I am not one of those who love to drive but was forced to do that recently. I had to join my MBA School (ISB) in Hyderabad and so had to move with bag-n-baggage from Bangalore. I had the option of taking a driver but that meant compromise on space and privacy. So, I chose not to take a driver as there was a lot of stuff which I wanted to carry. Since I wasn’t too confident about my driving and the distance was around 600 kms we (my wife and I) planned for a night halt at Kurnool. Given my Maruti Swift’s collapsible rear seat I was able to stuff it with loads of luggage and household articles.
We started early morning 7 o’clock from Bangalore. The NH-7 is the highway which directly connects the two cities. So, all I had to do was to connect to NH-7 at Hebbal from my house at Marathalli. We took the 1st break at Chikbellapur, which is around 50 kms from Bangalore. Just before you enter Chikbellapur there is a nice restaurant for snacks and refreshment. We took a 15-20 mins break. The road from Bangalore till Chikbellapur is rather wide and you can enjoy speeds over 100 km/hr. Once you leave Chikbellapur, Anantpur (a district in AP) starts. Though the highway is ok but at that point in time most of NH-7 was in the widening mode. We took a break or two before we reached Anantpur at 12 noon after driving about 220kms from Bangalore. Anantpur is a small town and you’ll have to take a diversion from the highway to enter the town. We wanted to check-in an AC restaurant as it was pretty hot. The only restaurant we found was Spice something (can't recall the exact name). The food was good, especially the veg biriyani. We started at 1 PM. Now our destination for the day was Kurnool, another 150 kms. Between Anantpur and Kunool there are 2 Reliance A-1 Plazas. These are wide spacious restaurants. Please note that they are good and neat but not AC. We used to break for 15 mins to have some caffeine. There are other similar concept cafes from BP, called Dhaba. We finally reached Kurnool at 4 PM. We checked in Mourya Inn, the only star hotel in that town. The AC room on twin sharing basis was Rs 950 + 5% tax. Not the best hotel which we had seen but for a 1 night halt it was fine. We were very tired and so did not explore the town much and has food in one of the hotel's restaurant. Kurnool has the original Pulla Reddy sweets shop, in case you want to try some.
Next day we again started at 7 AM and Hyderabad was another 220 kms. There were very few decent restaurants for breakfast and it is very easy to miss them, so consciously look out for them. There was only 1 Relaince-A1 Plaza and it was around 40 kms before Hyderabad (and 1 BP Dhaba about 35 kms from Hyderabad). We took some short breaks and touched Hyderabad outskirts at 12 noon. As expected we lost our way in the city and it took around 1 hr to find our way.
Overall, we drove at an average speed of 40 km/hr including all the breaks; we covered the distance of 600 kms in 15 hrs. After Karnataka mostly the highway was single lane but driving during the day time was easy. The traffic on Friday between Bangalore and Kurnool was pretty low. It was on the higher side on Saturday between Kurnool and Hyderabad, which could be partly because of the upcoming Ugadi festival. But overall it was a comfortable and safe drive even for a beginner like me!(For detailed driving direction we used the following map from MapMyIndia: http://mapmyindia.com/online/?cx=-1324684&cy=4689631&cz=3&from=Martahalli%20Underpass,Marattahalli,Bangalore,Karnataka&to=ISB%20Executive%20Housing,Serilingampally,Hyderabad,Andhra%20Pradesh&via=&type=best&q=dir)
