Tag: Chitradurga

  • Pune to Palakkad – 27 August 2025

    We drove down from Pune to Palakkad for Onam. The route we took was Kolhapur – Chitradurga – Tumkur – Sathyamangalam – Coimbatore – Palakkad.

    My main concern before the start of the journey was repair work on the Pune – Bangalore Highway (old NH4, new AH47 or NH48). Multiple people warned me about it. So, we were actively considering the Solapur – Vijayapura – Chitradurga stretch to avoid the repairs on the Kolhapur stretch.

    Two days before the drive, Rakesh had consulted multiple people himself and suggested that we take the Kolhapur, as a known bad road was better than an unknown road. I was concerned by the lack of mobile connectivity in case of any issues with our vehicle. Google Maps showed instances of roads being drowned in one or two stretches of the Solapur alternative.

    Colleagues at work I asked said that the stretch towards Bangalore was good but had no food stops nor mobile phone coverage for nearly an hour and a half as the roads went through wildlife sanctuaries.

    Following Rakesh’s advice we chose the Kolhapur alternative. 

    It was Ganesh Chaturthi that day and we started off with some Ganesh aartis. We had mentally prepared for multiple road blocks which appeared on Google Maps but did not exist on the road. Multiple times in Maharashtra, Google Aunty would ask us to take a diversion where none existed and seemed flummoxed when the car went straight ahead.

    The diversions on the Maharashtra stretch were much better built. There were potholes in some places but that was expected given the incessant rains in the past two to three weeks.

    Google Aunty did much better with the diversions on the Karnataka stretch of NH4. Here, the roads were much worse than the Maharashtra stretch with unnecessary speed bumpers, non tarred roads, and numerous potholes. 

    We made our first stop at the Kamat’s in Satara just before going up the ghats. The meals were good. We carried some snacks from here for what we expected to be a bad Kolhapur stretch.

    The Kolhapur stretch wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be. We went through but at slower speeds. 

    We crossed the border into Karnataka and stopped at a McDonalds (called Viraj Junction) just past the RTO check post for bathroom breaks and some coffee. 

    There are not too many food places on this stretch upto Chitradurga. So, we stopped at a familiar place for lunch when we saw it. It just says Restaurant but Google calls it Itagi Cross.

    We met a foreigner here who was going the other way on his Honda Goldwing. My 2 yo son waved hi to him. He waved back and asked him how he was. My 2 yo said, I’m fine. We had rice and dal here and it was really good.

    We had planned to reach Tumkur by evening that day but the Dharwad- Hubli stretch had other plans. This stretch was the worst stretch on our way to Palakkad. But, I’m happy they are expanding it now. When we reached Chitradurga, it was half past five. We stopped for tea and decided to push to Tumkur.

    We called ahead and booked Hotel Sadananda. We then had the first spell of rain on the road. This slowed us down a little. We then stopped for the night at Hotel Sadananda and had dinner from there. We had a simple meal at the hotel which was fine but not great.

    We had a hot water bath and had a good night’s sleep. We decided to leave around six the next night.

  • ISRO Land, Challakere

    Challakere is a town in Karnataka which is roughly 3.5 hour drive North East of Bengaluru. This is a place where a ₹2,700 crore plan to build India’s Human Space Flight Center (HSFC). This was where some of the tests for Chandrayaan 3 are being done.

    Tender Notice to clear Bellary Jali

    As usual, this news comes not from ISRO but from a tender notice posted on ISRO’s website. Based on this, I looked at the area on Google Maps. I found a few things that I shared on r/ISRO. As is usual, this is not a new discovery.

    This is land allocated to ISRO in Science City. Hence, you can see the campuses for Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and even Bhaba Atomic Research Station (BARC).

    Marked in blue is the ISRO Land, Chalakkere. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    You can also see the plans that were shared for the construction of this land here. Essentially, the land where we did these tests will be built over by the HSFC.

    Chandrayaan-3 tests

    Marked with blue arrows are craters created at ISRO Land where testing was done for Chandrayaan 2 and 3. Image credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    These craters are for what are called the Lander Sensor Performance Test (LSPT). LSPT-1 and LSPT-2 were conducted for Chandrayaan-2. The tender is for clearing the green swathes that you see. It is apparently full of a shrub called Bellary Jali which needs to be cleaned up before tests for Chandrayaan-3 can be conducted.

    Details of LSPT-1 and LSPT-2 were shared in Upagrah Apr-Jun 2017 issue (archived in Google Docs by u/Ohsin). This is the in-house magazine for U R Rao Satellite Center (URSC).

    The test involves flying a Beechcraft Super King Air B-200 belonging to the National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC) over the craters made for the purpose. The plane flew from 500 m to 7 km in altitude to simulate various landing conditions. They also flew early in the morning to get the same lighting conditions as on the landing site on the Moon.

    RLV Landing Experiment near Chitradurga

    There was mention of a Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Landing Experiment at Chitradurga.

    Snippet mentioning the RLV Landing Experiment in the ISRO Annual Report 2020-21.

    Interesting term in the picture above is the pseudolite (pseudo-satellite).

    While exploring the surrounding of Challakere, I spotted this, which could be a possible runway to which the RLV will glide and land on.

    Possible RLV landing site near Chitradurga – Chitradurga Aeronautical Test Range belonging to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (ATR-DRDO). Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    This blog post is a small effort to read documents and share with you the possible rabbit holes. Following them is up to you.