Oxford of East to City of Gardens

First of all very sorry for the delay in sharing my expirience of first long drive in my GP. Its almost a delay of month :hit .
Since the day I got the delivery of my car, I was tempted to take the car on some long drive.
It was my niece's B'day on 12th july and my parents were also there in bangalore, I want to show them my first car :wow.
So I decided to drive down to bangalore.
First thing I have done, I PM'ed J.Ravi for the route info and other info like places to eat and fuel pumps as he has already done that stretch earlier, and in no time I got all the required info from him. Thanks a lot J.Ravi.

Pune to B'lore:
According to initial plan, me n my room mate was suppose to start on Friday early morning. I was so excited on Thursday morning but my all excitement came to an end when I opened my mailbox, around 10 mails, lots of escalation and noise. After celebrating their independence on 4th July 22, 2010 gora public came with full energy, on Wednesday and resulting my mailbox full with "to do" list :A :A :A . So to stay intact with plan I have to finish all the work and get the leave approved. After talking to my manager she said "finish the work and take leave".

After spending almost 13 hrs in office on Thursday, I managed to finish all the work and again feeling like all set to go.
I reached home at around 11:30 PM, my roomy was still not there. Around 12 he stepped in and said it is not possible for him to go tomorrow. I am like what "we have already decided, I literally begged for the leaves and now you are saying you can't come" :A :A :A . I tried all the ways to convince him but all went in vein.
Now I have to decide, should I start alone or postpone the program for Saturday? Without deciding, I went off to bed.
At 4:00 I woke up and again not sure what to do, If I don't start today my whole day will go waste as I have already taken a leave and I will miss one weekend day with family. After a deep thinking of 15 mins, I decided to go. :dance :dance :dancing :dancing
I packed my bag and at 5:00 I started for my first long drive in my new car , Went to ATM, withdraw some cash and finally I was on highway. I was using GPS. After almost 10 Kms GPS sweet lady instructed me take a left turn to some internal city street and I did as I was bit nervous, completely trusting on her and didn’t want to go wrong. That was a complete dark street, completely deserted :confused :confused . After moving ahead around 500 meters I decided to take a U turn, as expected she recalculated and again I was back to highway.
Now next thing is to take the fuel as low fuel warning light is already there. After 15-20 kms I got one BP COCO pump. So now, all set to cruise to B'lore.
It was a nice and straight NH-4 till B'lore. Road quality is so good and inviting me to cruise but keeping instructions from Andy and Amogh in my mind I kept it below 3K.
Lots of toll booths on the way, Will update the list of all the booths later.Total toll I paid is approx Rs 497 for one way trip.
Took 4-5 small chai and fuel breaks.
Around 3:00 PM I was completely drained out of energy so decided to take a lunch break. Approx 50KMs before Tumkur I saw one Kamat Upchar, had my lunch there and after 20 mins of break I was again ready to start.
I reached B'lore at around 5:15 PM. Total distance covered is 849 Kms in almost 12 hrs.
Again sorry for the pics, I was driving alone so not able to took the pics.

This is my first write up of this kind. I have never ever written anything like this so I beg your pardon for the errors.
CONTD....

849kms in 12hrs.. ! that s impressive for a first long drive..

another line which brought a similar expression :shock: was, when i read about the Rs 497 in toll..!
:mrgreen:

Your travelogue is nice and well-started, Gmittal.

Yeah it is little difficult when you are driving alone. But thanks to NHAI, the road quality is superb.

Thanks J.Ravi. Your info was very useful during the trip.

B'Lore to Calicut:

It was my Parent's last weekend in B'lore, Coming Saturday they are going back to Khurja(My native place in U.P.). My sister was insisting them to visit her in laws in Calicut since long. Calicut is around 350 odd Kms from B'lore and according to my brother in law, bus took 7.5 hrs to reach Calicut. So we thought by car it will take max 5 hrs (but we were completely wrong).
After a long discussion It has been decided to drive down to Calicut on Saturday .
So according to the plan we have to start early morning on Saturday reach Calicut by after noon (considering 5 hrs of drive), have lunch there, roam around in the evening and again next day early in the morning will start from there to B'lore.
Considering the early start on Saturday I was instructed to go to bed early as I was already tired, I called it a day and soon I was in deep sleep.
Next day we started at 6:00 in the morning. B'lore peoples were already on the roads by the time and it took us 45 mins to touch b'lore-Mysore road from basveshvara nagar. Around 9:00 we stopped for a breakfast at Kamat Upchar, after almost 45 mins of break we were back on the wheels.
On the way we pass through gundlupeth ?Bandhipur National Park? wayanad. Nowadays no vehicles allowed in bandhipur national park from 12 in the night to 5 in the morning, to save the animals getting irritated from the traffic noise and lights.
We reached Calicut at around 3:45 PM. Our estimation of 5 hrs drive is nowhere closer to the actual time taken i.e. 10 hrs. It is actually more than required, because of other couple of long breaks and traffic Jam at Kerala Border.
We didn't have our lunch on the way as it was planned at my brother in laws place so we all were very hungry and tired too. My condition was worse so I had my lunch and lost in dreams.
I woke up at around 9:00 PM, dinner was ready, and we all had our dinner. After dinner I walked out in search of sutta but no shop was open at the time, later I come to know that market gets closed at around 7 in the evening.(Actually that place is little far from Calicut). After a small chit chat session around 11, we called it a day.

Calicut to B'lore:

I woke up at around 9:00 in the morning, and to my surprise all were ready by the time. Nobody disturbed me, thinking of I am too much tired ?. After 20 mins I was ready and having hot Idlis in my breakfast.
At around 10 we said good bye to aunty (My BIl's mother) and started for B'lore. Slowly and steadily we reached the ghat area just before wayanad. It is around 20 Kms of uphill drive with having 9 Hairpin curves. It is really a fun to drive on hills, I enjoyed every moment of that. Driving Punto on these hair pin curves is just a fun. I have seen corolla struggling on those curves.
Very soon we have crossed Kerala-Karnataka border and entered into Bandhipur National Park, after driving almost 10Kms between the forest, we saw a group of 7-8 elephants crossing the road. We enjoyed watching them to cross the road one by one and after they crossed we again started. We passed Gundlupeth in next 20 mins. After Gundlupeth, road stretch was good enough to drive at a speed of 120+ and so I was doing ?, suddenly I saw 2 guys on luna, around 30 mtrs ahead, coming from right side of the road to the left side without looking back for traffic, I slammed down the breaks and steered to the left as much as I can, my car stopped approx 5 mtrs from them. I was sweating like a hell, I got down from the car and start shouting on them with all MC's and BC's (later I realize they might not have understood what I said in hindi), those guys were scared and ran away on his Luna, after a 2-3mins I again started to drive, very soon I have seen those guys ahead of me, they are constantly looking back for my car. As I reached near to them they took a left turn, now I understood those guys are scared of me so after crossing that left turn I stopped my car after almost 100 mtrs and start waiting for them to come out again on the main road.
As expected after 2-3 mins they came out on the main road and saw my car, waiting for them, without loosing a min they took a U turn and went into the opposite direction. Me, my mom and my brother in law was laughing like anything.
Just before Mysore we had our lunch at Kamat Upchar.We reached B’lore at around 7 in the evening. We celebrated B’day of Riddhima(my niece) and called it a day.

B’lore to Pune:

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning, got ready and at 5 started for Pune. This journey was uneventful with 2-3 small fuel and tea breaks. I took me approx 12 hrs to reach Pune. Around 5 in the evening I was back in Pune.

That was quite a weekend!!

Actually it was started on friday and I was back on Monday.

Start ODO reading: 1095 kms
End ODO reading: 3679 Kms
Total distance covered is 2584 Kms in 4 days.

Few pics of the trip: