Wednesday 16 January 2013

Travelog: Bangalore -> Kodaikanal -> Munnar -> Thekkady -> Ooty -> Bangalore, Part 3

27-December-2012
We left Munnar early morning to Thekkady. Since our resort, Camp Noel, was almost 30 kms away from Munnar town, We cross the town at 11:30AM and we started towards Thekkady.


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12:30pm Crossed the town called Kavumbhakam.
1:15pm Crossed the town called Udumbanchola.

It is a very nice drive towards Thekkady, you go through series of Tea Gardens on both sides as you are driving. The road is good but narrow like typical hill roads. One has to be careful of oncoming traffic. There are quite a few hair-pin turns which makes driving a pleasure.
We stopped in the middle for a tea and bio break and reached Thekkady around 3pm.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Travelog: Bangalore -> Kodaikanal -> Munnar -> Thekkady -> Ooty -> Bangalore, Part 2

We left Kodaikanal on 26th December 2012 to Munnar. We topped the fuel in Kodaikanal and left around 9:00am. Again we set the navigation to Munnar on the Android device and start. Since our resort was situated on Palani Ghat road, we took that road to go downhill.

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The road is a typical ghat road so one has to be careful, there are places where only one vehicle can go across so, watch out for climbing vehicles, technically they have the right of the way.
The road crosses through few Wild Life Sanctuary check posts and every place you have to get down, right your vehicle number, name and then indirectly you are nudged to pay. The going rate seems to between 20 and 30 rupees.
11:45am Reached Palani, continued on Sathyamangalam Road.
12:30pm Reached Udumalaipettai. Continue on NH17. We continue following the road, many small towns, nothing of significance.
3:45pm Reached Munnar town. The city was completely jammed with traffic.

Roads are very narrow in whole section so one needs to be patient  with overtaking. The road surface is good.

Travelog: Bangalore -> Kodaikanal -> Munnar -> Thekkady -> Ooty -> Bangalore, Part 1

This is my travelog for a trip to Kodaikanal, Munnar, Thekkady and Ooty in the month of December of 2012. I was taking my BMW X1 on the drive. As part of preparation the vehicle was topped up with fuel, air pressure was adjusted for the passengers and luggage.
I always carry essential supplies while on long drive so I thought I would just list these here.

  1. A tyre inflator that runs on car battery. 
  2. Tubeless puncture repair kit
  3. Toolkit
  4. Umbrella

In Google we trust, so we load up the Navigation on an android phone and start following it blindly.


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22-December-2012

6:44am We left home towards the BETL road towards Hosur. Early morning, roads with comparatively less traffic resulted in smooth progress.
7:42am Saw a Jaguar and Suzuki Hayabusa following us near the toll. As we crossed the toll for BETL and proceeded further, there was huge traffic jam. The traffic consisted of hundreds of trucks. Not sure where these came from but one needs to avoid this traffic. May be start earlier, 5am?
9:11am Finally the traffic jams subsided and crossed Hosur.
9:30am Stopped at McDonalds near Krishnagiri, extremely crowded, got something to eat.
9:50am Back on the road towards Krishnagiri
11:38am Just crossed Salem Toll Booth, Decided to do lunch at GRT Grand Hotel, right on the bye-pass.
1:20pm Back on the road, for some reason major traffic jam in Salem
2:20pm Toll at Rasampalayam. Toll Rs. 38/-
3:05pm Toll at Velanchet Rs. 71/-
3:44pm Reached Dindigul, the turn towards Kodaikanal is tricky, One has to take a right turn but to take that turn, one has to get into left service road and then turn below the flyover. Look for signage. We missed the service road signage so went ahead and then took a U-turn and came back.

We used Google Map for navigation and the default route that it shows for Kodaikanal is not the right one. We ended up taking that route and ended up driving for almost 4 hours on a very bad hilly road before we reached Kodaikanal Ghat Road.

The road till Dindigul is fantastic, after that there is lots of construction on Kodaikanal road. One has to be careful driving on this road. The Ghat road itself is narrow but good surface condition.

We reached our resort around 6:30pm and checked in.