A Road Trip to Goa - Part 2

Days 2 and 3 - September 1, 2011 and September 2, 2011

After our long drive the previous day, none of us were in a mood to do anything other than laze around and relax amidst the facilities that the Leela had to offer us. Our room was adjacent to a lagoon, with a number of lotus flowers blooming in it. The lobby area was beautifully done, shaped a little bit like an old South Indian palace. Parts of the lobby (and if I am not mistaken, the usual location of the Coffee Shop) were boarded off, due to the ongoing renovation - and breakfast was served in a restaurant that seemed as if it had been located in one of the conference halls.



Given the extent of rain the previous day, the grounds of the Leela were rather water-logged - very oddly, we had to wade through ankle deep water on the path heading towards the beach. The beach itself was fairly broad and clean, albeit with black traces on the sand. (I was unclear if that was natural or arising from oil spills). The sea was extremely rough, and there was no scope for any of us to venture near it.

Leisurely meals, lazing by or in the pool, long walks on the grounds, reading novels, Ayurvedic massages - what more can you ask for while in Goa?

Day 4 - September 3, 2011

After 2 days of lazing around at the Leela, we decided to visit Colva Beach on Day 4 of our holiday. The drive to Colva took a bit, and frankly the beach was rather disappointing. It was much smaller, and narrower than the quasi private beach near the Leela, and there was not much to do either (at least in the afternoon). After looking around to try and find a place to have lunch, we gave up, and headed for the Taj Exotica, which was on the way back to the Leela for lunch. After a nice buffet lunch at the Exotica, and some time spent walking around on its grounds, we headed back to our hotel, where we spent some time walking down the banks of the Sal river.

Day 5 - September 4, 2011 - The Journey Home

Before we knew it, our brief vacation was over, and we now had to drive back home. Given that the last leg of our journey would be in Bombay (with street lights et al), the imperative to make a very early start did not exist. We got some breakfast packed for us from room service, and headed out by 7:30 am. This time, we did not have lunch with us, and I decided that we should aim to hit the Kolhapur McDonalds in time for lunch. It being early on a Sunday morning, traffic was light (except around Churches, where a number of people had come for early morning mass), and we were able to maintain a good speed through the Goa section. We refueled at a petrol pump a little ahead of Madgaon (I had not bothered to identify "reliable" pumps in Goa, and chose one that looked better than the rest). The journey from our hotel to the Goa border took just 1 hour 45 minutes, as opposed to almost two and a half hours while going the other way. 

Despite bad roads, the section to Sawantwadi was covered in a little less than half an hour, and in the absence of a slow Alto blocking us, we made it to Amboli in a further 45 minutes, reaching at about 10:30. The Goa - Amboli run thus took us almost an hour less than the running time on the Amboli Goa run while going the other way. Just off the main road at Amboli, there is a Vithal Kamath restaurant, and we decided to stop there for some snacks. Amboli was shrouded in mist, and there was a light drizzle - perfect weather for some Batata Vadas and Poha. After a 45 minute break, we headed off again. The drive was amazing - one moment, we had thick fog around us, and the next the mist would lift and we had fantastic visibility. After crossing Ajara, we decided that since the so called quality road through Gadhinglaj had not been that great, we might as well try the Uttur route.

A relatively small pothole

NH4 near Tawandi Ghat

The road towards Uttur was incredibly scenic, with undulating landscapes, and pretty yellow flowers along the way. The road quality also seemed to be much better than the road we had driven on while coming from Sankeshwar. This seemed like a very good decision for us to have taken, and I was mentally passing remarks on how web-sites are not completely trust-worthy. And then, we crossed the state border in Karnataka, and the road disappeared. It was like crossing a minefield or a lunar landscape - with potholes big enough to swallow a small car, and where even SUV drivers have to crawl at under 5 kmph for fear of bottoming out. As I understand it, the stretch of road from the Tawandi Ghat turnoff (which is in Karnataka) to Uttur (which is in Maharashtra) is mostly used by Maharashtra State transport vehicles and people traveling from Kolhapur - hence the Karnataka government does not bother to maintain it. Clearly, we need to work on a better system of dealing with road maintenance. Fortunately, this stretch lasted just 4 km (which took about 20 minutes to cover), and on a net basis, the time from Amboli to Tawandi Ghat was more or less as the time going the other way (even if the distance was 20 km less).

We reached Kolhapur by about 1:20, and after spending 40 minutes at McDonalds, set off towards Pune. The journey back towards Pune was terrible - incredibly heavy traffic, with rows of ST buses traveling at 40 kmph arranged in a mobile chicane,  which in turn were slowed by idiot truckers trying to overtake each other at 25 kmph. My lack of experience in highway driving shone through - and I often ended up getting stuck behind someone or the other for long stretches of time.

Nevertheless, we made it to Pune by about 5:45, and took our final break at a Cafe Coffee Day just off the bypass.

We restarted from Pune at 6:30 - fortunately Sunday evening traffic on the bypass was not too bad, and we hit the Expressway fairly quickly. Traffic on the Expressway itself was very heavy - and made worse by heavy rain. I tend to drive relatively slowly at night, and kept top speeds down below 120 kph (and speeds on the ghat at much lower than that). Nevertheless, the 120 km Pune to Panvel stretch took just 1 hour 40 minutes, and shortly before 8 PM, we thought we were nearly home. As soon as we exited the Expressway, we hit a wall of traffic. We crawled till Belapur, and fortunately for us, most of the traffic continued along Thane Belapur road while we diverted onto Palm Beach Road, which allowed us to drive a bit faster. Neverthless, the  20 km to Vashi had taken us over 40 minutes. After Vashi, we made relatively quick progress till Chembur, which we reached before 9 pm. We were just 6 km from home, and I commented that we should be home by 9:20 or so.

But just after Suman Nagar, we were faced with the worst that Bombay can throw at us, with a massive traffic jam heading towards Sion (at 9 PM on a Sunday night). The next 2 kms took us over an hour, and finally we reached home at about 10:15. It did seem a little surreal - we had covered almost 600 kms in a bit over 10 hours, and then taken almost two and a half hours to do the last 40 km.

Including local travel in Goa, we had covered 1350 km. The NH4 sections were by and large fabulous - and would probably be a lot better if a little bit of driving discipline were inculcated in the heads of our truck drivers. One did also feel that a better system of toll collection, a la the EZ Pass systems we had come across in the US or ERP in Singapore is needed - on the NH 4 stretch between Pune and Kolhapur, toll payment time of 45 minutes (in total) was a ridiculously high part of the total drive time of 3 hours 45 minutes. But all in all, it was a great vacation - and certainly one that has inspired me to consider more driving holidays in future.