I thought of completing Part 3 sometime later on, but the pull of the fellow Ghumukkar’s has made me continue even before I scheduled to write. Again thanks for all your comments. Remarks from seniors like Ram Sir and Nandanji has made my page look complete. I am writing for the first time to any blog, but the response and the love I am getting, I think I should start converting many of my travel memories into words.

Let’s move on to the last phase of the journey.

Day 2: Varanasi to Kolkata: 6th Feb 2010
The day was memorable for us as we are about to complete our last leg of the journey. And also to cover the unknown factor called “Bihar” and “Jharkhand”. We were too tired and the excitement was not enough to wake us on that day. We had no option but to rely on our friendly alarm clock. We scheduled to leave Varanasi by 5:00 am, but due to “known” reasons we had to wait for another 30 mins. After getting the direction from the caretaker of Rahi Guest house we headed for the road. The direction … on coming out of Rahi guest house you head towards the Railway station, on reaching it you take a right and take an oath to not to look here and there but to go straight. Another word of advice, I forgot to mention in my last blog, is that, if you ask for direction to any fellow Varanasian, they might say “Sidhe jaia then right and blah and blah” – here “sidhe” means the road on your side, even if it goes 90 degrees left then also it will be considered “sidhe” within the direction, – something which I learned the “hard” way. Coming to the plot, we made our car drink enough alcohol (err I mean Petrol) to last the unknown last phase.

Bar for Cars

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In May 2000, I along with my family was at Darbhanga which is a small town in northern Bihar. My grandpa and grandma lives there. We had gone there to spend our summer vacations. We had planned two weeks of stay there. At that time I was in std. 5 and my brother, Johny was in std. 3. After 2 -3 days of stay my father suddenly came up with an idea to take us to Janakpur. It was a significant place of our culture and we hadn’t been there even once. Meanwhile one of my mamajis, (mamma’s cousin) also came to Darbhanga for some of his own job. We asked Papa to ask if he was free enough to come with us. After his agreement we were in all 5 persons to leave for Janakpur.

We went to the Darbhanga station and took a local train to Jainagar. It took 3-4 hours to reach there. It was meter gauge track then but presently the tracks have been converted to broad gauge and so now it hardly takes 2-3 hours to cover the same dist ance. From Jainagar we took a toy train to Janakpur. Jainagar – Janakpur route had a narrow gauge. We reached Janakpur after 2 hrs.
Janakpur does not fall within Indian borders. It lies in Nepal, a small neighboring country of India. So, it was a foreign trip for us. Johny and I were extremely happy with this information which Papa gave us in the train. Being a neighboring country, it has almost the same climatic conditions as of the states of north-eastern India. So as it was the month of May, the weather was extremely hot.
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My intention behind writing road-reviews have been to provide necessary information to fellow travelers (read drivers) who wish to undertake that journey. With that thought, probably Delhi-Patna doesn’t make the cut, since not many would be traveling (read driving) such a long stretch. Patna is not a hot tourist place and neither its close enough to let people choose the tar instead of routine rail or expensive air. So the only real reason I think would be then to use this is to get and feel high, since I did it, just the last week. I drove all the way to Darbhanga (200 Km further to Patna) from Delhi. May be 10 years down the line when I read this again, I would feel young (and stupid), so here it is.

Delhi – Patna can be divided into following stretches.
Distance – 1050 – 1100 KMs , Time – 32 hours with a 12 hour night stop at Allahabad or Banaras. 20-22 hours non-stop with 2 meal breaks and 2 tea breaks.

1. Delhi – Agra – Etawah
2. Etawah – Kanpur
3. Kanpur – Allahabad
4. Allahabad – Banaras
5. Banaras – Patna

View Larger Map
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