My last road trip to Haridwar was in Feb this year. After this trip again in March this year I did a road trip to Wagah Border.And now after five months here comes my road trip again.This time too during Rakhi Holidays , we again planned a road trip to Dehradun, Mussoorie and Haridwar similar to every year. My Last years wonderful Mussoorie experience is described in my previous post -”Road Trip to Mussoorie – The Queen Of Hills “. This time Rakhi was a little late ie. in the last week of of august , and this time was the peak of monsoon. However , our plan was made a month in advance. We had to go to Dehradun this time by different route. We had decided to follow the Route – Delhi – Panipat – Shamli – Saharanpur – Chutmulpur – Dehradun. But rains played havoc to our plan. We knew that this is the state highway and the condition of roads were not good due to heavy rains. So just a day in advance , we changed our plan and decide to go by the same old route of National highway. Details of the trip –

No. of Adults – Four
1. Myself – The solo driver
2. My Father
3. My mother
4. My Great Grand Mother

My Car – Maruti 800
Total distance covered in the trip – 750 Km
Avg distance per litre – 18 Km/Lr
Total cost of fuel consumed – Rs 2500

It was 22nd August’10. Rains were on its full throttle. But our plan was made. We left Delhi on 22nd at 5 am. Continous rains were pouring. We followed the route from ISBT , Dilshad Garden on NH-24 towards Ghaziabad .
From Ghaziabd we turned on NH-58 towards Meerut.

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I have visited Dehradun a lot of times and mostly by train only. As the road condition (Ghaziabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Roorkee) is not very good and traffic is very high, the road travel is always very exhausting.

This time, me and 1 of my friends, Nishant planned to go for a 1 night trip to Dehradun, travelling by own vehicle. But we decided not to travel via Meerut, Muzaffarnagar etc. Instead we decided to go via Baraut, Shamli, Sahranpur.

13.05.2010, Delhi to Dehradun , Driver: Nishant (Solo), Accompanying: Myself

We started our trip at 6.30 am from my Home in Bhajanpura, which is very close to Loni More.  Soon, we were out of Delhi, heading towards Baghpat. Road was OK and traffic was very minimal. After Baghpat, the traffic started increasing. This was a single road only and a lot of villages are there on both side of Road, so we were carefull in driving. Around 7.45 we reached Baraut. Normally at baraut, there is lot of traffic jam and you need some 15 minutes to cross this very small stretch of some half a KM. But we were fortunate enough that road was clear and crossed Baraut in 2  minutes.

After Baraut, the journey became very pleasant, as day was not very hot. On both sides of Road, lot of mango trees, full of Mangoes were there. Traffic was very minimal and we were running on a speed of 90 km/hr easily.

Around 9 we reached Shamli and around 10 we reached Saharanpur. After crossing Saharanpur, we took a halt at a Dhaba and had our breakfast.
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During those recession times, just two days before Obama taking oath as 44th president of USA, I landed into USA in Bellevue, Washington state near Seattle. On very first weekend break, a close friend (Samrat) planned a trip down south in Oregon state to visit waterfalls in Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge is one of the many natural beauty sites which have been declared as National Scenic Area by US govt. I had no involvement in planning of this trip as I hardly researched anything this time before coming. Samrat being his enthusiastic self and shouldering responsibility of taking entourage of 16 folks including his and two other families hired one of the biggest personal passenger vehicle in US, a Ford 16 seater.

Ford 16-seater passenger vehicle

Farmers’ markets are a phenomenon in California. The goods on sale are very similar to the day shifting bazaars (a.k.a Som Bazaar, Mangal Bazaar, Budh bazaar and so on) in India. Freshest of the fresh vegetables, fruits, and even flowers can be bought from these markets. One such market was outside the Ferry Building, near Embarcadero, at San Francisco on a weekend in early May this year.

It was in one such Farmer’s markets where I relished the juiciest strawberries and stood in awe of the biggest orchids that I could ever have imagined. A friend once stated “U.S. mein sab bada hi bada hota hai.”
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