Day 4 – Palakkad to Kannur
It’s already Day 4 in my road trip! The travel through the narrow Highways coupled with high congestion on the road has put my road trip to a very slow pace. I am struggling to cover even 200 KMs on these Highways. But nevertheless the enchanting beauty of the place is keeping me occupied. Unfortunately I did not get much of a chance to capture a lot of photographs in Kerala as I was in a hurry to get out of the congestion which had put a hold on my road trip.
The Trip from Palakkad to Kannur was via Ferokh-Palakkad Highway and NH 66 which soon I realized was not a very good decision; I should have taken the NH 66 the whole route. I was staying in Hotel Srichakra which is on the Highway to Thrissur. It’s been my favorite hotel every time I visited Palakkad. As usual the stay was comfortable. A stray incident wherein someone dashed into my car in the parking lot was a bad memory. I got to take few photographs at the Hotel premises which I have posted on the homepage.
I drove a bit towards the Palakkad city and a right turn took me into the Highway towards Kannur. There was a bus strike that day but still I struggled to negotiate the congestion on the Highway – and also the narrow and curvy Highways here. For some reason there are a lot of curves on the Highways here which makes it difficult to overtake other vehicles because the highways on this stretch have bidirectional traffic (there are vehicles plying on both directions on the same road). My target was to make it at least till the Kerala border (Kasarkod) before nightfall but I could make it only till Kannur by around 7:30 PM. I noticed a cosy looking Hotel – Surya residency right on the highway (just a few kilometers before the Kannur city) and the thought of a peaceful sleep in a cosy hotel made me stop at the Hotel for that night.
The stay at the hotel (Surya Residency) was comfortable and the staff was very courteous. The night went by. Next day morning (Day 5) I started from Kannur with Murudeshwara in Karnataka as my next destination. I was not sure at this point whether I will be able to make it to Murudeshwara the same day. The rest of the trip will be covered in the next article for Day 5.
The one lesson that I learned from Day 3 to Day 5 is that the distance one can cover in one day has a lot to do with the road you travel. One can travel as long as 700 KMs in a day and sometimes it can get tough to negotiate 200 KMs in a day. That strictly needs to be kept in mind while planning a road trip. Get to know from friends about the roads that you take. I will post one page on this site dedicatedly showing how the road conditions at various places were which may probably help other like minded road travelers.
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Looking forward for more update Sajit…you are doing great…