@sbraj. The saravana bhavan is not on highway. It's 4 - 5 kms off the highway towards vellore. We avoid highway eateries as we perceive many of them to be unhygenic. If it doesn't look clean, we go inside the town.
So this one was too costly.
The next morning we woke up leisurely. The previous night I was rather irritated with the hotel staff asking me to park my vehicle to specifications listed by them as though it's an army tank laden with shells. Finally I got damn pissed off and drove it over some empty tubes they'd put there on the basement car park and stormed off the car to my room.
We had a nice little brunch and left the hotel and got confused on the bypass. Signages were poor. To make matters worse, the flyover above (now opened) was not functional. So we had vehicles going from everywhere to everywhere on a saturday.
Going up and down on that road thrice we finally followed another vehicle and drove the wrong way. The gut feeling was that some one catches, he gets caught first. Some one bangs, he gets banged first which will alert me.
We finally found the way to the bypass and got on to the great horror called nice road (guess that was it).
This was the route I planned to take.
However, a stretch of Nice road was WIP. may be some irate villagers dug it up. So they split the toll to two.
Hosur road - 15 rs.
Bannerghatta - 63 rs.
There was a deviation in to some strange looking place in Bangalore after Hosur road toll where I had to ask atleast 7 persons and take U turns thrice to get back on to the road that takes me to the second leg of Nice road.
Sir, Nice roadige hege hoguvadhu?
Elli hog beku nimage?
Nanige Tumkur hoguva beku sir.
Seedha hogi. Mundhe signal alli right alli thirugisi. Mathe leftu.
Don't bother looking for translation. I followed the directions to a T. But still got lost.
@ampere. That's the parody of Nice.
We finally got on to the Nice road again at the other side. Paid up 63 bucks and kept on the road. It took me a good 2 hours to circumnavigate Bengaluru and reach Nelamangala from electronic city road.
I had to reach some good place for late lunch.
The tumkur stretch was horror. Every speedbreaker looked like cleaving my car in two. With a fully loaded car with so much in boot and full occupancy, I was damn scared. Can anyone in Karnataka public works department tell me why such hillocks are there in the form of speed breakers? With the amount of tar on those speed breakers in Karnataka, they can put roads for the whole of Bijapur I guess.
I finally managed to find Srikrishna veg hotel near Chitradurga. That looked decent. But the real reason I stopped there was that my baby was hungry and ready for it's next feeding session, while I enjoyed the views of the windmills.
But I was so disgusted with this stretch of NH4 that I didn't bother to even check whether my camera is in the car or not. No photos there.
After a brief stop over, we proceeded. the harihar ranebennur stretch was horror too. I pity the villagers. Every damn vehicle on NH4 has to pass through every door step of poor ranebennur. To make matters worse, there were two huge trucks (monstrosities on road) ferrying across railway locomotives.
That pretty much made up most of my day. On a single lane, trying to over take two such monsters who are one behind the other.
After overtaking and inside ranebennur, we couldn't avoid stopping for tender coconut. After sitting in the car for nonstop 7 hours, we needed to cool down. As we sipped the wonderful tender coconut, I saw the two monsters passing by. I cursed myself, for I didn't know when we'd get chance to overtake them again.
Soon we were delighted to see that the single lane paved way to 4 laned highway. It was almost sunset time.
With a wonderful highway opening up, I stopped briefly for a quick photoshoot.
My daughter loved the red sun that was setting quickly. Guess there was cotton fields nearby.
Sunset near ranebennur
My Josh machine with the setting sun
Now the next big question on my wife's mind. Where do we call it a day. It was already painful starting on a long stretch from hosur and reaching ranebennur by nightfall. Hubli was what I'd planned earlier. But driving on a sunday from hubli to pune was not in my mind. I wanted to reach home earlier so that I can relax and unwind for more gruelling office the next day.
How about Belgaum? It's just another 3.5 hours from here I told her.
2.5 hours is what I do max with my baby at any stretch. We need to give her a break and plan for her next food session every 2.5 hours.
No boiled milk left. She's just had her orange juice after the sunset pitstop. Max she can be kept waiting for 3 hours. Is it possible?
I told my wife, let me hit the roads. We'll stop when our daughter starts getting cranky. We move to the nearest restaurant and boil milk there for her.
I moved to overdrive and was soon doing 120 kmph.