Pollachi - Bangaluru via Dhimbham Ghat Road

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I had a trip to Bangalore IIM. I purposely avoided the regular Salem- Hosur highway due to two reasons. i) plenty of vehicles on the road and I can see only fast-moving vehicles and will be stressed, ii) unreasonable toll payment at different tollgates – for travelling 400 plus kms one has to pay more than 800 Rs as toll (why someone has to pay hefty amount as toll, till today I have not understood the logic behind this).

I planned for alternative route, and it was a correct and perfect choice. From Pollachi I took the Palladam road and around 12Km before Palladam took the right turn to reach Annur and Sathyamangalam – Chamrajnagar – Kollegal route and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This was done in 2014. I don’t know whether there are new tollgates in these routes also as a part of India Developing to global standards (greatest joke)

The roads were fine, no potholes, almost all thought roads were good, except very few patched places and rough roads here and there. Few months back I had a similar trip to Mysore in 4 hours in this route.

I really got what I wanted – the empty beautiful roads and natural scenery and driving in 100 + KM/H. Nothing to complain.

Pollachi to IIM Bangalore was 370 KMs and it took 6 ½ hours with a breakfast break and couple of other small breaks. The total travel time was 6 ½ hours and driving time would be 5 ½ hours. Not bad… covering 65KM per hour. Started at 615 am from Pollachi and reached Sathyamangalam at 8 am with a breakfast stop. Sathy – Dhimbham 27 hairpins in a span of 9 KMs was very memorable with fog and mist, reached Bangalore around 1245 pm. Kanagapura-Bangalore Road had moderate traffic.

In the return trip started at 545am and reached Chamrajnagar at 830 for breakfast break and couple of other stopovers reached Pollachi before 1230pm. The driving experience was good in my Palio Sport.