Holiday at Coorg From Chennai via Salem: Road Trip

[harishankar]

Successfully completed the Holiday at Coorg from Chennai. This is my travelogue.

Excuse my style, it is my first travelogue.

Planning
After deciding on a vacation last month, I successfully managed to squeeze in some holidays at work and booked at Madikeri Club Mahindra for this December. After some research, I decided to take my new Mahindra KUV 100 NXT on this trip and since I wanted to combine the holiday with a visit to my in-laws at Salem, accordingly I decided to start from Chennai last Tuesday afternoon and reach Salem by night and halt there at my in-laws place. Since I did not want to travel whole distance from Chennai to Madikeri in one night, and did not want to waste money overnight at Hotel in Bengaluru or Mysuru. Thus Salem was the logical choice, though the distance is more. Also my Father-in-law agreed to drive up to Mysuru the next day and return to Salem from Mysuru.

However, a few days before the vacation, my boss sustained a finger injury (fracture actually) and at the last moment the vacation looked in jeopardy, since the injury looked like it might put him out of action and I might have to cancel the leave. Luckily my boss was good enough to allow me to continue with my plans.

This was the first time I actually ventured out of state by car and looked forward to the drive and the experience of a long inter-state drive.
Planning was like this:
-> Tuesday - Leave Chennai by afternoon and reach Salem.
-> Wednesday - Leave Salem early morning and reach Mysuru by 12 noon or 1:00pm and have lunch. Drop my father in law at station and continue on to Madikeri. Reach resort by evening.
-> Thursday, Friday, Saturday - stay at resort
-> Sunday - Check out by morning and return to Salem.
-> Monday - Halt at Salem
-> Tuesday - Return to Chennai from Salem.

Day 1 (Day 0 actually)
With growing excitement I took a half-day off on Tuesday and came home by 1:30 pm and had lunch. Packed my things quickly (I am a late packer) and started from home by 2:30 pm. However, because I could not recharge my Fastag account and the issue turned out to be non-compliance of KYC, I quickly visited the local branch of Axis Bank at my area and handed over the KYC form with copies of my ID proof. Since of course, it takes a few days to update KYC, I had to continue without recharging Fastag, but luckily I had a couple of hundred rupees balance on my account which allowed me to travel to Salem by paying cash only at a couple of toll plazas. Since the KYC updation took some time, actually left Chennai only around 3:00 pm with my wife.

Decided to take the OMR route to Thiruporur and then the Chengalpattu-Thiruporur route to reach Chengalpattu since I always enjoy the scenery on this road. This is always a good road because it is easier to access from Adyar. For those in Western parts of Chennai this road may be too much of a detour. Had an uneventful drive to Salem and eventually reached Salem at around 8:00 pm and broke for the day at my in-laws place.

Coming up...
Drive from Salem to Mysuru and then on to Madikeri (and photos).

 

[harishankar]

Day 2
The plan was to start at 6:00am from Salem. Actually got up only at 5:20 am (was a bit tired after the driving the previous evening) and managed to start from Salem by 6:30am with my father-in-law. Tanked up at Salem LOA bunk for 21.83 litres (full tank from Chennai and had covered around 388 kms including some city run prior to the long drive) and as per my mileage calculator it had given 17.77 km/litre, which is good for this petrol car.

From LOA bunk, my father-in-law took the wheels and as per advise from fellow TAI member, we decided to take the Bhavani-Sathyamangalam route to Mysuru, and so drove from Salem and took the Coimbatore highway. At around 7:30 am we halted for breakfast at a Saravana Bhavan hotel on the highway, somewhere between Bhavani and Sankari.

After breakfast, we continued the journey via Bhavani and took the highway up to Bhavani and from there, left the National Highway and took the SH-15 to Gobichettipalayam - Sathyamangalam. The state highway is a very well laid road, and very scenic also. You can maintain a speed of around 70-80 km/hr comfortably on this stretch, though of course, being a 2 lane, you will have slow moving traffic and overtaking lorries/buses to contend with.

Since my father in law was at the wheels, I took time to relax and also snap a few photos of the route. Here are some pics, snapped from my iPhone, all taken while on the move:

As you can see, the road is in excellent condition and there is a bit of traffic but not much. There is much scenery on this route, but due to time constraints did not stop much anywhere except for bio break.

Coming up...
Day 2 - continued - drive up to Mysuru, lunch and then to Madikeri...