For Diwali in 2007, Krishnan and I left from Bangalore between 4.30 and 5 am and were at Krishnan’s mom’s place in three and a half hours. We fell in love with the highway and made several trips during the two years that Krishnan was in Bangalore. Then on Thursday last week, Oct 31st we went on the same highway … Again for Diwali.
We started at 7 am and it took us two hours just to cross Krishnagiri because new flyovers are being built between Hosur and Krishnagiri and the traffic was just unbearable. We had to stop at Ammanoor, my dad’s ancestral place, near Arakkonam. We managed to reach Ammanoor by 12 noon. It was my grandmother’s death anniversary and we participated in the ceremonies and prayers, ate awesome food and left around 3.30 pm. My aunt and her husband came along with us and we had to drop them at Pallavaram. We got onto the highway and at a particular point entered Poonamallee-Kundrathur road and traffic just engulfed us … For a distance of about 20 kms it took us three hours. For the first time in my life, I ended up with pain in my left foot that was on the clutch, as I couldn’t take it off the clutch at all. The ordeal didn’t end there. We dropped off my aunt, uncle and my mom on the main road and asked them to take an autorickshaw to reach home and started off towards our hotel which is again just 12 or 13 kms from Pallavaram bus stand. That took an hour so we reached the hotel by 7.30. No the agony doesn’t end there, we wanted to visit Krishnan’s mom and surprise her because we had told her we might not be able to make it for Diwali :):) so we left the hotel around 8…. This is the worst – for a distance of less than three kilometers, it took us 45 minutes !!! I nearly gave up on driving. :):):)
Come Sunday, we had to drive back to Bangalore. With trepidation we started at 10. Interestingly, got delayed in several places, delayed at the restaurant who took half hour to pack the food, at the fuel pump because there was a nail in one of the tyres and that had to be fixed, at the next door petrol pump because this guy didn’t have diesel and all the diesel cars were queued up next door and then we picked up mom from my aunt’s place and because we saw less traffic we decided to take the same shortcut to Poonamallee through Anakaputhur and Kundrathur …. And just 5 or 6 kms later got stuck in a jam only to realise a bus had a puncture in the middle of a one one road :):) we quickly backtracked and got onto the main road and at 12 noon got onto the highway near Koyambedu. At 4.50 pm we entered our house in Bangalore with a 20 minutes stop for eating our lunch !! By 3.45 pm we were at the Electronics city toll, so technically we had entered Bangalore in three and half hours – just the right gift for the torture on Thursday :). The roads were empty and the Yeti had fun.
So the lesson is – timing is critical 🙂 just like in everything else.