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We started at about 6 in the morning from Darbhanga and after one hour, we have covered 12 long kilometers. We were on a six lane East-West Corridor which was being done and I don’t need to remind fellow ghumakkars that protests and road-blocks happen in my home state, Bihar. Car cabin atmosphere was still very peppy because half of the crew was seasoned and rest of them were oblivious. I moved to 13th KM and was hoping that I reach Kushinagar in time, a brief stop we planned before we spend the night at Gorakhpur.

It was late afternoon, when I got close to the holy city and the hope of meeting Gorakhpur before it gets dark, ensured that we spend the limited time in Kushinagar without any undue haste. The city is right on East-West Corridor, the ambitious road project which would connect Silchar in East to Probandar in West, and as you get close you would see a large statue of Lord Buddha, acting like a gate.
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I was at Benares and we were mulling over whether to do a trip to Sarnath or not. I was not feeling too well, long driving and June summer was getting the better of me. I didn’t want to stretch too much, since I was to drive to Darbhanga the very next morning. The shorter route from Varanasi to Darbhanga via Chhapra has been ruled out by multiple people. Almost every one whom we called asked the same thing, “Dont make it dark”, start early, dont drive in evening and so on. Finally, we had decided to go via Patna. That meant some extra driving. I have been to Patna many times and I was familiar with the road from Patna to Darbhanga but Patna was still 4-5 odd hours away from Banares. So mulling continued for few more split seconds before we decided to move on and do a quick trip. It would have been a shame to go till Banaras and not visit Sarnath.

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Hello Ghumakkars,

The following post is based on a post originally made by me to a closed Yahoogroup. I am posting this here as I could not resist the temptation of sharing an exhilirating train ride in monsoon here, based on the response that Karthik’s Train Journey to Thiruvalla got. This post does not contain any visual photographs. Hope you will like reading it through.

We had gone to Lucknow-our Home Station and had booked our return trip on the hallowed 5609 Abadh Assam express. We chose this train as we wanted to be home by Sunday(17.08.08) night as we did not want the kids to miss their schools as none of the overnight trains can give an assured timely arrival at Ghaziabad, our adopted Station. And there is no day train from LKO to GZB on Sundays except for Gomati and SwarnShatabdi, but then sitting in a confined space for 6 to 9 hours is tiring, especially so for ladies and kids.
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After spending a day at Allahabad, we started towards Banaras or Varanasi. The drive is not a long one as its only 140 KM away. Getting out of Allahabad though takes a bit of time since the roads are not too wide and being in the east, the city gets active pretty early in the day. As we got out of city, we found ourselves in ‘Hanuman Ganj’, and I may be missing the correct name here, where we had to maneuver another bad patch. I tell you this because after Hanuman Ganj, we crossed a railway crossing and we found ourselves back on six lane NH2. I think NHAI is making a bypass so someone who is coming from Kanpur and is headed for further east towards Kolkata then he can avoid Allahabad. Proabably that bypass would meet just after Hanuman Ganj as I could see a flyover meeting NH2 but it was not done from the other side and seemed like the one I saw a glimpse when I was entering Allahabad (I think lukarganj area). So much for roads, I should go and work for NHAI.

Once you are on NH2, you keep going with its usual share of small towns and villages. As you approach a village or a town, you would notice that there is an embankment on both sides, a way to dissuade and prevent dwellers to make the road an extended part of their shops. These towns and villages were the change in scenery then the usual Monsoon green. You see lots of flora but not much of concrete.

Banaras - Coming shortly to you
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