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Let me have the pleasure to introduce the participants of this incredible journey. I am sure by the time you have seen the snaps of the place almost every soul would feel envy and disappointed for not joining us. Pardon the length, but at any point if you feel that I am reading any script from a fairy tale, trust me we were in one…..

The Bikers Raje Singh Rawat ….our guide and biker no 1.

Bharat Kanodia …. biker no 2.

Inside the Chariot Abhishek… the amazing driver.

Rajiv ….. the navigator.

Sayed …. the bike-car hopper.

Journey Noida to Landsdowne…….. 255 kms approx ( 1 way)

September 29.2007.

4:00 AM Rajiv wakes up and rushes to take a bath and complete the morning routine, followed by a small morning worship for the safe journey. Its 4:45 AM and the other four members are enjoying their sleep. Rajiv rushes to Bharat’s bedroom, wakes up Raje and Bharat and calls Abhishek and Sayed on their mobiles to get ready.

5:15 AM Raje, Rajiv and Bharat starts their bikes and proceed towards the ATM machine to draw some cash.

5:45 AM Sayed and Abhishek are still not there at the meeting point.

6:00 AM Abhishek reaches the meeting point and 5 minutes later we pick up Sayed and head towards another point.

The journey begins….. (more…)

My visits to places are normally more comfortable journeys, maybe I am getting old and don’t feel like roughing it out any more :-). So, I planned a 3 day trip to Dharamshala, and the first thing I looked for was how to get there. Not a bus, not a train, but a flight. I found only one airline that served this route, and that was Air Deccan. Booking a month in advance, I got 2 return tickets for Rs. 9000, out of which more than Rs. 5000 was the tax component. In this case, if you are going to Dalhousie or Pathankot or Dharamshala and want to go by air, then book in advance since the ticket price shoots up drastically as you reach the desired journey date (in my case, when I enquired around 15 days before the flight about re-scheduling, I was told that the ticket had gone up to Rs. 29000).
So, any plans of changing the journey date were abandoned, and I got a bit busy in asking people about the place and places to see, and about the weather, and so on (this mind you, after I had already been there in college on a visit with friends). Once I learned some information (none of which I used to any great degree), it was time to head to Delhi Airport. The flight was late by 30 minutes, par for the course. And then the bus took around 20 of us to … we can’t be going in that small plane !!! .. it was, for the first time in my life, I would be traveling in a turbo-prop plane, and seeing the propellers rotating instead of the pleasure of a normal jet. The feeling wasn’t entirely too pleasant, but the flight was decent. Another thing I never cared to find out was whether this was a direct flight; it wasn’t. It first headed to Pathankot, and after a 15 minute stop, headed off to the Gaggal airport. This was a very small airport, and I think the flight I landed on was the only flight that comes there, and there were a lot of security over there waving big automatic weapons, so I did not try taking a photo of the airport :-).
We negotiated with the taxis, but there is apparently a union, and for a journey of around 30 minutes to the Club Mahindra Resort of Kangra Valley, none of them was willing to take less than Rs. 300. Eventually we gave in, and took a taxi. The journey was as we expected, on narrow roads resplendent with lush greenery on either side (due to it being the rainy season), and we finally reached Club Mahindra around 1:30 in the afternoon. After a quick lunch and a short break, we took a taxi from the Resort with a pre-planned package for the First day.

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Background

It all started from a discussion with Nandan when he gave an idea for a long road trip from Delhi to Mumbai. It was a bit ambitious for a software guy like me, but the idea clicked and registered so gravely in my mind that I planned a smaller version from Delhi to Vadodara. Why Vadodara? That’s because my brother lives there and we visit his place every year. We usually go by air, i thought driving down would be a good change! :-). After numerous discussions with friends (including Nandan), we couldn’t find any company for the trip. Finally me and wife Shagun decided to take the plunge without any other companions and started for Udaipur (our first milestone) on the morning of 29th September.

Day 1 - 29 September : Delhi to Udaipur,~ 675 kms

In order to save 30 kms from the long drive, instead of starting from our home in Noida, we started early from Shagun’s parents’ house in West Delhi. Weather had started getting cold as it’d rained the previous night. The familiar 250 km stretch on NH-8 from Delhi to Jaipur was covered quite comfortably in 4 hrs and a 10 min tea break. We had done all the planning and had a big stack of print outs courtesy googlemaps.

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The Pink City of Rajasthan has two kinds of keen visitors – a) foreign tourists and b) Indian women. That has been my judgement so far, when all the women I know love the city and want to go again and again, and their men have that look on their faces – you know, that says - what-is-there-in-jaipur-?-? and how-many-times-do-we-go-there-?-?-? !

Well, my dear men folk, for only women would have the answer to this : Jaipur is close-by, so no traveling-for-11-hours. Site-seeing is great and kinda mushy. Food is simply wonderful. And… ahem… there are too many shopping opportunities. And yes, Chokhi Dhani, ofcourse.

So we dumped all men around us (except for one – the driver!) and decided to go to Jaipur with only 2 agendas – shop till you drop and an evening at Chokhi Dhani. Though both had to be squeezed to a small capsule, because the youngest female of 2 years suddenly decided to not enjoy it. (more…)