On the East Coast Road to Mahabalipuram - Part One

The East Coast Road (ECR) , also called the scenic beachway, is a modern Expressway that connects Chennai to Pondichery. And scenic it is, you bet.

As always, we had been planning for this trip for long. "Planning" is the operative word. We had a hard time executing it. So after umpteen failed plans, we set out on that elusive journey on the 14th of April this year.

We had planned to start early in the morning at around 7. And if u are wondering, yeah 7AM is pretty early for us. But as luck would have it, it started pouring down. Can u believe ? Rain in Chennai? That too during summer ? Thankfully it stopped after a couple of hours. So again nothing went as planned ! Finally we started off at around 10 from Chennai. Six of us on four bikes. Three Apaches and one Pulsar.



That's Shyam, Me and Hitesh (clockwise) on our Apaches, just before we started off. The other Hitesh is the lensman.

About 15 minutes after we started, with the bustling traffic of Chennai far behind us, we hit the ECR. The ECR is a tolled highway, but thankfully not for two wheelers. And if you ask me thats the best way to enjoy the drive.

Let me digress here a bit and say something about what i feel. I am the kind of a person who likes the gush of wind blowing on your face when you are on a good drive at 80+ kmph. And ECR is one of the roads where you can do that, within the boundaries of safety. But please do wear a helmet, always. And since it isn't a divided highway, overtake with extreme caution. The buses don't give a damn about two wheelers. I might probably write my experiences with Chennai traffic sometime, in another post.

Back to the trip. Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram is about 50 kms from chennai on the ECR. After a few kilometers on the ECR, you hit the tollgate. We stopped near Mayajaal, which is a Multiplex, to pick up one of Hitesh's friends. We also needed some breakfast, badly!

After having our fill of dosas (they were really good! Maybe because we were too hungry), we continued on our journey. By then, it had started to get really hot. We wanted to be in Mahabs as fast as we could. But no, ECR had more in store for us.

Well this post is becoming too long.. I think i'll write more about this in a later post.