Driving from Hyderabad to Bangalore, India: Why most people prefer to fly

India is on many people’s travel bucket lists for understandable reasons: It offers so much variety in terms of things to do and sights to see. There is no shortage of amazing food and unique cultural experiences. I had the privilege of traveling there in December and started 2014 there as well.

I had just arrived in Hyderabad barely 24 hours before we set off on our journey to the state of Karnataka to enjoy some of the temples scattered throughout that state. It was a five day journey, but the sights visited will not soon be forgotten. We drove by private vehicle with a driver who knows the roads.

The drive from Hyderabad to Bangalore (in Karnataka) was nothing less than long; there’s a reason why most people fly between the two cities and then hire a driver and vehicle in Bangalore only. But we decided to be special and take the long route. Once we left behind the traffic of Hyderabad, it was actually a very pleasant drive and the main road was surprisingly well maintained. There wasn’t much traffic, and this was one of few times when vehicles actually maintained their lanes and didn’t do anything too crazy. The pollution finally dissipated and it was like being liberated to a different world once the city was behind us.

We drove past farm fields and rivers, hills and other rocky outcroppings too. We did stop at a dhaba (roadside open air restaurant) for tea, and I found their sign about biryani and Coke to be amusing. 

One of the highlights of that stop was not so much the tea or even the sign, but using the fairly-clean restroom and watching a scared gecko crawl out of the toilet after I flushed! :-) Good thing I like geckos; I just had to laugh!

Occasionally we’d go past cities and road signs would point these out along the way. I always enjoy seeing the tri-lingual signs; in Andhra Pradesh, the signs are in Telugu, Hindi and English. In Karnataka, the signs are in Kannada (the language of Karnataka), Hindi and English.

It took about 8 hours to reach the border of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and another 2 hours beyond that to reach Bangalore, and two additional hours to reach our destination within Bangalore itself, battling raging traffic. 

Bangalore has a lot more trees compared to Hyderabad, and more vehicles that use natural gas. Therefore although it was still plenty polluted, it was noticeably less polluted than similarly busy regions of Hyderabad. 

After spending the whole day in the car, we gladly stopped at a McDonald’s for dinner and called it a night. Being vegetarian, I was pleasantly surprised by all of the unique choices on the menu, and loved that they even have a separate vegetarian kitchen! While a local meal would have been even better, this was quick and easy, and just what we needed that night, before setting off to visit many temples the next morning.

Interested in traveling to India? Contact us; we're getting ready to unveil India as one of our newest tour destinations!

Wishing you safe travels,
Marisa