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A month back, I traveled to Bangalore from Madras by road. I want to tell the readers of this forum my impressions about this road trip which some of you may find it informative and useful.

For those who are unfamiliar, there are 2 roads by which I can reach Bangalore. The one which goes via Mount, Sriperambudur, Arcot and then a detour to Vellore, onwards to Ambur, Krishnagiri, Hosur is little longer (approx. 30kms) has a distance of 350kms from Adyar in Chennai to Richmond road in Bangalore.

The other road to take is a deviation in Arcot towards Ranipet and then on to Chittur,Palamener , Kolar to Bangalore by National highway no.4.

Of the two roads, the first one via Vellore , though a little longer, is the best one to take because of good quality roads right through. The other one is still under construction in some stretches and definitely takes a longer time.

I left my home on a Sunday at 6.45am in Adyar ,took the first route. I faced a slowdown and delay at Poonamalee.This is one of the few bottlenecks which can delay the journey by atleast 15minutes. From there, I reached Sriperambudur which is national highway no.4, took me almost an hour from my home and immediately there after the first toll gate at Nemili. When you are at the toll gate, please carry enough Rs10/Rs20/Rs5 denominator notes/coins so that your exit from the toll gate is not delayed. Another point to note at the toll gates is that they will ask you whether it is a single journey or a return.
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At times few things happen, when these are least expected.

That’s what happened on the evening of February 19, 2010. We were on way back from our company’s ATM manufacturing plant after the third and final day of the grueling session of the so called ‘kick off” to our abode at “Nalla Echo Beach Resort” at Puducherry (many people still call it Pondicherry). The day was awfully long, to compensate which the company had planned a gala musical evening at the resort. During the cocktails, I casually mentioned about the Vailankanni Shrine (Meaning: Virgin of Velai, the town), a holy place which a cleric friend from the US had been visiting practically every winter for the last fifteen years. One of the locals told me that it was only 160 km from the resort and the time taken would be around 4 hours. I looked at Vinod Varghese, a close friend, who took a few minutes to arrange a cab for six of us who had consented to undertake an overnight journey (we were supposed to take a flight back home to Delhi on the next day).

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Vivek talked about Rameshwaram and Dhanushkodi in his last post and I found that he missed visiting inside Dhanushkodi village. So, my story will start from Dhanushkodi and to your surprise, it will end at Dhanushkodi. We reached Rameshwaram from Madurai about 3:00 PM, we planned to visit Rameshwaram temple in the morning, so we asked our taxi driver Kanan if there is any beach nearby or not, he noded his head and said “Yeeessss” (I liked the way he used to say Yeeessss”), it is 13 KMS from here and called as Dhanushkodi. Without saying anything else, he started towards Dhanushkodi, as Vivek mentioned, it was a 2 lane road, roaring ocean on both side. Left side of the ocean is called “Male” and right side of the ocean is called “Female”, reason, left side is quiet and calm and right side is roaring all the time, my wife and my mother didn’t liked the reason, and neither my daughter  – As told by Kannan, no offence please. Well, we reached the beach in an about 45 minutes, on the way, we also visited a temple where Lord Rama performed the “Raj Tilak” of Vibhishan. Kanan told us that this is the beach, it was very deserted, we found a Indian Navy post there a tea stall and a snack shop. Indian Ocean was beautiful, roaring and with high waves. We dared to go deep inside it and also asked kids stay off.
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