This was the longest driving day of the trip with a distance of greater than 600 kms covered within 12 hours. A lot of the route was along one of the sides of the Golden Quadrilateral, the NH4. This road puts most other roads in India to shame with its relatively pothole free surface and comfortable width of greater than 2*2 lanes throughout.
The first leg of the journey was from Pune to Kolhapur. During this time the road is made of tar and consists of 2 lanes on each side throughout There are some stretches of traffic(slow moving trucks :( ) and some rough stretches of road on the way. We had already been on this road on a previous road trip and knew what to expect. Due to the presence of traffic, one only occasionally gets to travel at 100kmph+ speeds on this part of NH4. However, much to our delight, NH4 only got better as we progressed along our way.
We cruised along the highway at quite a rapid rate, zig zagging through slow moving trucks along the way. A major waste of time was the long at boring wait at toll stations like the one pictured above. The toll stations in Maharashtra charged a higher toll(Rs.70-120) and took a lot of time to go through, while the toll stations in Karnataka were not only cheaper(Rs.20-40) but also very fast and efficient.
This was my first major experience at highway driving and I enjoyed it. Weaving through trucks sort of reminded me of the childhood racing games.
Like I said before, the highway just got better as we traveled along it. From a 2*2 lane road made of tar, to one made of cement, to a 3*3 road and then finally a 3*3 road with two service roads running besides it. It gave a glimpse of what the Autobahns in Germany may be like.
Along the way, we caught sight of what seemed to be a palace upon a hill. It was visible form 3-4 kms away. As we approached it, it attracted us towards it with its magnificence. The "palace" was located just of the highway. We took a detour towards it and were welcomed by a jovial security guard who invited us to see it. It turned out that our palace was actually the 'Suvarna Souda' which was the recently inaugurated building of the Karnataka legislative assembly at Belgaun. It was a splendid white structure with an ornate golden Ashoka chakra sitting on top of it. It was spread over a large area with well maintained lawns and afforded an awesome panoramic view of the surrounding area.
Finally near Hubli, the time came to depart from the beloved NH4 pictured above. We saw a shortcut which would save a some kms and decided to take it. However, this turned out to be a decision for the worst. The road seemed to exist only in the map. What was first a tarmac road, quickly disintegrated to gravel and finally to just a single lane of muddy rocks. Progress was slow on this road and this was by far one of the worst roads we experienced on our trip. Whatever time we had saved by racing through NH-4 quickly disappeared as we had to travel quite slowly on this road.
The horrible road finally ended and we reached a state highway. By this time the sun had touched the horizon and it was starting to get a bit dark. The state highway was a 2 lane road with a single lane on each side as shown in the image below. This made overtaking slow moving trucks an buses an arduous affair. This was my first time at night time driving along such roads. With experience, I slowly got better at overtaking vehicles safely on such narrow roads.
We finally left this road to follow a narrow road for 10 km road to Gokarna beach. This was a deserted single lane road with only us on it and darkness for miles around. Finally with the help of Google Maps, we arrived at our destination. As we reached the town the final stretch of road was through an extremely narrow lane lined with houses, stalls and temples. Navigating though this was complicated by the fact that a couple of busloads of school children had chosen the exact moment of our arrival to take to the streets and block our way. Somehow navigating through the sea of human traffic we finally reached our first destination.
It was 7:30 pm by the time we reached and after 11 hours of near continuous driving it felt great to land my feet on solid ground. We parked and ran towards the beach. The sand here is very soft and silky and is not at all sticky. After quite a while of taking in the beach scenery, we headed back to the town in search of food and accommodation.
The small town of Gokarna was filled with loads of hippies. The streets were also lined with small shops selling trinkets and other souvenirs. We also spotted some restaurants along the way but all of them seemed vegetarian. After taking a complete tour of the village, we finally settled in to dine at a rooftop veg restaurant. The food here was extremely cheap(Rs.8 for an ice cream scoop) and we were the only 2 Indians there amongst a number of foreigner couples. After a sumptuous meal we went around in search of acco which we finally found at the place where we had had our dinner. At 350 Rs a night, we found a cosy room to rest our aching bodies and prepare for the rest of the trip before us.
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