

https://youtu.be/Cz44CQOb6zM

As per the video, Samruddhi Mahamarg is starting for traffic from Shirdi to Nagpur in May 2022. The remaining part (Mumbai to Shirdi) will start by May 2023.

[W@SIM]

Originally Posted by antz.bin

As per the video, Samruddhi Mahamarg is starting for traffic from Shirdi to Nagpur in May 2022. The remaining part (Mumbai to Shirdi) will start by May 2023.

My source of info is dated 5th April - https://www.hindustantimes.com/citie...097749595.html

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by dicor

what is the status of Samruddhi Mahamarg? I know it's not innaugrated but can we drive?

Nagpur-Shelu Bazaar (Packages 1-4) is slated to open on 2nd May. Beyond that it may open only next year at the earliest, because P5 and P7 are far from done.

This video would help explaining the status quo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPgdzU1JoWg

[dicor]

So I did following route on 23rd April 2022

Day 1

Started at 06:15 AM
Maihar > Katni city (bypass widening going on so avoided that) > Jabalpur bypass > Nagpur bypass > Butibori > Wardha By pass

Above road is good 4 lane express way but with speed detectors occasiinaly. Need to cap to 90 kmph.

Wardha > Pulgaon (20 Kms of rough tar, no potholes, rest of the road is good)

Pulgaon > Karanja (decent 2 lane tar but no good stopovers, petrol pump washrooms are not maintained anywhere)

Karanja > Mehkar > Jalna (decent 2 lane tar, rough patches in between, lot of speed breakers)

Jalna > Aurangabad (fantastic smooth tar road, heavy traffic)

Day End - 10 PM
Stayed at Aurangabad Gymkhana (Huge property but it's worst service when compared to competitors)

Day 2
Aurangabad > Ahmadnagar (decent 4 lane with heavy traffic)

Ahmadnagar > Pune (good 4 lane with lesser traffic unless you reach Shikrapur)

Other details
Vehicle XUV5OO
Total Distance covered - 1146 KM
Day 1 - 870 KMs, Average Speed - 60 kmph, DIS FE 16.0 KMPL
Day 2 - 267 KMs, Average Speed - 51 kmph, DIS FE - 15.1 KMPL

Tankful to tankful 14.9 kmpl, Reached pune in 1 tankful.

[Leoshashi]

Got to experience the Samruddhi Expressway as a part of my Pune-Nagpur run. I was on my way to Nagpur via Amravati, when I spotted this huge Eway entrance, after Shelu Bazar. There was one small passage for vehicles to enter, and I saw few locals getting on it. Since I knew the Eway was complete till Nagpur, I decided to get on it. But in the excitement, forgot to check the fuel I had on board.

-The entire stretch was empty. Not one soul was found on the road, baring some Engineers and contruction teams on Boleros and Pickup Vans.

-In terms of completion, the stretch I drove on was almost complete, baring a few minor construction going on.

-Avoid getting on it post dark.

-Google maps doesn't know about it's existence yet, it didn't recognize it as a road.

-Everything which could go wrong that day, went wrong! I had just about enough fuel for the stretch, Phone network vanished in some parts, and I experienced the worst ever thunderstorm in my life. The winds were rocking the car like crazy!

-I was a bit perplexed as to why was the MID reading out close to 25kmpl at speeds above 100kmph. The mystery got solved when I got down for some pics, there was a strong tail-wind, and the car was literally being pushed from behind, thus consuming very little fuel.

When I got on the Eway, Nagpur was still 4.5 hours ago, and ETA was 11PM. Thanks to Eway drive, I reached my destination in less than 3 hours.

-The Eway ends at Hingna, Nagpur in the form of a huge roundabout.

Some pics:

[ampere]

This is some road! What is amazing is even Google baba is unaware and not to mention no mobile connectivity!

Let's hope all that infrastructure gets quickly added up.

[mygodbole]

Update on Samruddhi Mahamarg July 20: The Shelu Bazar-Hingna highway stretch is complete but comprehensively blocked by the construction company on state government orders. Please fuel up and be prepared to return to an off ramp. I was lucky enough to be allowed through.

Pune-Nagpur (July 20, 2022): Pune-Ahmednagar-Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) – expressway from near Dawalwadi to near Pimpalkhuta – back to Jalna-Mehkar highway near Palaskhed Chakka, just before Kingaon Raja – Kingaon Raja-Shelu Bazar- expressway from Shelu Bazar to Hingna roundabout on the outskirts of Nagpur.

On the highway from Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) to Jalna, near Dawalwadi, there is a signpost that ‘invites’ drivers to get on the expressway. Took that and crossed Jalna and Sindkhed Raja off-ramp. About 25km past this, there is a bridge under construction near Pimpalkhuta where one option was to return to the off-ramp. A construction crew member guided me off the expressway near Pimpalkhuta onto the Jalna-Mehkar highway. About four kilometers of broken road from expressway to the highway, not really recommended for cars with low ground clearance.

The regular highway took me to Shelu Bazar from where I went back on to the expressway. Road is complete, mobile services intermittent, no FM radio reception. As mentioned by Leoshashi, this drive time can be less than three hours, it took me just under three hours. This included one 5-minute chat with construction company guard who let me through the barrier and another 10-minute ‘diversion’ where expressway to >> Nagpur side was blocked and the other side had a gap. I had to seek the previous median-crossing about four kilometers earlier and drove ‘wrong-side’ for about 22 kilometers before jumping back to the correct side.

Those keen on avoiding the short stretch of pot-holed, non-existent road in Jalna, may be able take the expressway from Sindkhed Raja to the outskirts of Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad). Don’t know if and when it may be blocked. Don’t know if Sindkhed Raja access is open.

I have also seen a vlog on Youtube by a biker who took the expressway from Vaijapur to Sindkhed Raja but there were barriers for cars in that vlog.

[autoweirdo]

Hopefully new govt sticks to its word of opening stretch on 15th August, though I am skeptical whether complete stretch between Shirdi and Nagpur will be open at one go. May be we will have to face diversions at multiple places for few days. Any update how is Pune Aurangabad stretch currently? Also is flyover in Nagar completed?

[mygodbole]

Originally Posted by autoweirdo

Any update how is Pune Aurangabad stretch currently? Also is flyover in Nagar completed?

Pune-Aurangabad stretch is the usual two-lanes-this-way and two-lanes-that-way. Usual patchwork on the roads, but motorable at a steady pace. Some sudden deep potholes have appeared post-rains this season. If one can, avoid. But be ready to roll in/over anything.

Flyover in Nagar NOT complete. Plenty of diversions but Google maps are reasonably accurate. Car drivers, please do not take the first bypass meant for heavy vehicles. Cop at this junction advised me at 3am to go through the town.

Shirdi Nagpur stretch very unlikely to open before next Maharashtra Day (and I would be pleasantly surprised if this stretch opens by Independence Day 2023). Many sections are ready and willing, but there is NO ancillary service anywhere -- no fuel stations, no food stops, patchy cellphone coverage. Also some sections are still being constructed.

The Shelu Bazar-Hingane stretch is almost ready for traffic but the lack of highway services will delay any 'official' opening.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by autoweirdo

Hopefully new govt sticks to its word of opening stretch on 15th August

If that is the case, it would only be Nagpur-Shelu Bazaar. There are intermittent sections completed, remaining are not. You can check this video, which is pretty comprehensive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcwaLmYw_o0

[Beerus]

Hi,

I am planning on driving(solo) from Pune to Nagpur on 26th. Any updates on the expressway and what route I should take?

I have driven to Nagpur once before, took 14 hours. I am looking to see if there's a smoother way.

[jethrofloyd]

Hi,

I did a Mumbai - Nagpur - Mumbai trip last week.

Mumbai - Nagpur: 22nd August, 2022

My initial plan was to follow Mumbai - Nashik - Aurangabad - Jalna - Amaravati - Nagpur, split in 2 days.

I planned to start early; but owing to some emergency work ended up leaving Powai around 9 am and then having to stop and work just short of the Eastern Express Highway for an hour and a half.

Mumbai - Nashik: Effectively left Powai just before 11 am, reached Starbucks in Nashik city around 2 pm. The road till the ghats has a lot of potholes and portions where it’s broken entirely, and needs major repairs. After the ghats, the road is still not the best, but far more manageable and with far less traffic. Overall, unless I was specifically headed to Nashik, I would avoid it if better alternate routes were available.

I had some more work to be done, so finished that at the Starbucks before proceeding to Aurangabad.

Nashik - Aurangabad: Started around 3 pm and entered Aurangabad by 6:30 pm. The roads are reasonable, although they’re mostly single lane for each direction towards the end. Be careful if you are itching to overtake trucks because there are a lot of bikes, autos and bicycles on the road. I only stopped for a quick 5 minute tea break at a road side stall.

Since it was raining intermittently, the windscreen had become a bit dirty — so before we checked in to a hotel at Aurangabad, got the car jet sprayed at a local car wash.

Interestingly, I saw the on-ramp to the Samruddhi Mahamarg as referenced in the posts above, and considered attempting to access it, but decided against it.

Aurangabad - Nagpur: Started around 9 am the next morning, and followed Google Maps via Jalna - Mehkar - Karanja. The road was mostly in good shape but almost entirely single lane for each direction, and a tractor accident caused a lot of delays early on. And the entire route is filled with a ton of truck and bike traffic, so by the time I crossed Shelu Bazaar, it was around 2 pm and I wasn’t having a very enjoyable drive. The road isn’t entirely terrible throughout — there are a lot of nice stretches, but on the flip side there are stretches within it that last a few kilometres that are really bad and will leave you with a sour aftertaste.

So a bit after crossing Shelu Bazaar, I saw an on-ramp to the expressway again. This time, I decided to give it a shot. It was an 1.5 km on ramp on to a toll gate which was sparsely dotted with couples on bikes who had discovered a nice, breezy location for a date. I fully expected to have to return based on posts earlier, but decided to go and shoot my shot anyway. The entrance is entirely blocked by bricks except for one lane on the far side of the toll plaza on the other direction. A lone security guard from the construction company was keeping guard. I stopped my car and asked him about access — and about 5 mins of chitchat later, he said that we could go but he recommended coming back after 30 mins since some construction inspection was ongoing at that point. He also asked us to refuel because the expressway has no ancillary services. We turned back, had a quick lunch, filled up the tank, and bought a few bottles of cold water for the guy (he was standing in the sweltering heat!). When we were back, he waved us in, and we were on the expressway!

Samruddhi - Towards Nagpur: The expressway drive was absolutely stunning. For the entry point, interested BHPians can find the spot marked as “Akola - Nagpur Entry Point” on Google Maps. We covered about 175 km till a massive roundabout at Hingna, and I would be lying if I didn’t say that it was a driver’s heaven. Absolutely straight roads, completely empty barring 3-4 construction vehicles in a 175 km stretch with a posted speed limit of 120 kmph — after a first few 10s of kilometres of revving and high speeds, I set the car to cruise control and basically relaxed my way into Nagpur in just shy of 1.5 hours. The “wrong side” stretch mentioned above is still the same. As a result of being on the expressway, we were in Nagpur by 6 pm! I didn’t even mind the unpaved and broken road that led into the city after the expressway, or coming into office hour city traffic right off a completely empty stretch.

The expressway is absolutely ready for traffic as far as the carriageway is concerned from Shelu Bazaar to Hingna. But there are absolutely no ancillary services — no petrol pump, no food, no water, no washrooms, no medical facilities, nothing at all — and nothing that is even being constructed. I have no idea how much time these things take to be constructed, but right now there’s nothing.

In any case, my 2 cents: you might or might not be able to get onto it depending on the benevolence of the guard. If you do: be fully prepared (full tank, air pressure calibrated, water) and it will put a smile on your face. Generally speaking, it’s much needed — it completely revamps the route and time you need, and it should be opened as soon as possible, even if it is for a short stretch.


Nagpur - Mumbai: 25th August, 2022

I wanted to complete the return leg in one day instead of two, so I decided to do Nagpur - Aurangabad - Ahmednagar - Pune - Mumbai. This was because I didn’t want to take Nashik - Mumbai after dark given my experience while coming in; and the Pune - Mumbai expressway is one that I’m very familiar with and I have driven on it at all hours of the day.

But the other strategic decision, emboldened by my incoming leg, was to try to get on the expressway again from Nagpur. I fully expected to return from the entry point. But I was feeling too greedy to not even try.

Samruddhi - From Nagpur: After following basically a non-existent road to the entry point for about 6 km after coming out of Nagpur city, I reached the Hingna entry point at 6 am. And lo and behold: except one, all lanes through the toll plaza were open and unblocked, and there was no one around. We waited for a couple of minutes — and then decided to go in. Once again, it was 200 km of completely straight, completely empty roads. Note that some portions of the carriageway heading towards Mumbai are blocked, so after about 70 km in, you will need to drive the “wrong way” for most of the remaining stretch. I decided to go beyond the Shelu Bazaar exit, to see that about 10 km in, the road is still being constructed just before a bridge. So I turned back and exited at Shelu Bazaar, having covered a total of about 220 km (including the 10 km x 2 excess travel) in about 1h57m.

Shelu Bazaar - Aurangabad: We had a quick breakfast at Shelu Bazaar (nothing to write home about). The road was the same we encountered on the way in, and we stopped for lunch at Aurangabad around 2:30 pm. I needed a bio-break so I decided to stop at WelcomHotel Aurangabad — and had a sandwich and a coffee; both of which were overpriced and bland — but the clean toilets were what I really wanted anyway.

Aurangabad - Ahmednagar: This was a good 120 km drive, covered in just about 2 hours. The roads are two lanes in each direction with lots of car, truck and bike traffic. The road condition ranged from stretches of clean, smooth roads to intermittent patches of potholes. Some repair work was also ongoing in 2-3 places. We encountered a few places where bikes jumped on to the road from connecting lanes to the side, and the day being a festival day in Maharashtra, there were occasional parties of men and women blaring music and dancing through. But overall, I was glad to be driving through this than Nashik - Aurangabad. You can maintain speeds of about 80 kmph in most places, but be careful around crossings. Also, right after leaving Aurangabad, I accidentally jumped a red traffic light on the highway (a tall trailer ahead of me blocked my view and the trailer jumped the light as well). I was pulled over and warned, but was lucky to be not fined. Learning from this, I noted at least 5 more traffic lights in the next 20 odd kilometres but interestingly none of them were working (no lights on at all). So if you’re driving on this route, be sure to make note of this. Reached Ahmednagar uneventfully after this and crossed through the city around 5:30 pm.

Ahmednagar - Pune: Google maps kept showing me an alternate route which was supposedly 5 minutes faster but did not involve the Pune Mumbai Expressway, so I had to manually navigate till Shikrapur. The road was the same as Aurangabad - Ahmednagar. We stopped for tea about 10 km after Ahmednagar and reached the outskirts of Pune around 8:30 pm. We faced a lot of traffic as we approached Pune, and Google Maps took us through a winding, narrow alternate route that eventually took us to the entry point of the expressway. We refueled, had a couple of nice, leisurely cups of tea at Krishna Restaurant which is fairly popular for people taking this route; and entered the expressway around 9:15 pm.

Pune - Mumbai: The usual expressway, so I’m not going into detail here. There were a couple of buses who were driving pretty recklessly ahead until the reached the tunnels in the ghats. There was a terrible accident inside one of the tunnels where a truck had turned completely sideways. I think it instilled a much needed sense of fear and respect for the road in most drivers because I didn’t notice any aggressive driving after that. As for myself, my appetite for speed had been fulfilled in the other expressway early in the morning, and I drove comfortably in the high 80s, occasionally moving into the 90s. After the customary 10 minute delay at the Vashi bridge, I reached and had parked at home in Powai about 20 minutes past midnight.

Overall, I set the trip meter at the entry point to the Samruddhi expressway at Hingna, and from there till Powai we had driven 820 km in 14h20m of drive time with average fuel efficiency of 15.2 Kmpl (all figures as per MID). My vehicle was the Jeep Compass 4x4 S 2.0 AT Diesel. It behaved impeccably throughout, and had the road presence of a king. Through non-existent stretches of dust or flat 100 km stretches of concrete - it was at ease throughout, and not once made me feel uncomfortable. I was pleasantly surprised by the fuel efficiency figure too — while I know that the MID is optimistic to say the least, the best I’ve gotten before on highway runs on the same MID has been about 13.

My soft recommendation for anyone who is taking this trip: if you’re from Pune, obviously take the Pune - Ahmednagar - Aurangabad - Nagpur route. Follow all the tidbits in the posts above. I followed some of them and was richly rewarded. If you’re from Mumbai, I strongly recommend avoiding Nashik and taking the Pune route — it might add some time or kilometres, but you will have a more comfortable and safe drive. As far as the Samruddhi expressway goes: it’s not open yet; but feel free to ask nicely. Your mileage may vary.

[dvl666]

Originally Posted by jethrofloyd

Hi,

I did a Mumbai - Nagpur - Mumbai trip last week.

We are planning a trip to Tadoba & Pench from Mumbai in Oct around Diwali.

You would suggest we go via Pune or Nashik? Also the new samriddhi route should be bypassed in either routes? Or is it worth taking it and then going to Tadoba?