Aligarh is a main educational town in western UP, situated 130 Kms away from delhi. Â It is famous for AMU (aligarh muslim university). Since start of my career in 1999, I got many opportunities to visit the town, but always on my official trip. And those days, schedule would have been very tight. Start early morning by train, reach there by 8 am, work whole day and return by evening train.
However, 2008 brought a change in the schedule and I got married in the same city. My wife belongs to Aligarh. So after that our visits were no more rushing. We travelled many times by car via Dadri, Bulandshahar etc. This was a single road, further connecting to Etawa, kanpur etc. Lot of small towns are situated on this road and it takes approx 4 hours due to the traffic jams in these town. And if you have  a bad day, then these jams can even consume hours of you.
So this time, i decided to travel  through another route via Faridabad, Palwal, Khair etc…
The distance was 30 kms more than normal route but i was told that road is much much pleasant here. We started early morning at 7 o’clock (me, my wife and son). This was a bright and pleasant morning of june and traffic was just starting to increase. We took the Pusta road and travelled by Gandhi Nagar, Laxmi nagar chungi, Akshardham mandir, Mayur vihar & Noida. After reaching Noida, we crossed DND way and took a right turn from kalindikunj turn. Then we reached Jasola and took a left turn for Delhi Agra road.
The newly build flyover at Badarpur is really very good. In old days, crossing this stretch used to consume 30 – 45 minutes even in morning time. But now, same can be crossed within 5 – 7 minutes max. But yes, you have to pay Toll for it.
Then started the Faridabad and a series of Traffic Signals. And I have never crossed any of them with a Green light in 1 go. You have to always wait for 1 – 2 red signals in crossing each of them. After faridabad, we reached Ballabgarh. A small Traffic jam was present at Bus stand entry gate. But we could cross it in 5 minutes or so. After crossing Ballabgarh, the real Highway started, and we could drive at 80 – 90 KMPH speed easily.
We stopped for a small break before Palwal, as this is the last proper place to halt on the way to Aligarh. My son enjoyed the beauty of Green corps in the field and was happy to see such a view. (he is just 2 yrs old). After buying some light snacks and soft drinks, we started again. Soon we reached palwal, crossed the bus stand and took a left turn from next red light. And this was start of the trouble, because condition of road was very very poor. There were lot of stones and dust of the road. Fortunately, all this lasted for approx 500 mtrs only. Then again good but single road started.
Really, this road is more pleasant. Traffic was very less here. We could see a lot of greenary on both sides with minimum poppulation. We reached Hamidpur and took a right turn. Soon we could see the new GreaterNoida Agra expressway being constructed. Then we crossed Tappal, a very small town on the way. The drive for next 30 minutes were very good as road was OK and traffic was minimal.
Soon we reached to a small town with bridge on a NAHAR. A haryana roadways bus was parked on the bridge and bridge was so narrow that even 2 wheelers were able to cross with bit difficulty. The bus was reported to be broken down but both driver and conducter were not looking in any trouble. After 10 minutes, the bus started (without any external support) and we could countinue our journey.
After these we crossed khair, another small town. After this, road was perfectly ok, without any more trouble and we could manage to enter aligarh in exact 4 hours (despite of extra 30 kms)
Most important for me, the driving was much much easy here and I could dare to travel back to delhi on same day. This would have been very very difficult, if we would have been travelled from Traditional rode. So, my recommendations to all, Pls use this road rather than the other one.