This stretch would be our longest drive, about 62o Kms to home in Bangalore. We decided to leave early as we expected that we would take atleast 11 hours including stops in between. Checked out of our room at 5:30 AM we were able to commence our journey at 6 AM after loading our luggage.
In a short while we were out of Kolhapur and on the highway heading towards Bangalore. The roads were excellent and with very little traffic and this helped us cover 85 Kms in the first hour of driving. Elated with the prospects of a long drive cut short by a few hours we kept on.
A few hours down the road we came across a Kamat, we decided to stop over for breakfast, hot idlies and sambar. We were the only customers that early in the morning and we were back in the car in 15 minutes flat, good timing.
The stretch between Kolhapur and Bangalore is dotted with Kamat Upachars and one need not worry about food on the road.
Is there a reason why there is not much traffic on this road? Or is that all there is?
We lost a about 10 minutes when we getting on to the bye pass at Harikere(?) the bywe pass went through narrow small town roads and soon after entering the road there was a question in our mind if we were on the correct road, as we saw traffic heading towards Kolhapur towards our right. We did not look too keenly for traffic going towards Bangalore :) So we traced back and checked and rechecked and got back on to the same road with doubt in our minds, in about 50 minutes we were on the 6 lane road that we were used to. A signage at this point would have been welcome and saved us a few minutes.
The bye passes and the flyovers and bridges and quality of road and little traffic shortened our time in the car by about 3 hours. We reached Bangalore in about 7 hours. This stretch was typically what we would do on our road trip every day except that it was longer by about 170 Kms but the time taken was only a little longer and not as much as we expected. We were prepared for a long and gruelling 10 hours on the road.
The entry into Bangalore was a breeze, signages pointed us clearly in the right direction and all we had to do was to take the NICE road and head home.
Once on the NICE road we relaxed our pace and headed towards Kanakapura road exit, the Vasudev Adiga restaurant a little further in was inviting and we stopped for lunch.
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