1000 kms, 20 hours - One heck of-a ride, and I realise its been dad's dream run for 15 years!!! I was so very thrilled to hear it out from the horses mouth...
On one simple call with my dad, I asked him if he was interested in driving all the way to coorg in the gypsy. As usual he was excited like a 5 yr old kid. So on the D day dad lands in pune, just for a sake of driving back to coorg with me. So we start off with the route plan.
DAD:- Shall we take the NH4 till shimoga and take NH till Hassan and then drive on SH till coorg.
Me:- No lets try a new route, NH4 till hubli, then deviate into unknown roads till Gokarna, then we will find the Kochi highway
DAD:- Bad idea!!! lets try that
The Map The Charoit
So we leave on 24th of june at 7:00am, NH4 is no doubt one of the best highways, spotless 3 laned roads.
TSD:-
7:00 Pune
8:15 Satara
9:30 Kohalapur (Breakfast)
10:30 Nipani
13:15 Hubli (Lunch)
14:30 Giriya Kariyat (Deviation to Gokarna)
This is the biggest mistake we did!!! This road is not advisable to drive, we still managed to hang in there there on the road since we had the gypsy.. We waded through the Anshi National Park and reach yellapur (NH 63). We take 2.30 hrs to cover a distance of 70 kms
16:30 Yellapur
17:15 Deviation from
Hubli Karwar road, to Gokarna, passing through another forest.
18:30 Gokarna (Sunset), even here the NH is in a very bad condition, its a two lane highway, passing all along the towns and villages...
21:00 Mangalore So we finally reach Mangalore for dinner. So finally after 14 hours of driving we were still behind by 4 hours to reach home. So we have a nice fish fry dinner..and leave to coorg by 22:00
23:00 Puttur
1:00 Sampaje Gate (Border for Coorg and managalore)
2:15 Madikeri.. On the way from Sampaje to madikeri we encountered thick fog, literally with 4 lights we were unable to see 5 meters ahead. Some how sticking our noses the windscreen we reached madikeri.
Finally at exactly 4 in the morning I reached my place. My return journey map:-
This route was much simpler. Left at 4:30 in the morning with two of my brothers, we drove towards hunsur and then took the KR nagar SH, which really in a good shape.
Then we deviated towards the chamranagar and then took the badravati NH, vistited the Badra reserviour (Anyone planning to visit, please do not waste time, they do not allow visitors. we were dejected after going all the way there.)
We could just climb up the small hill and look at the dam, the reservior is huge equals half of Pune as a water tank..some pics
The other mistake we did was not following the NH till arsikere and take NH4, instead we continued towards darward on a SH, wherein a considerable medium stretch of the road was bad, lost a lot of time over there. So finally at 4 in the evening we reach the NH4 before dharwad and zoom in to pune by 2:00 in the night. We encountered rain in between, so that delayed your flight, else we were good on the drive.
Some last pics