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Offlate, I hear from many of my friends / colleagues who do Hyd - Blr that the timing is always above the 6 hours average, airport to airport, with sedate driving.
The same route, same roads and the same cars used to do this atleast 30 minutes ahead, about 5.5 hours until about 2018 end. I am wondering what has changed !. The Blr - Hyd side continues to stay around the 5.5 hour mark these days.
Between Kurnool and Gooty the road has become quite bumpy with lots patches, broken top surface etc.
Also, in general the traffic has increased on this highway with lots of big trailer trucks due to the Kia plant.
These are my observations based on my regular Bangalore- Kurnool trips. Not sure if anything else is contributing to this in Hyderabad- Kurnool stretch.
Traffic has increased in the Hyderabad-Jadcherla/Mehboobnagar stretch too. On our way from HYD to BLR, we could make decent speeds only after Jedcherla due to lot of traffic. On the way back too, traffic increased after Jecherla.
I have also noticed more speed breakers on the HYD-BLR highway now. Earlier, there used to be more speed breakers in Karnataka and very less in AP. Now AP also has quite a few speed breakers.
I completed the Hyderabad to Bangalore drive as planned on October 28, 2020. Overall, it was a relatively smooth drive and I decided to take it easy with speeds of around 70 kmph to 80 kmph throughout the drive. We stopped roughly every 2 hours for about 10 minutes by the side of the road to stretch our legs, have water, and get refreshed. We were not too much bothered about the overall duration of the drive.
We started from Hi-tech City around 7:20 a.m. We reached Shamshabad ORR exit at 7:50 a.m. We too had about a 10 minute wait with only two toll lanes operational. Exited the toll booth around 8:00 a.m. Thereafter, there was a lot of vehicular traffic till Jadcherla. Roads were smooth, with well marked gaps in medians, but, the traffic made it a stressful drive.
We stopped at
Food Pyramid for a late breakfast at around 9:45 a.m. Had a leisurely and a heavy breakfast stop for an hour. The place was well managed with Covid19 safety measures in place, with clean rest rooms. We resumed around 10:45 a.m.
Kurnool and beyond had a couple of diversions, and a number of potholed roads in general scattered throughout AP.
We refueled at
BPCL COCO Gooty at 1:55 p.m.
We had planned for a lunch stop at
Hotel Blue Moon Highway, but, unfortunately, it was not operational. We turned back for about a kilometer and made a quick stop at
Hotel Mayura for lunch around 2:15 p.m. We resumed our drive at 2:45 p.m.
Thereafter, we continued driving towards Bangalore, with the 10 minute breaks every 2 hours.
Road conditions improved again upon entering Karnataka, and the roads were butter smooth.
We crossed Devanahalli toll plaza around 6:50 p.m., re-fueled again at
G K Filling Station, and finally reached our
hotel around 7:30 p.m.
The speed breakers didn't bother me too much, because I was anyways slowing down at the places where the gaps in medians were indicated by road signs.
So, excluding the breakfast, lunch, re-fueling, and rest stops, we had taken about 8.5 hours airport to airport.
Hoping to start earlier in the day for our return drive from Bangalore to Hyderabad on November 7, 2020.
Do we have 24/7 petrol bunks on the Blr-Hyd highway? Also, what is the speed limit on the Hyd ORR? Are there speed cams installed on this road?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ankan.m.blr
(Post 4924379)
Do we have 24/7 petrol bunks on the Blr-Hyd highway?
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Yes, several fuel bunks are open 24*7, based on my observation when I went on this route late at night.
Quote:
Also, what is the speed limit on the Hyd ORR? Are there speed cams installed on this road?
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100 kmph. A few places have speed cams while the cops set up temporary cameras at random locations, mostly during day time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashMustang
(Post 4921598)
Hoping to start earlier in the day for our return drive from Bangalore to Hyderabad on November 7, 2020.
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Did you make this trip back? I am planning BLR-HYD trip soon with family and we plan to carry our own food. One thing we cannot carry our own is a restroom :)
Any suggestions for good covid supported restroom place on the way?
Quote:
Originally Posted by chakri400
(Post 4950913)
Did you make this trip back? I am planning BLR-HYD trip soon with family and we plan to carry our own food. One thing we cannot carry our own is a restroom :)
Any suggestions for good covid supported restroom place on the way?
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You can try restrooms at fuel bunks, especially big COCO ones or private ones such as Shell and Reliance. From my experience they're maintained well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chakri400
(Post 4950913)
Did you make this trip back? I am planning BLR-HYD trip soon with family and we plan to carry our own food. One thing we cannot carry our own is a restroom :)
Any suggestions for good covid supported restroom place on the way?
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After Bangalore, there is a Shell petrol pump near Chikballapur on the right side which has good rest rooms, it was opened just few days back. But you need to take a U-Turn.
Also there is a Cafe Coffee day near Gooty, just after the toll plaza and it has decent rest room.
After Kurnool, there are quite a few good food plazas available which have decent rest rooms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chakri400
(Post 4950913)
Did you make this trip back? I am planning BLR-HYD trip soon with family and we plan to carry our own food. One thing we cannot carry our own is a restroom :)
Any suggestions for good covid supported restroom place on the way?
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Yes, we did. The return trip experience was very similar to our onward trip, so, I avoided posting it again here. We started from Bangalore by 4:45 a.m. and reached Hyderabad by 4:00 p.m.
Regarding rest rooms, we found the ones at Food Pyramid to be very well maintained.
https://g.page/Food-Pyramid-Highway-Restaurant?share
We had also stopped at this place, but, we regretted it.
https://goo.gl/maps/CAyuSuZGwhLmy8hH9 Quote:
Originally Posted by ashis89
(Post 4950925)
You can try restrooms at fuel bunks, especially big COCO ones or private ones such as Shell and Reliance. From my experience they're maintained well.
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Sound advice here. Would second this.
Here's a list I had compiled prior to the trip (these would be on the left side of the road when driving from Bangalore to Hyderabad). We did not stop at all of them, so, it's based on Google ratings of these places.
Cafe Coffee Day (
https://goo.gl/maps/7jy7kRXi5RHqFdcn7)
Bharat Petroleum Ltd Ghar Dabha (
https://goo.gl/maps/4amohQugqKhEhLbaA)
Café Coffee Day (
https://goo.gl/maps/4rijr5fM8JKH3ddr8)
BP COCO - Dhone (
https://goo.gl/maps/u5mwuANSGrG2F1Gx6)
Bharat Petroleum COCO (
https://goo.gl/maps/uDpZ8dsATjAZcMPe7)
Quote:
Originally Posted by samkat1
(Post 4892837)
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I also found this list to be useful, though we did not try out all of these places personally.
From this list, avoid this place -
https://goo.gl/maps/upXQH9gLxRq - this was the one we regretted stopping at.
Hope this helps. Cheers and safe driving!
Quote:
Originally Posted by FlashMustang
(Post 4950967)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nagarjun
(Post 4950950)
After Bangalore, there is a Shell petrol pump near Chikballapur on the right side which has good rest rooms, it was opened just few days back. But you need to take a U-Turn.
Also there is a Cafe Coffee day near Gooty, just after the toll plaza and it has decent rest room.
After Kurnool, there are quite a few good food plazas available which have decent rest rooms.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ashis89
(Post 4950925)
You can try restrooms at fuel bunks, especially big COCO ones or private ones such as Shell and Reliance. From my experience they're maintained well.
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Thank you all for sharing this useful information. I will update my experience post the trip
We will be travelling HYD-BLR next week. How do we identify company owned petrol bunks? Typically the company owned ones have better restrooms in my experience.
While travelling BLR-HYD, we had stopped at a BP petrol bunk. While it was clean, it didn't have western commodes which would have helped my aged parents, only the Indian squatting types. So trying to make sure if I can find decent clean restrooms with western commodes along the way.
Based on everyone's inputs
BLR to HYD Trip COCOs:
BP Chikballapur COCO
Bharat Petroleum, Manavpad - Kurnool
COCO THIMMAPUR Indian Oil Fuel Station
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