Delhi to Hyderabad by road

Had taken the Delhi-Hyd road trip around one and a half years back. Sorry guys for writing this article so late….but then better late than never.

The total road distance between Delhi-Hyd comes out to be around 1520 kms. We covered the entire distance in 2 days. Started at 6 PM from Delhi and spent the night at Agra. Next day we started at 8 AM from Agra and after a marathon driving we reached Nagpur at 11 PM. Didnt stop anywhere except for petrol. From Nagpur, we set off for Hyd at 1 PM (tired after the previous day’s marathon) and reached Hyd at 9 PM, could have reached earlier were it not for a puncture thanks to the “national highways” of MP.

The entire route can be divided into 5 separate parts (according to the highways)

1. Delhi-Agra NH2 200 kms.

2. Agra-Gwalior NH3.

3.Gwalior-Jhansi NH75  98 kms.

4. Jhansi-Lalitpur-Sagar-Lakhnadon NH 26 , 319 kms.

5.Lakhnadon-Nagpur-Hyderabad NH7.

The worst part of the above stretch was the 4th one.The best were of course, NH2 and 3. NH7 was also good.

I guess a lot has been written about the Delhi-Agra stretch so no need to elaborate on that one. Just after Agra, the road is pretty bad but once we get out of the city and onto NH3 its pretty good. There was only one stretch on NH3 where there was a flyover under construction where we faced some problems. Mind you, I took this trip 2 years back so I have no idea about the state now.

The entire route from Agra-Hyd comes under the North-South corridor of NHAI started under the BJP govt., which was forgotten when Cong. came to power so I am not sure if anything would have improved. NH3 before Gwalior passes through Chambal valley (Dholpur) which makes for some pretty picturesque spots.From Gwalior, the NH3 goes onwards to Mumbai. We took a diversion towards Jhansi (NH75) which did not touch Gwalior city. NH75 is ok but doesnt even come close to the previous two. Well, at least there is a road to drive on! On the way we passed through Datia where there is an old palace by the side of the highway.

The real nightmare comes on the next stretch. We anticipated that things in MP would be bad but didn’t expect this. The road, if it can be called that, completely disappeared at intervals. At times, we thought it better to drive through the fields and pag-dandi’s adjacent to the road rather than putting the car through the torture-test of potholes and speed breakers. Further, there were no proper dhaba’s to speak of and very few petrol pumps. No signboards, and no electricity in the villages we were passing through. Seemed like we had boarded a time machine and reached the outskirts of civilization! Also saw a few trucks on the way being stopped by some gunmen…dont know whether they were your run-of-the-mill dacoits or proper naxalites. My advice to anyone attempting to go from Gwalior to Nagpur is to add a few kms to your route and go via NH3 (Shivpuri-Guna),NH12 (Bhopal) and then NH69 (till Nagpur), though I am not sure how things are on that route. But I am guessing that at least till Bhopal you will not be at the mercy of your fate.

Once we reached Lakhnadon and hit NH7 (this comes from Varanasi and goes till Kanyakumari via Nagpur-Hyd-Bangalore) we were able to pick up speed. Lakhnadon-Nagpur took around 2.5 hours. After Nagpur, the road is pretty good. Some of it was being four-laned when we made the road trip. The only bad stretch was when we hit Adilabad, that too only for some kms. The roads in Maharashtra and AP are way better than those in MP.

I dont have any pics for this trip, but I’ll be attempting the road trip from Hyd-Delhi once again shortly and will keep all posted about how much things have/have not improved in the last 2 years. Hope this was informative!