Team-BHP > Travelogues


Reply
  Search this Thread
5,773 views
Old 8th February 2010, 11:09   #1
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times
Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore

Hey folks this is my first travel post in TBhp on a car (Previous was Kodai on a Karizma), though not the first time travel .

I had a friends marriage in Mlore on Friday i.e. 5th, so with 3 days in hand thought we will drive in our car. But once the marriage finished on 5th 10.30 am. Suddenly had a light bulb going off in my head and i proposed the idea of Munnar to my wife. She readily agreed (being a travel bug herself).

Route

1. Thursday Nite: Blore > Kunigal > Hassan > Sakleshpur > Shiradi Ghats > Thumbe > Mlore

VGood Road: None
Good Road: Blore - Hassan (Except Tumkur Road)
Ok Road: Hassan - Shiradi & Thumbe - Mlore
Bad but Drivable: Shiradi - Thumbe

Time Taken: Apprx 7.5 hours (No Breaks Except Loo!!)

2. Friday Day: Mlore > Kassargod > Thelassary > Calicut > Kotakal > Thrissur > Chalakudi > Pulluvazy > Munnar

VGood Road: None
Good Road: Mlore - Thrissur
Ok Road: Thrissur - Munnar
Bad but Drivable: None

Time Taken: Apprx 10.5 hours (Snack Break @ Calicut & Pulluvazy)

3. Sunday: Munnar > Udumalpett > Dharapuram > Kangeyam > Perundhurai > Bhavani > Mettur > Thoppur > Dharmapuri > Hosur > Bangalore

VGood Road: Perundhurai - Bhavani & Thoppur - Bangalore
Good Road: Udumalpett - Kangeyam
Ok Road: Bhavani - Mettur
Bad but Drivable: None

Time Taken: Apprx 10 hours (Lunch @ Kangeyam, Snack @ Thoppur)

Fuel Expenses
Bangalore 26 Lts (51.75/Lt)
Mangalore 20 Lts (50.75/Lt)
Munnar 24 Lts (47.87/Lt)

Total Cost: Rs. 3700

Pics & Travelouge coming in the evening at home

Last edited by motomaverick : 8th February 2010 at 11:17.
motomaverick is offline  
Old 8th February 2010, 21:54   #2
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times

1. Thursday Night: Destination is Mangalore





Journey Start time decided: 9 pm
Journey Actual Start time: 10:30 pm
Why the Delay? First I was held up with the speakers that I had decided to fix before the journey. The work was estimated to get over in an hour but it took some 2.5 hours. Rushes home from Domlur side and filled up some 28 liters of fuel from the Bommanhalli Shell.

Had a quick bite as we had planned this to be a non-stop drive. I had still some doubts over the headlights function as I had no time to get them adjusted and focused properly. It was working with some self adjustment though the lights were 90/100 bright. Muttered some prayers and started the car out of the house.

Not bad as Thursday night traffic was less and it took us some 45 mins to get onto to tumkur road via Outer ring road. I was pretty comfortable and excited as this was a drive after a long time. We took the deviation towards Hassan just before Neelamangala and were truly on our way to Mangalore.

Nothing much to write about in this section as it was an uneventful night. The roads have already been mentioned with the famous Shiradi ghats taking the cake for the best roads in the country (from the bottom ofcourse) but it was still drivable in the night so I guess the condition has improved.

Reached Mangalore at around 6am and went straight to the marriage house to get freshened up.
Attached Thumbnails
Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04032_1024x768.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04035_1024x768.jpg  


Last edited by motomaverick : 8th February 2010 at 22:05.
motomaverick is offline  
Old 8th February 2010, 22:22   #3
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times

2. Friday Travel: Mangalore to Munnar




Plan: No plans whatsoever when starting from Bangalore that we will go to Munnar. But the oppressive weather and boring beaches made us yearn for some Hills.

Post the ending of the ceremony at around 9am we decided to head towards Munnar.


Wife: This is really humid and I am bored with beaches.
Me: So you want to return home today itself? We bought quite a few clothes.
Wife: What do we do?
Me: Shall we head towards a Hill Station nearby?
Wife: Which is the nearest one?
Me: Munnar ( I lied but I always wanted to visit Munnar )
Wife: How many kms you said it was to Munnar?
Me: I didn’t say anything it was my friend who said its somewhere around 550kms
Wife: You sure you wanna drive so long?
Me: You sure you wanna stay here?
Wife: Nope. Lets checkout google maps and start


That’s how we decided in a split second to start a whole new Kahani Mein Twist kind of a thing to a plain simple travel from Blore to Mlore.

Checked out maps and took some prints from a café and post having early lunch in the marriage hall we started for our destination at around 11am. It was 553 kms via Calicut & THrissur so it was quite evident that we will reach Munnar at around 10pm latest. So before hand got the rooms booked at some Misty Mountains Resort hotel, which incidentally fell on the route towards Munnar.

The rest of the journey was a fast paced dash to Munnar, hence, no pics of this leg. Except for the Hotel at night.

Reached the place at 10.10pm and checked in. Got the valley facing room but at night you can hardly see anything. So freshened up and retired for the night after 19hrs of almost continuous driving. Spare for the 2 hrs nap i took after reaching Mangalore in the morning.
Attached Thumbnails
Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04172_1024x768.jpg  

motomaverick is offline  
Old 8th February 2010, 22:52   #4
BHPian
 
Soccerfan's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Kochi
Posts: 591
Thanked: 59 Times

thats a nice start . waiting for the next part
Soccerfan is offline  
Old 9th February 2010, 05:39   #5
Senior - BHPian
 
maddy42's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Coorg
Posts: 2,130
Thanked: 1,326 Times

wow thats one long drive you did. Cool that your better half is also bitten by the travel bug.

Well the nearest hill station being munnar had me rolling though. Lol
maddy42 is offline  
Old 9th February 2010, 08:52   #6
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times

Quote:
Originally Posted by Soccerfan View Post
thats a nice start . waiting for the next part
Thanks soccerfan. Right now in office so can post only the travelouges

Quote:
Originally Posted by maddy42 View Post
wow thats one long drive you did. Cool that your better half is also bitten by the travel bug.

Well the nearest hill station being munnar had me rolling though. Lol
Yeah i know sometimes u gotta fake it to make it!!
motomaverick is offline  
Old 9th February 2010, 15:33   #7
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times

3. Munnar Travel: Travelling Around Munnar





After a good nights rest, got up to a lovely sunrise viewable from the Window. The valley looked really beautiful with the mist and red haze of the sun.

Today we decided to roam around Munnar basically drive down the Top Station road.

a. Top Station – 34kms
b. Kundla Dam – 24 kms
c. Echo Point – 20 kms
d. Mattupetty Dam – 14 kms
e. Flower Garden – 5 kms


The drive is truly awesome on this road with super smooth road and layers to tea gardens. Top it off not much traffic except for the usual tourist cabs. There is a road to Kodai as well from Top station and it looked pretty adventurous but not for a Zen. Maybe some other time on a SUV will attempt it

Being the early birds at Top station was able to spend 15mins in silence at view point # 2 away from the shouts & noise of fellow travellers. There was a sign board there “This Land for Sale” We were pretty tempted to inquire about the cost

After Top station we went down towards Kundala Dam and decided to have a go on the Shikara. We had pretty tiring experiences with paddle boats earlier so this time we were pretty sure that we wanted someone else to row the boat. The Shikara is a smaller version of the ones you get in Kashmir but it was very good ride for around 30mins. Costed us some 200 bucks with a 30mins waiting period thrown in since there is only 2 shikaras for boating.

Echo point & Mattupetty was pretty crowded so we decided to skip them. I really wanted to check out the Indo-Swiss cattle farm but then somehow we missed the sign board that we had seen while going up previously. I guess everyone goes to the Cattle farm before Top station, we being ulta people they would have never thought someone will be doing top station first.

To compensate for the loss we went in to some Flower garden. Wifey just went berserk seeing so many flowers at one place those too different varieties. I was busy stalking a bee that was busy with its daily work of nectar plucking, trying to capture it on the cam. Yes, I did manage to click its snap when it was busy at its job.

By the time we reached back to Munnar it was lunch time and we grabbed some bite at Sarvana Bhavan. This one was pretty good and VFM than the ones I ate in Chennai. Post this we decided to head back to the resort to take some rest before going for a sunset view in Pothamedu. On our way back we saw quite a few cars coming from Aluva side with race numbers stuck on their side. It looked like these were passenger cars that were participating in some rally of some sort. It would have been good to paint our zen in some bogus number, take a u-turn and head to the finish line first

5pm we decided to reach Pothamedu sunset point which is on the road towards Bison Valley. It was a lovely view of the rows of hills lined one after the other each one rising above the other. Awesome view, had a cup of Munnar tea over there sitting and admiring the view.

Finally came back to the resort at around 6.30pm and sat in front of the TV planning to order room service before retiring for the night. Lovely end to a lovely day.


4. Back to Bangalore: Munnar – Chinnar – Bhavani – Hosur - Bangalore



Started back after a relaxed yesterday at around 10am. Did not want to leave the place but Monday office beckons both of us and we reluctantly moved ourselves to the car. Bought some tea at KDHP sales outlet, filled up some 1000 bucks gas that fetched us 20 lts as the fuel cost is just 47 bucks to a liter here and off we went on our return journey to Bangalore. We reached Bangalore at around 7pm. Not much of a rush on Hosur road. Drove pretty fast over the Dharmapuri Hosur section and was able to touch 155kph on the zen. That really bought a broad smile to my face as 1 Santro gls was not able to keep up to the little box’s pace

Overall a pretty satisfying drive since Thursday night. Surely this is not the end and some more exploration is on the way, but then that’s for laters as got some serious goals coming up in the next few months that should keep both of us busy.

Total Kms covered (including travel inside Munnar): 1600 kms apprx


…..will be uploading the pics soon.
motomaverick is offline  
Old 9th February 2010, 22:40   #8
Senior - BHPian
 
motomaverick's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 1,898
Thanked: 989 Times

Here are some of the pictures that was taken mainly in Munnar.
Attached Thumbnails
Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04053_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04051_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04082_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04090_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04098_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04100_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04119_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04114_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04131_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04132_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04140_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04143_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04144_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04149_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04155_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04163_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04061_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04064_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04176_877x658.jpg  

Rush Hours!! Blore > Mlore > Munnar > Blore-dsc04036_877x658.jpg  


Last edited by motomaverick : 9th February 2010 at 22:42.
motomaverick is offline  
Old 11th February 2010, 22:09   #9
Senior - BHPian
 
Latheesh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: CNN/BLR
Posts: 4,238
Thanked: 10,042 Times

Nearest hill station...Munnar??? that was cool, nice pics
Latheesh is offline  
Reply

Most Viewed
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Team-BHP.com
Proudly powered by E2E Networks