Why the NH66 Is Not the Only Road South
Most Mumbai-to-Goa drivers join the queue on NH66, the coastal highway, sometime around 4 a.m. and spend the next twelve hours overtaking trucks and watching the sea appear and disappear between petrol stations. It is a fine drive. It is also, by now, entirely predictable. The inland route, NH48 out of Mumbai, then south through Pune, Kolhapur, Amboli, and down into Goa via Sawantwadi, adds roughly two to three hours to the total drive time and subtracts almost all of the traffic. What it gives back is harder to quantify on a map.
