Chennai - RajahMundry A NH-5 Drive

[rajscorpion]

Hi Folks, I would like to share my experience in Chennai-Kolkotta Highway drive from Chennai to Rajahmundry on a road-trip that I completed this week. I will post my experience about my tour in subsequent posts. To start with the tour plan was not intended to go for Rajahmundry but it was to Thekkady. As many of you know that there were some unrest in Thekkady due to Mullai Periyam dam issue. Hence, I have changed my travel plan and headed towards Andhra.

Let me share some of the pictures that I have taken during this travel. It was a mixture of pilgrimage and fun travel experience. First let me post the pictures and later I will come up with the stories....

 

[AppU]

Nice set of pics Raj,


Keep it coming..

 

[mukeshus]

Nice set of Pics Raj.

From the pic it looks like yours is Scorpio Sle Rocky beige same as our other member Amit.

Btw welcome to the Hawk gang buddy.

Even i am back from my long trip of 1850 kms in 4 days to Kanyakumari, will come with my travelogue soon.

Waiting for the description with pics of rest of travelogue.

 

[rajscorpion]

Planning...
I was more inclined towards travelling Kerala (God's Own Country) for Christmas vacation. I was doing some research around Thekkady and Munnar. I have gone through different websites related to the travelogues about visiting Thekkady. Gathered information about the list of tourist spots, accommodation available, time required for travel etc. Charted the list of things to do with proper plan. I penned everything into a detailed project plan [ I feel it was even better than the project plan I make for my project in office :) ].

Meanwhile, I have informed some of my friends about this plan and few of them showed interest in it. But, as I know that most of the time inviting a large number of groups may not work out. So, I made my decision that I will be giving a cut-off date to my friends to say a 'Final YES' so that I can go ahead and booked accomodation. As the target date was approaching I started getting execuses from my friends that they were not able to make it due to so and so reason. As it was perfectly expected by me, I was not in shock but rather enjoying the execuses that they were providing me. May be it could help me to cook up some stories when it is required …ha ha ha :). To my surprise, as usual one of my good friend 'Balaji' has given 'GO' for me to book accomodation. :)

Ok. Now,it is time to move on to the execution part of 'accommodation'. First I tried to get details about KTDC and wanted to book rooms in the KTDC hotels. The main reason I chose these hotels where due to my previous experience with KSTDC (Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation) and TTDC (Tamil Nadu State Tourism Development Corporation) when I visited different places around Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The room that you get in these hotels used to be average kind of accommodation but it is certainly value for money. You may not get STAR hotel kind of accommodations but decent enough that you can stay with family and enjoy your vacation at a lower cost.

As I decided to book KTDC hotels in Thekkady, I tried through their website. As the dates that I am going to book accomodation would be during X-mas time, so I was not sure whether I would be getting or not. As I thought, all the rooms in KTDC hotels have been booked and none are available. So, now it is the time for me to try other hotels or homestays. I did not want to go through homestays due to the fact that I have not experienced its service before in my travel so decided to continue my search for economy hotels. I was looking for rooms with max 2.5k per night. As it is going to be 4 days for my trip, I don't want to spend beyond that for accomodation. I chose 'makemytrip.com' for the hotel search. Now, here is the twist that I saw when I was searching…..Do you want to know what that could be…? It was really amazing for me to know that even Govt operated organizations also having tie up with such websites for their room reservation. Yes. I am talking about KTDC hotel in Thekkady. I was able to see that there was room available for 24th and 25th night in Thekkady. I was so excited and booked my rooms for myself and my friend's family. Now, I started dreaming about my trip and started preparing for the travel until I came with some shocking news….

You may want to know…what is that shocking news….If you are serious news watcher and you would have known by this time what was the shocking news.. Let me post the news shortly and will share the remaining part of the story in subsequent threads…..

Please hold on till I come back to you with some more interesting twists :)

 

[rajscorpion]

Nice set of Pics Raj.

From the pic it looks like yours is Scorpio Sle Rocky beige same as our other member Amit.

Btw welcome to the Hawk gang buddy.

Even i am back from my long trip of 1850 kms in 4 days to Kanyakumari, will come with my travelogue soon.

Waiting for the description with pics of rest of travelogue.

Yeah mukeshus, you got it right. Its Scoprio SLE...I have started writing more on the travel. I want to write about my planning and execution in more detail and also will post more pictures with some description that can help people to get some info in case they need to travel on those routes. By the way, where are you from? Me, from TN and settled in Bangalore

 

[rajscorpion]

Yes. Those who have guessed what could be the problem is correct. The same KL/TN issue over Dam. Due to the unrest developed by peoples at both the states the plan of traveling to Thekkady had to be abandoned. My heart was broken due to that fact that brothers of both states are fighting over Dam issue for which both of these people also were not having any immediate solution. Apart from the Dam issue, my heart started crying due to the fact that my travel plan has become virtually impossible. I was hoping that the situation will become better as the days goes by but the situation started becoming worse. So, finally I made a decision to drop the plan and get the money back which I have paid towards accommodation. This was the first time I am checking the cancellation policy. When I read the cancellation policy, I almost cried that there was no cancellation allowed if cancelled less than 10days. Now, I become more worried due to the fact that the travel plan is collapsed and also the money that I have put for the hotels are also going to become void
I was thinking about the losses that I have incurred for next couple of days. Meanwhile, my parents decided that they would like to visit Tirumala to see Lord Venkateswara. As my plan is cancelled they wanted to go themselves to Tirumala thinking that I won’t be able to make it. So, they went ahead and started planning themselves for the Tirumala trip. Meanwhile, the weekend was approaching and I have to decide what to do for the vacation. So, suddenly I decided to join my parents and get concurrence from my wife as well for the Pilgrimage tour. Now, we made a decision that we will be visiting Tirumala. As it was a weekend and usually there would be lot of crowd in Tirumala, we were thinking about the accommodation. I recalled that one of my friend is having his apartment in Tirupathi, so if I get the option to stay in his house, we can solve the problem of accommodation. So, I immediately called him and asked whether I can stay for couple of nights in his house. He agreed. So, finally our plan took off.

 

[mukeshus]

Yeah mukeshus, you got it right. Its Scoprio SLE...I have started writing more on the travel. I want to write about my planning and execution in more detail and also will post more pictures with some description that can help people to get some info in case they need to travel on those routes. By the way, where are you from? Me, from TN and settled in Bangalore

I am from Mangalore, settled in Bangalore..

Oh so sad that the cancellation of room that happened due to Mulaperiyar dam issue.

Actually my plan was towards Kerala, Guruvayur temple and Thiruvananthapuram.

In the end dropped the idea and planned for Kanyakumari.

 

[rajscorpion]

Mukeshus, where is your travelogue and photos? Eagerly waiting to see it :)

 

[mukeshus]

Mukeshus, where is your travelogue and photos? Eagerly waiting to see it :)

Will be doing it by today, most of the pics were clicked in Iphone 4, sync is a problem in Windows.

Will have to resize the pics and Travelogue will be ready.

 

[rajscorpion]

Adding few more pics during my trip.The below few pictures have been taken in Tirumala.

1. Entrance of Tirumala Road
2. Tirumala Road in the hills
3. Rock Garden in Tirumala (To see this place you have to travel around 1KM from Vaikuntham Complex 2)
4. Waterfall near Rock Garden
5. Fountain at the back side of Tirumala Temple
6. View of the temple
7. program near temple


More to come....

 

[sethumurugan]

Friend, am confused. the thread title sayd Chennai-rajamundry drive but did not find anything about that. Am i missing anything here?

 

[rajscorpion]

Friend, am confused. the thread title sayd Chennai-rajamundry drive but did not find anything about that. Am i missing anything here?

hi sethumurugan, I was suppose to update the thread with travel experience of rajamundry. But, as I had to go onsite for my project I could not continue. When I returned from onsite last time, I visited Mudumalai. so, totally forgot to update this thread....Now, as I was updating my travel from Chennai to Borra Caves, Vizag I could not update this.

Let me try to update.