Praveen P.N » Travel

Protected: A trip to the Land of Smiles – Thailand

Praveen — Wed, 18 May 2011 07:05:42 +0000

Bangalore to Goa by Car

Praveen — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:34:20 +0000

This new year was different because I had no plans of going to Goa by Bus or Air, instead, I decided to join my friends on a road trip to Goa. The first thing that came up during early discussion was “which is the best & shortest route to go to Goa by Car”. Since I haven’t gone by a car on this route, the first thing I did was look-up Team-BHP. There’s one thread that comes up when you search for Goa to Bangalore driving directions, but that thread had way too much of information & every person had a different opinion, basically too much of information can be tricky at times.

After a lot of so called research, we finalized the following:

Bangalore to Goa:
NH 4 -> NH 206 -> NH 17 route, that’s Bangalore -> Tumkur -> Shimoga -> Talaguppa -> Sirsi -> Karwar -> Panjim

link

What we thought was a good road was not so great to start with and took us about 15 hrs to reach Goa. I would not recommend this route to go to Goa, especially after what we discovered on our way back.

Goa to Bangalore:
This time one of our friends called up their driver who had gone from Goa to Bangalore few days before the new year. We inquired about the best route from Goa to Bangalore and I was a bit surprised when he told the route.

It was like, hit NH 17 -> NH 63 -> NH4, that’s Panjim -> Karwar -> Dharwad Bangalore By Pass -> Tumkur -> Bangalore.
At first it sounded like a round about, but we took his word and started our journey at 7am in the morning from Panjim.
Panjim to Karwar – There’s nothing much to write about the roads in Goa.
Karwar to Dharwad By Pass – Roads are good, but a a few small Ghats here and there. Overall I’ll rate it as a good road.
Dharwad By Pass to Tumkur – The best part of the trip. Awesome roads throughout.

We completed our return trip in just 11hrs including a 1hr break for lunch, fuel & tea. That’s just 10hrs of driving.

link

Conclusion:
Even though the NH 17 -> NH 63 -> NH 4 looks like a longer route, it can be covered much faster than the NH 206, simply because of the awesome roads. Don’t take the NH 206 to go or come back from Goa, try the NH 4 once and you’ll fall in love with that highway.

Vehicle details:
Number of vehicles – 3 (Swift – Petrol, i10 – Petrol, Punto – Diesel)

Happy New Year

Update from Arun(via comments):
Just returned from a road trip to Goa. Great roads until Hubli and then to South Goa via Karwar (again great roads). Thanks for your tip about NH 17 -> NH 63 -> NH 4 – absolutely the right thing to do. Watch out for some bad patches on the road from Hubli to Karwar. On the road to Hubli, and alhough the road is brilliant – do watch out for the speed breakers at junctions (no marking on these). 9 hours both ways with an 1.5 hour stop.

Life & travel in Bangalore

Praveen — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:43:41 +0000

Happy new year. Its been quite some time since I’ve updated my blog. My focus for this year would be to update my blog more often than what I did last year.

I’ve got some things to share about my traveling & house hunting experience in Bangalore. The first thing anyone does after coming to Bangalore (for that matter any place) is search for accommodation.

Firstly go get yourself a newspaper like AD Mag (which is available in any local book store) which will cost you Rs. 10, that should solve half the problem. What next? Go to Yahoo! Maps India and get familiar with the places around your office (or wherever you want to find a place). Once you get a hint of places surrounding the locality you are looking for, just go though the ad’s in the newspaper. Check the distance from your office to the one mentioned in the ad using the direction service of Y! maps. By the time you go through all the ad’s from the paper you will get a rough idea of real estate prices in Bangalore.
You have the distance, route, contact number. What are you waiting for? Just call up and inquire. Chances are very high that by the time you call up, the Flat/Apartment would be already occupied by a person like you (who was early to get there). Go ahead keeping in mind how you will pay the owner just in case you like the place. A friend of mine missed a couple of opportunities as he had not carried his cheque book along.

Traveling in Bangalore can be tuff at times (specially after evening) with rickshaw drivers demanding more money. Its all fine during the day. Try and get into rickshaws with a digital meter. That will surely save you some money & let you track the distance traveled. I haven’t had any bad experiences with the rickshaw drivers yet.

I know that I didn’t mention any of those sites on the web which have information about houses/apartments.
I tried a couple of sites like www.sulekha.com and www.adsbangalore.com. The former wont give the contact information of the person who posted the ad & the latter has very less options for sorting the search results as per the my convenience. In most cases people are are in shock when they receive an inquiry call about the flat/apartment. Either the ad posted is very old or the place is already sold out. A lot of stale content lays in these sites with no one really bothered to update them. Lastly, if nothing works for you, get in touch with a real estate broker. If the broker cant find a place as per your requirements ask for some contact details of other brokers & he will refer you to other brokers. They have a very good network & yes, be prepared to shell out a months’s rent or a healthy amount to pay the broker in case you find a house with their help.

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