Bangalore-Mangalore-Kundapur : Trip Execution

10-Apr-09, 0400 hrs : The alarm goes off and i jump outta my bed and quickly get ready. 0445 hrs : My friend arrives and we leave home heading towards Mangalore. A few meters into the journey, both of us light up cigarettes and talk about the journey that we're about to undertake.

As i'd mentioned in the previous post, route 2 : Bangalore - Mysore - Hunsur - Piriyapatna - Kushalnagar - Suntikoppa - Madikeri - Sampaji - Sulya - Puttur - Mani - Mangalore is what we'd chosen for this leg of the journey. Taking Kanakapura road and then the NICE BMIC, we reached Mysore road at 0515 hrs.

First pit stop : Our regular tea shop (just a few hundred meters from WonderLa) on Mysore road. At this point we were hungry and the one place we could think of was the Kamat hotel in Mysore. The hotel opens at 0700 hrs sharp and we paced ourselves well to reach the hotel right on time! I downed a few Poori(s) and my friend gobbled up a couple of Idly/Vada and we hit the road again.

Much to our surprise, the Mysore - Hunsur stretch was simply impeccable. Fresh black tar and nice scenic surroundings made this stretch a pleasure to drive on. Pedal to the floor and i was doing about 140 kmph. We were enjoying it so much so that we completely missed to notice Hunsur fly by! :)

Piriyapatna : Narrow roads, people/catle crossing roads every few meters... This, snapped us back to reality! And at this point, i was telling myself... "hmmm... looks like this wasn't a good route option either". Though the roads were narrow, they were still motorable and not too much pot-hole ridden. It was only in the towns that we needed to slow down. Rest of the journey, i was pacing at an average of 80 kmph.

Kushalnagar and Suntikoppa were small towns and we just passed them in a jiffy. My friend had a lot of hopes about Madikeri (which was coming up next). He had a rosy picture about beautiful girls clad in traditional coorgy style sarees etc... Much to his dismay, we couldn't find a single girl on the streets that day and i was is no mood to take my friend on a tour of Madikeri. A little dissapointed, we left Madikeri at around 1000 hrs. oh, i forgot to mention : We saw this restaurant called "Athithi" in Madikeri which had been discussed in Team-BHP forums. Looked like a decent place to stop by for lunch.

Ghats! It was time to burn some rubber :)
The 30 odd kms between Sulya and puttur was a ghat section. We enjoyed this stretch as we paced through it a lot slower, clicking photographs etc... A short break here and we pushed on. Puttur went un-noticed as we had to take a right turn to reach Puttur town.

BC Road : This road signals the arrival to Mangalore and boy it's completely f***** up! It was around 1230 hrs by the time we reached here. The real humidity of a costal area began to belt us out of our comfort zone as we started sweating like pigs! chugging along, we reached a place called Pumpwel and picked up my wife from her hostel.

Fooooooooood !!!!
Thankfully, there was a restaurant called Pegasus close by and we dropped in for a re-fill! We were so dead tired by now and we sat down ordering food as if we'd been kept starving for the last 3 days! God,i stuffed myself like a pig and my tank was full. I still had to drive 100 kms to Kundapur and i was sleepy and was feeling lousy at that moment! Trust me : the thought of actually booking a hotel in Mangalore also crossed my mind :D

But, we pushed forward.... 0400 hrs : Kundapur, finally! My belly was full and felt as if it would burst any moment now :)

Agumbe route... coming up next!

Bangalore-Mangalore-Kundapur : Route Info.

I knew there were multiple routes from Bangalore to Mangalore. With the help of Team-BHP's forum and MSN maps, i set out to draft my detailed route plan between Bangalore-Mangalore-Kundapur.

(Unfortunately, at the time of writing this post, MSN had altered the look and feel of their maps. The maps now no longer show the different waypoint names or names of places enroute!)

I'll just provide the alternative google maps version of the route here :
Start - Bangalore
End - Mangalore

Route 1 : The shortest time/distance route (NH-48) (420 kms) :

Bangalore - Nelamangala - Tumkur - Tiptur - Hassan - Sakleshpur - Shiradi ghats - Uppinangadi - Mani - Mangalore

Pros :

1. Shortest time/distance
2. 80% good roads
   
3. 420 kms from Bangalore. Journey time approx. 8~10 hrs.

Cons :

1. 20% bad roads (i mean really bad - searching for tar types)
2. Shiradi ghats is one section people curse about. The HP tankers and mining lorries that use this route, cause heavy damage to the road. Appoximately 30 kms stretch takes more than an hour to traverse!
3. At night, traffic jams are common on this stretch! Jams lasting for 6+ hours are commonly reported here. Please avoid this route at night and during rains.
4. Car chassis takes a beating! With pot holes resembling surface of the moon, beware of chassis kissing the ground at regular intervals. Careful about that gear-box too!

Inspite of all the hassles in this route, the buses that ply between Bangalore-Mangalore still take this route and manage to cover it in 10 hours flat! Beats me :)

Considering the points above and also the taking note of the alarm bells raised by other motorists at Team-BHP forum about this route, i decided to search for an alternative!

Route 2 : Madikeri - Scenic route (450 kms) :

Bangalore - Mysore - Hunsur - Piriyapatna - Kushalnagar - Suntikoppa - Madikeri - Sampaji - Sulya - Puttur - Mani - Mangalore

This was another alternative i picked up at the Team-BHP forum. I'd travelled upto Madikeri in 2008 and knew that the roads were decent and motorable. But, Madikeri onwards i had no idea how the roads would turn out to be. If what some of the Team-BHPian were saying was right, this route would provide a scenic and more pleasant ride compared to route 1. A little more investigation and i'd decided to go for it! Took a print out of the map and wrote down the names of places i'd pass through (waypoints).

Pros :

1. 90% fine roads
2. Scenic drive
3. Avoids NH-48 which is heavily used by trucks

Cons :

1. Roads are a little narrow compared to route 1
2. 10% roads out of shape (after piriyapatna upto madikeri) but are motorable
3. 30~40 kms more compared to route 1
4. Little more time consuming since the roads are narrower
   

Route 3 : Chikmagalur route (450 kms) :

Bangalore - Tumkur - Tiptur - Arsikere - Kadur - Chikmagalur - Ujire - Bantval - Mangalore

I have been to Chikmagalur many a times. So, this time around i decided to avoid this route. Ujire to Bantval is reported to be a bad patch. This was out of my list soon...

So, route 2 it was!

Bangalore-Mangalore-Kundapur : Planning

It was my turn to travel :)

It was quite sometime since I'd visited to my wife's home in Kundapur (a small town situated on the coastal line of Karnataka). I sat down thinking about how & when i'd plan this journey. Kundapur is about 520 kms from my home here in Bangalore. I knew i had to make this journey in the month of April. So, i openened up my calendar and scouted for possible travel dates. Since, we didn't have any official holidays in April, i was forced to choose 10th,11th & 12th April 09 as my final dates. 10th being a friday, i had to take a day off of work and this was the easy part!

The dates were set, Out-Of-Office message was set and sent out to my team @ office. 6-Apr-09, am now sitting in my office - still thinking of how to reach Kundapur. The matter is : I've never travelled in a bus so far and i don't plan to either! Train reservations were out of question as the Bangalore-Mangalore route is usually fully booked and if at all one needs to buy train tickets, he'll have to do that well in advance. Air tickets were way too costly for me. 4 days to go and now i'd ruled out travel by bus/train/flight. The only options i'd left with (and the only options i love) were to either ride or drive to Kundapur!

Incidentally, the same day, one of my friends from IBM called me to ask my plans for the weekend and i honestly replied that i'd be travelling to Kundapur all alone in my car! He asked me if he could hitch a ride with me for which my answer was "ummm... seriously ? OK"... Soon, two other friends of mine followed suit and asked me if they could tag along. Now this kinda started turning out to be a boys weekend getaway trip, but my intentions were clear. I HAD TO SEE MY WIFE! :)

So, we were set... I began enquiring about all possible routes from Bangalore to Mangalore and then to Kundapur. My first step was to google for this information and i came across an automotive community called Team-BHP. A fantastic website i must say! A team of dedicated motor-heads working to maintain and run this website with content rich forums and splendid, highly informative threads!

Searched for "Bangalore Mangalore" and came up with the following thread called :
Bangalore - Mangalore/Udupi road info
With over 500 posts/replies on this thread, i began dissecting and assimilating the information that i needed.

MSN maps - A truely fantastic tool to plan your route!
In one of the replies to the thread above, i saw an external link to the MSN maps website. I hadn't used this one earlier. All i did was to give my starting point (Bangalore), ending point (Kundapur) and voila! A super clean and detailed map view of my entire route was staring at me through the monitor!

8-Apr-09 : So, yeah... dates were fixed, friends were joining in, my route map was ready, my car was ready to make the trip. Just when everything looked good, i got a call from one of my friends who'd agreed to join the trip. The call came at 1400 hrs and my gut feeling was that he'd called me to say he'd drop out! So True :(
An emergency had cropped up at his place and he had to stay back at home. So, the other 3 of us stuck to our schedule. A boring and unhappy day passed.

9-Apr-09 : 1030 hrs, another call from another friend who'd promised to join the trip. This time, it came as a shocker. My friend mentioned that he'd pulled out of this trip since an he had to attend an emergency court case with his mom. I couldn't say NO. So, it was down to the two of us now. Thankfully, the other friend of mine had no such reservations in mind and he agreed to stick to the schedule.
1900 hrs : A call from my cousin

Cousin : Hey
Me : ssssup ?
Cousin : Heard you are heading to Mangalore
Me : Yup, you heard that right!
Cousin : So, what time are you leaving ?
Me : Midnight
Cousin : What the.... ????!!!!!
Me : What happened ?
Cousin : You plan to drive to Mangalore overnight ? Crazy ?
Me : he he... kinda yeah.. he he
Cousin : Mate, have you travelled to Mangalore before ? Do you know the route ?
Me : aaaah...ummm... NOPE.. he he
Cousin : Take my advice, shut the f*** up and sleep now. Get up and 0400 hrs and leave. By the time dawn breaks, you would have reached half way and then you can ask people for directions to Mangalore!
Me : hmmmm.. Not a bad idea mate!
Cousin : Are you going alone ?
Me : Nope, me and another friend o mine...
Cousin : Does he drive ?
Me : No, but he smokes.. he can give me good company..he he...
Cousin : Very funny! Now do as i say and your journey will be stress free. This is just an advice, don't take it to heart. If you still wanna leave in the midnight, please do so...
Me : hmmmm.. I think i'll go with your idea.
Cousin : Cool! give me a call once you're back mate.
Me : Sure
Cousin : chao
........

So, now i had a new timeline in mind!

Hobby ? Yes, I think so...

I've been thinking of blogging for quite some time now. Though am not new to blogging and the like, it's just that i haven't spent much time in maintaining and/or updating my other blogs. Result : Orphaned blogs sitting out there waiting to be purged! I have too many of them yeah :(
Most novice bloggers like me would agree : It's like buying a new gadget, we go through the instruction manual with full enthusiasm in the beginning and then, slowly the interest tapers downs through the days!

So, why did i re-start again ?
Every time i head out on a trip with family or friends, i say to myself - "I've got to make a photo blog and document this journey", so that a few years down the line, i can look back and re-live the happy moments. Not just that! Maybe, others can take notes from my travelogues and experiences.

Lets see how this goes :) My 3rd attempt at documenting the good things about my life!
I aim to cover the following topics here :
1) Travelogues.
2) Photo blogs.
3) General information, which i think will be favorable to others.

Cheers
--Nav--