[madaboutCARS]

A little bit of background:
Way back in September 1st week 2008, I was checking my office calendar and researching on holidays. My wife had holidays on Oct 8th and 9th and myself on 9th Oct. So we both decided that we will take a leave on 10th Oct and will go out for a trip on 9th 10th 11th and 12th. I informed my manager that I am planning to take a leave on the following dates and he said “yeah we will look into it”.

Then came the news which I always hate “Client Visit” and initial agenda was clients will be on 7th Oct and are going to stay till 10th. I was very upset by this news and told my wife, she said “Ok, you enjoy with your client, herself and one of her friend will go out to Goa or Pondicherry and will have fun.” Open dhamki, but I can’t do nothing.

Because of all this we didn’t booked any hotels or resorts as we were unsure whether we will able to go somewhere. But in my mind I was silently praying to lord Ganesha that “God do something and delay the Client’s visit”. Guess what my wishes were granted. On 6th Oct my manager confirmed that the clients are not coming and I again asked my manager can I take the planned leave. He said yes but make sure that in your absence somebody should look into the team daily progress. I was very happy and gave the deadlines to the team for the whole week + each day targets, only thing, my onsite counterpart has to do was to take the updates. So it was all set that I am going on vacation and now comes the important thing where to go? My wife asked one of her colleague to joins us, they were also ready to join us but only in one condition the distance shouldn’t be too far as they have 9 month old baby . Well a discussion with all the stakeholders including the baby happened and the outcome was “PONDICHERRY”.

As I said earlier there was no hotel or resort booking, I started calling all the resorts first, not to my surprise all were booked, even all the hotels which I got from net were booked. Finally we decided that we will go there and search. Worst case scenario we will drive back to Chennai in case we don’t get any decent stay in pondy. On 8th night I visited pondy tourism website and took all the hotel names and their numbers.

Regarding Route: Where else I can get detail route apart from Team bhp website. In 2 and 3rd week of September I have gone through numerous logs on pondy and goa in my free time so I had a complete idea which route to take. There is a log written by dadu link provided below where he has clearly mentioned the route details, I simply took a print out of that. Thanks Dadu for sharing the details, it really helped me. For everybody reference I am posting the link of the log which I used.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...ndicherry.html

So here it all starts:
Day 1, 9th Oct 2008 04:15 am: Car starts and raring to go …
Mysore to Electronic city: Well the road from Mysore to electronic city is good the only difference know is that there have been some addition of humps and what I believe is more humps will appear in near future. I tried to maintain a steady speed rather than pushing my car. Overall I maintained 80km/hr in this route.
Thankfully I didn’t take the kanakpura road while going, which I took while returning from pondy and had a bad experience, will write up about that below in my travelogue.
Well by the time I crossed electronic city and headed towards hosur it was around 6.45 am.
Hosur to Krishnagiri: Roads are getting constructed in some parts between electronic city to hosur but not an issue you can still comfortably drive.
Took a break in A1 plaza but it was closed, anyway we used the bathrooms and the guard was asking money for that also.



Krishnagiri toll gate: Hosur to krishnagiri toll gate, roads are superb in every sense. Although many fellow team-bhpian have done this route @ 120-140km/hr , I wanted to stick to 80 km/hr rule as I believe that in India you make roads like US also with all markings; people will be there who will suddenly cross or people will be coming from opposite end or worse a broken car or lorry in the middle of the road. As there was a baby on board I didn’t wanted to rush things. Max I touched in this road was 100km/hr but that’s too for little distance.



Ok after Krishnagiri toll gate you need to move towards Tiruvannamalai.
Krishnagiri to Tiruvannamalai:
As said you have to go under the second flyover and take left turn and just 15 meteres after the left turn you need to take the first big right turn and you will land up in 2 lane road. Well dadu had written there are potholes on the way but I think some patch work has been done and I didn’t encounter any potholes. Overall roads were good.

Scary moment : road was bit curvy and I saw one bike was coming from the other end , I was relaxed and thought that it will cross as usual but to my surprise when the car will be around 10 meters I saw the expression of that biker , he must be doing a speed of 50 to 60 and was trying to avoid my car, eventually it was clear to me that he is heading straight towards me and still trying to avoid my car , in flash of a second I moved my steering towards left to avoid collision with that biker luckly nothing happened we crossed each other safely. I thought of stopping and shout at him later realized that there is no point in that. But for one moment I had seen yamraj infront of me as both of us were in high speeds. Thanks to power steering we escaped . As my father always say in highway if you are driving safely you are 50% safe rest 50% depends upon other driver.

Mathur: Breakfast stop as suggested here we had our breakfast in mathur. I liked the hot dosa and idly. I think Sambar taste is different from what we get in Karnataka. I would recommend people to take breakfast in mathur. Really good.

Tiruvannamalai town : Indeed a tricky route, the pics of the big white temple


If you get confused here do ask some traffic police guys they will guide you, I stopped to reconfirm. Without asking, the traffic police guy showed the direction as if he knew what I was going to ask …

Tiruvannamali to Pondicherry : straight forward route keep following the signs, only problem that might occur is when you go through Tindivanam , actually we thought we were lost but again I asked the local guys who guided us to a flyover , once you take the flyover you can find the direction to pondy marked and from there on its straight road to pondy.

Reached pondy around 12.30pm. Well as I said I didn’t had any previous booking as soon as I entered pondy I called a home stay “Meeranjali home stay” whose phone number I got it from pondy tourism website. To our luck they had 2 rooms available one of 2200rs(ground floor) and 2000 rs (secondfloor). Well this home stay was 1 minute away from governor’s bunglow main gate . By 12.45 we checked in .
Room I stayed :

to be continued ....

[sammyboy]

Bro please re format your post using the instructions given here
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/announ...your-post.html . Also pm'd u just in case.


Note from Mod : Thanks Sammyboy - formatting tags have now been removed.

[dadu]

Too many ppl visited pondy these days, hows the weather nowdays, I believe it must be raining there or not ??

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by dadu

Too many ppl visited pondy these days, hows the weather nowdays, I believe it must be raining there or not ??

Dadu, it certainly wasnt raining when i went there. Was quite hot, though.

[badboyscad]

Originally Posted by dadu

Too many ppl visited pondy these days, hows the weather nowdays, I believe it must be raining there or not ??

The climate is good now, cold and raining for the past 3 days. perfect for a booze party.

[benkey2]

Originally Posted by dadu

Too many ppl visited pondy these days, hows the weather nowdays, I believe it must be raining there or not ??

climate is just like chennai. has been raining for past 2 days- thanks to depression at bay of bengal. but if u have car then nothing much to worry. still u can roam