The story of lockdown and quarantine has become old and what’s trending is the “new normal.” No more staying indoors or becoming insane, people are stepping out of the four walls with extra precaution. Now the trip between Chennai and Bengaluru is not big a deal as I have seen people frequently going that distance on road. But given the current lifestyle, it was a big deal for me and the apple of my eye (husband- tryin’ to be Bollywood dramebaaz!)
We had a lot of obstructions on the previous day of our travel. The major one was our car- We had given it for service a week back and it was still with the mechanic. We were unsure of when the car would be available. We had planned to start from our home in Chennai at 6 AM on Saturday to avoid traffic in the city. But the mechanic gave us a shock by telling us that the car would be available around 9 AM! After a lot of calls and discussions, we finally got the car by 8 PM the previous day.
The next day, due to some power obstruction, we got delayed by half an hour and started around 6.30 AM in the morning. We took the Krishnagiri-Hosur route to reach Bengaluru as the road was smooth and wide. We did face slow-moving traffic while crossing the city but as we’d started a little early, things got better in some areas and we enjoyed the trip. There was one stretch where the road was fully surrounded by greens and it was bliss to ride that road, unfortunately, the traffic did not allow us to enjoy the road so well.
The major traffic congestion was near Sriperumbudur. There were a lot of office buses travelling at that time and this led to an extended stretch of traffic. Once we crossed that, the traffic was decent and we got the chance to enjoy the view. Before reaching Vellore, at around 9 AM, we stopped at a place for having our breakfast. I had packed some sandwiches and we did not feel like having our stomach full so we had half of it and the rest we planned to have later. Anyways, it was around 7-hour drive, so we were sure that we might feel hungry later.
After about an hour, we stopped at a café coffee day for fuelling our bodies! The view that the café offered was totally speechless. They maintained necessary hygiene and we felt that it was safe and the crowd wasn’t too much as well. We sat there, had our coffee, took some snaps of the view, enjoyed the vibe, and resumed our trip with added energy.
There was a stretch somewhere near Ambur, although, I am not so sure where the view morphed into a hill station! We felt so mesmerised by the view and at the same time, one of our favourite travel songs started playing and it was just perfect. Some unknown excitement in me kept forcing me to take pictures of the beautiful view and I almost became emotional in some places as well. I thanked God, our car, and my husband infinite times for making this trip happen.
A few days ago, I became so insane due to lack of travel and this trip satisfied my soul and I became happy. We came across so many gigantic rocks and I felt that we are travelling to a hill station and not Bengaluru. Before reaching the Nice road, our car started troubling us slightly. We were unsure of the problem and the first thing we did was stop the car. We took a break, had the rest of the sandwiches, and after 10 minutes, we started the trip and the car was fine.
Overall, this route had around 5 to 6 tolls and except for the toll in the Nice road, the rest had cashless payments (FASTag.) As usual, there was pretty long traffic congestion near Electronic city which lasted for about 20 minutes. If you are planning to travel from Chennai to Bengaluru, start around 5.45 AM or 6 AM in the morning to avoid traffic in and around Chennai City. This would be a good start.
We reached around 3 PM at Bengaluru which included 3 breaks cumulatively for around 1.5 hours. Overall, in this new normal, one thing that I loved a lot was this road trip. I have had a lot of train trips from Chennai to Bengaluru but this takes the spot for the best one as this view gets missed while you are travelling via train or flight.
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