Day 19 of our epic drive: 500km+ of sheer bliss

As we head south, the roads are getting better and better. However, nothing beats the silky smooth highways of Andhra Pradesh. As we crossed borders and headed to Telengana, the road conditions worsened but not unlike how bad it was in some of the Northern states. The 500km plus journey was wrapped in about eight hours. And that gave us some time to explore the picturesque locales of Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram). The Pallavi dynasty had built monuments here in the 7th-8th centuries and they still attract a lot of crowd, even today. Krishna’s Butter Ball makes for a thoughtful photo op and is popular among the tourists. Unfortunately, we couldn’t drive the Renault Kwids next to it as it’s a protected site by the Archaeological Survey of India. If you’re visiting Puducherry, do take a detour to this place.

As we speak about roads, the toll booths deserve a mention too. This part of the country is populated with a lot of those and that speaks volumes about the road conditions. Which obviously means very good fuel efficiency figures and even the AMT is delivering figures of over 16kmpl. And that is after we have pushed the cars to their limits. Yes, the Renault Kwid is well capable of high speeds which we realised during the drive today. What more, even the bright headlamps are really good and come with a widespread beam; good enough to spot frogs that are afar (of which there are many in this part of the country, during monsoons).

Fret not, I will speak of food as well. Those who’ve been following our blogs must’ve been missing the food blogs since a couple of days. You could always blame me for it as I’m not a foodie like Jehan but the fish curries and fish fry are delicious here and deserve a special mention. Even the prices aren’t as exorbitant as we have back home in Maharashtra. So there’s gonna be lots of fish and prawns as long as we are here in South India. Vegetarian? We shall talk about Udupi idlis and uttapams soon, so stay tuned.

Click here to read the previous blogs on the 29 States 29 Days challenge.