In line with my annual target to achieve something which i can call a personally enriching i decided to embark on a family driving expedition. The planning was a challenge. Just deciding where to go can be quite intimidating. I prefer the hills but driving in the hills can be quite painful and cannot be called quite an experience. So decided to sort this for myself. Ill get driven to the hills and would always drive to the plains. since the north was out, the options left were UP-MP or Rajasthan-Gujarat. Decided to pick the latter. The finally planned route was Udaipur-Ahmedabad-Diu-Somnath-Jamnagar-Chittorgarh-Delhi, a planned distance of 3000 km. I personally thought of the trip as quite challenging, had never done something of this magnitude before. Friends too thought of it as quite drastic, but had made up my mind and decided for it. Convincing my family was a bit tight but eventually all went fine and we decided to go for it.
The car a Nov 2008, Honda Civic, the family self, wife and 13 year old son, and the plan was to drive myself across. I had done this once in 2004 and its been 6 years, was a bit excited and a bit tense. Then started the exercise of reading numerous blogs on the issue. Happy to know that many had done this and more and my trip looked like childs play. That was a comfort.
Started from Vasant Kunj, a south Delhi suburb at 0643 hrs, it was a fine morning cold but relatively clear. I was to hear later from my friends that it was a very foggy day and lots of flights were cancelled. But we managed to make a safe and clear exit out of Delhi. My milometer at start(ignore the dates in all the pictures, my camera has a date problem) reads 18232 Km.We started off along NH8, all was fine till we left Gurgaon, trucks started lining up from the second toll onwards. thereafter for the entire stretch till we stopped for breakfast at 0915 hrs at Hotel Midway Tokas, about 103 KM from Delhi. Then started a long session of parathas for breakfast which would go on for the next 9 days.Half hour break later we were on our way, the entire stretch till Jaipur was in a bad state with 6 laning of roads going on. I remember i did Jaipur by road in 2006 and again in 2009 and on both occasions it was a pleasure. Now its become painful to drive to Jaipur. It took me almost 5 hours at an average speed of 50 kmph to get to Jaipur, normally a 3 hour drive. I don't recommend anyone to go to Jaipur atleast till mid 2012 hopefully by when this road work would get over. About 357 Km from Delhi and about 100 km south of Jaipur is Kishangarh.From here on there are 2 routes to Udaipur. One is along NH8 via Ajmer and the other is via Nasirabad-Bhilwara-Chittorgarh, NH 79. Based on inputs from blogs we decided to take NH 79 and it was the best possible decision. The Kishangarh-Udaipur stretch was the best highway i have driven in India(obviously the Mumbai-Pune expressway comes close, but not anything like this). This is a nice 6 lane highway lined with hotels, small and medium restaurants and scattered petrol pumps. Check the pic for a preview.
Lunch was at 1425 hrs at Hotel Sahyog, a small nondescript place about 440 Km from Delhi. A quick bite later we were off at 1450 hrs. I wanted to reach Udaipur before sunset, hate to drive on Indian roads in the night. We stayed at Grand Sita bang in the middle of Udaipur, would give it a 2.5 on 5. Its an average stay over hotel, that i booked thru Make my trip. Was clean and nice.Being winter i had estimated sunset at 1730 hrs, so i had about 2 1/2 hrs to cover more than 200 Km, which seems like a stretch, but the roads were fab and we reached our hotel by 1730 sharp. That was some drive almost 11 hours in the car with an exclusion of 1 hour for lunch, 10 straight hours oif driving time. Hopefully once Jaipur roads come up the Delhi Jaipur stretch would come down below 3 hours, so Delhi -Udaipur can be done in 8 to 9 hours, with an hour stopping time.The plan was to spend 25 and 26th night at Udaipur and see around the place. Very wifey plan but decided to play on. a days break was nice after the long drive. Udaipur according to me is a very hyped up city. One has better places to go in India. Hired a cab for the day, did a 1045 to 4 pm scene. Udaipur has lots of boating and a ropeway to the Karnimata temple. Got late for lunch and our taxi guys takes us to this ramshackled place. The Rajasthani thali was good and also topped it up with Dal bhaati and choorma(i understand thats a Rajasthani delicacy).The next day was supposed to be a relatively easy drive compared to the one Udaipur, so decided to sleep late. We planned to leave the next day by 8 or so.
27 Dec 2010, Monday:
Udaipur to Ahmedabad - 256 Km
Stay at Ahmedabad: Afternoon 27 Dec 10 to morning 28 Dec 10
After a 600 km drive, 256 km seemed like childs play, so we started the next morning at 0835 hrs from Udaipur. The road leading from the hotel led us straight to Udaipur bypass on to NH8 for our onward drive to Ahmedabad.The route is via Shamalji-Himmatnagar-Gandhinagar to Ahmedabad.Unlike the Kishangarh-Udaipur stretch this road is well maintained but winding which cuts the speed.The Rajasthan border is 117 km from Udaipur, with a simple fort like structure. Its Gujarat after that , green and beautiful. The roads continue to remain nice but winding as before. Lunch was at a Punjabi joint called Hotel Nilgiri, owner by a Sardarji. He got us nice hot parathas and tea.Quite a decent and clean place. Started after a 30 min stop and reached Ahmedabad by about 1130 hrs. We checked into Hotel Comfort Inn, Sunset , very close to the airport. This was a nice hotel, i would give it a 3.5 on 5. Very spacious with nice clean washrooms and a nice view of the road below.Post lunch we visited the Gandhi Ashram in the day. It was quite a humbling experience. Think about a frail man who spent all his life to the service of the nation, his requirements were bare his physical appearance was frail but he had the strength to move a nation the size of India that too on the principle of non-violence. Very impressive.Rest of the evening was spent in the room.
I did not find too many blogs writing about travelling from Ahmedabad to Diu. There are 2 routes that you can take. One via NH 8E via Bhavnagar-Una-Diu and the other via NH 8B till Rajkot-Jethpur and after Jetpur split off to NH8D which splits off to Junagarh-Veraval-Somnath and thereafter NH8E to Una-Diu. I had no precedence nor any write up hence took this the latter route via Rajkot based on an advise by the reception guy at my hotel.But my advise to readers of this blog would be to try the Bhavnagar route also, as apparently all the state buses take that route and may be 150 km odd shorter(or so my hotel receptionist told me at the Diu hotel), however i understand that is a 2 lane route all the way from Ahmedabad to Diu so your driving might be much slower that route remains unproven till date.We started from Ahmedabad at 0812 hrs on 28 Dec.The road is almost straight forward, we simply caught NH8B, we reached Rajkot, at 237.5 Km from Ahmedabad at 1130 hrs(was a 3 hr 15 min drive) and stuck on NH8B till Jethpur. The road thereafter goes on to Porbandar. Here is the terrible part. There are no roadsigns to mark the exit from Jetpur to NH8D to Junagarh. So at a particular point you split off from the Porbandar route and enter Jetpur town and exiting the town takes about 20 odd min and lo and behold you are on NH8D. No signboards at all for a long time, but asking people helps. The road upto Jetpur is 4 lane and is a beautiful drive. After Jetpur, NH8D is 2 lane with no median on the road.
The condition of the road is ok till Jamnagar, i mean not too great but you can do decent speeds. We were desperate to eat Gujarati food and in Ahmedabad all we got was a load of Punjabi food. I wonder why they dont serve authentic Gujarati food in many restaurants in Gujarat. Why copy others when your cuisine is so great. Take the bypass around Jamnagar and at the south gate of Jamnagar, we finally caught a small lunch home serving authentic Gujarati food. The thali was nice, loved the sweet dal the most. Would have loved to take a nap, but we needed to go on. The road after Junagarh started deteriorating gradually. I was wondering that 2 main attractions of Gujarat are Somnath and Gir forest and a visit to Diu, but unfortunately the road from Junagarh right till Diu (the road is 2 lane) is pathetic. You cant drive fast as you may hit a pothole and damage your car. 100 km short of Diu the road is in terrible condition and your speed reduces to about 30 kmph. The road is an absolute disaster. Mr. Chief Minister, please do something about it, if you really want tourists to reach Somnath and carry great memories of reaching that place.The view however is fab, green fields on both sides with coconut trees. The road is lined with huge trees which give nice shade to the entire road. You need to reach Una, before you see a broken sign showing a right turn off NH8E to Diu. From this point Diu is 16 Km. We reached Diu by 1700 hrs and checked into Hotel Cidade de Diu, the hotel is in Diu town. After dumping our luggage , we walked down to the town to catch some tea and watching the sunset. It was nice to see the sea after ages. Being in Delhi, had almost forgotten the look of the sea. After a quick shower we headed towards Nagoa beach , about 8 Km from the town. Diu also has a little airport. It was a nice scenic drive. The best hotel at Nagoa beach is Radhika Resort. There are others like Hoka Resort, Rasal beach resort and Suzlon beach resort are also near the beach. You would get the best view of the beach from Hoka and Suzlon beach resorts. If i was asked to rate by looks, it would be Radhika, Suzlon and Hoka in that order. Beer at Rs. 100 with loads of sea food at Radhika resort was welcome. Dinner at Radhika is highly recommended. The next morning after breakfast we visited Diu fort, i remember visiting the fort in 1993 and feels great to be back after 17 years. The view from Diu fort is fab.We drove thru the lanes of Diu and the feeling was very very antique. We loved it. We headed back to Nagoa beach and had beer and lunch, more sea food, prawns and pomfret.
After lunch at 1400 hrs we started from Nagoa beach for Somnath. As mentioned above the road is in pathetic shape. On the way we came across this antique ford, being used as a taxi. Probably the owner was not aware of its worth and decided to use it as a taxi.The drive took me 2 hours, something that we could have covered in about an hour and some more.Since this trip was planned in almost 4 days, all hotels at Somnath were full. There are about 3 odd good hotels at the Somnath bypass about one km out of Somnath. The ones within Somnath are small ones including 2 hostels run by the Somnath trust. Its recommended that those planning to stay at Somnath should do hotel bookings well in advance. The evening aarti starts at 7 pm, lasts for 30 min, followed by a light and sound show that starts at 745 and goes on for about an hour.Now here is the catch. There is an extremely strict dress code to enter the temple premises. Also do not carry anything with you. The following are banned. Any type of footwear(obviously), there is a place to keep your shoes but that was full when we got there, so better to go bare feet from your hotel, else keep your shoes whereever and expect to find it at your own risk, no leather including purses, belts and leather watch straps, no ladies purses, no car keys; in fact enter only with your clothes on and nothing else. There is a dress code for women too, no skirts or anything that shows your legs. Good rules, but not allowing us to carry my car key is where i was stumped and could not go inside. Wife and son had good darshan and then we went for a nice happy dinner. Great end to a lovely day. Our hostel was quite bare with no facilities except an attached bath. Had to get tea the next morning in a glass from a local tea shop. But what the hell, for a traveller these things hardly matter, the fun is to keep the travel on. The next morning we were supposed to go to Gir for a safari. I was speaking to a family while having dinner. They were staying at Gir and had come down for dinner. Apparently earlier you could phone and book and the safari, now the person booking the safari has to personally buy tickets which means standing in a line for up to 3 to 4 hours and followed by a 2 hr safari. I decided on a change of plan and decided to skip Gir forest and instead head to my next destination. This is what makes you feel like a traveller and not a tourist. For a traveller its the journey and not destinations that is more important.
30 Dec 2010, Thursday: Somnath to Jamnagar (via Rajkot) - 275 Km
Stay at Jamnagar: Evening 30 Dec 10 to morning of 01 Jan 11
Since the distance was manageable, we decided to have breakfast at Somnath (the same restaurant where we had dinner, Hotel Sukh Sagar, for those wanting to stay this is a decent hotel). Finally we left Somnath at 0957 hrs for Jamnagar. The route was via Junagarh-Jetpur-Rajkot and Jamnagar.Rajkot is 185 Km from Somnath, you take NH8D to Jetpur then NH8 from Jetpur to Rajkot. Though our map showed a couple of routes to reach Jamnagar, we finally landed up in Rajkot city (which seemed the only way we could find). There are no sineages on the way to Rajkot indicating any turns for Jamnagar.The only way is to leave NH8 at Rajkot and enter the city , travel within the city for 8 km before you reach the state highway which takes you to Jamnagar via Dhrol.This entire stretch of 85 km is 2 lane without a median which significantly slows down the speed. Surprisingly after turning left from Rajkot we saw a ChokiDhani on our left there was no time to visit so we let it pass. An interested traveller who has missed the same in Jaipur can visit the same. Aquick lunch later we were on our way, and by 1700 hrs we were at Jamnagar. Our destination was an isolated Naval station in Jamnagar , INS Valsura, where we were to meet and stay with a good friend of ours. Valsura is a quaint and quiet place along the sea, very peaceful . 31st afternoon was nice with some great Gujarati thali at Hotel Aaram, which apparently serves the best gujarati thali in town. And it was well worth it, the best thali till date, highly recommended to all those visiting Jamnagar.We had a nice 31st evening, got into bed by 0030 hrs and was awake again at 0500 for the next days trip. .
01 Jan 11, Saturday: Jamnagar to Chittorgarh (via Rajkot-Ahmedabad-Udaipur) - 670 Km
Stay at Chittorgarh : Evening 01 Jan 11 to morning of 02 Jan 11
We had a long long drive ahead and i was really looking forward to it. I needed to cross the entire state of Gujarat and move as much north as possible, this was a tight target considering that i had had just about 4 hours of sleep. The best part was we had not decided where we would stop, but it was estimated to be some place after Udaipur. Also luckily we had not calculated the distance so the enormity of the task did not hit us as we begun our journey. We started from Jamnagar at 0658 hrs, it was dark, the road from Valsura to Jamnagar was in bad shape, so we made a very slow exit. The road from Jamnagar to Rajkot was more or less clear, but again being 2 lane the progress was slow. The first target ws Ahmedabad, 302 Km away from Jamnagar. We reached the Ahmedabad bypass all fine, and got on to the ring road. The ring road brought lots of confusion with it, at times we would see boards mentioning Himmatnagar and then suddenly they shifted and started showing Vadodara. It was a ring and had i taken a wrong exit i would be heading south instead of north and with 470 km more to go before sundown that was no joke. We managed to find an exit (not sure of that was the right one but a good 10 km away we finally got on to the 6 lane highway leading to Udaipur. Ahmedabad to Udaipur is 256 Km and that was an ok target.We stopped at Himmatnagar for lunch , was quite a nice hotel but stuck to roti and dal to keep it simple and had Pepsi to drive the sleep away,which it did very effectively. We finally crossed Udaipur bypass at about 1600 hrs and we were very sure of reaching Chittorgarh by 5. That's when we encountered this horrific jam just outside Udaipur. Luckily some locals helped us take a village route and before we realized we were on NH76 heading towards Chittorgarh. But the Jam had costed us about 40 odd min and we were low on fuel and cash. Luckily we found a pump that accepts cards and tanked up.1645 hrs we were off from Udaipur and we had 113 Km to cover before sunset which apparently happens around 1730 hrs. seemed almost impossible, i was bracing up for a bit of night drive something that i hate to do in India. NH76 is a drivers paradise and there was almost nil traffic on the road and we managed to reach Chittorgarh by 1800 hrs, 113 km in 1 hour and 15 min was not bad at all. With an hours break for breakfast and lunch , we had driven for 10 hours, felt nice.Could not see much of Chittorgarh as it was already dark. Some enquiries later we finally found a decent place to stay, Hotel Nandan Palace. Very clean and welcome after a real long drive. I would give it 3 on 5. I had clocked about 700 km on 01 Jan, and from a travellers point of view i felt nice to be on the road the complete day, may be that's what i expect to do this year, quite a welcome thought. Be on the road as much as possible. The next day was also not expected to be that easy, we were about 600 km odd off Delhi and was to be a long drive. I felt ok after driving the day not tired at all. That's what happens when you doing things which you love to do.
The next morning we were up early with a plan to be on the road by 7 am, but by the time we finally made it , it was 0737 hrs. We got on to the same highway from where we exited to Chittorgarh without fully checking the google map that i was carrying(unluckily did not get a Rajasthan map before we started, so were relying on google maps). The highway in fact was NH76, which goes to Kota. After driving about 25 odd km i realized that we were on the wrong highway. Asked locals and got into the nearest village and 5 km of bumpy roads later we were back on NH79. NH 76 comes in from Udaipur to Chittorgarh and proceeds to Kota. While to go to Jaipur you got to change over to NH79 just before Chittorgarh, somehow we missed that turn and that costed us about 45 odd min. quite an expense when you got to do about 600 km that day. But issues behind us we were on NH79 on our way to Jaipur via Kishangarh. The road up to Kishangarh was fab and so was the road up to Jaipur. But i found that the quality of traffic was bad from Kishangarh to Jaipur (too many trucks and all over the place). We crossed Jaipur at 1200 hrs, which was good time and we expected to be in Delhi by 1600 hrs.But our horror was just about to start. Six laning of the highway was in progress and we encountered massive jams at 5 to 6 place (basically whenever the highway touches a village).Finally after struggling for about 6 hours we reached Delhi and parked my car at 1800 hrs. Was quite a trip, great memories, safe driving and almost no near misses too.In all we had covered 3120 km, spent about 9 days on the move and that exceeded my last driving trip Delhi-Bikaner-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur-Jaipur-Delhi which was about 2000 km in 10 days. At finish my milometer read 21402 km.
The journey was over, or should i say this journey was over, many roads and many destinations becon, who knows when the calling is but the traveller waits and when the calling comes he just moves. My soul tells me to be ready and am all set to move...to see another distant sunset..Au Revoir.....
