Got courage to do this travel from an earlier post. Had planned to start early but the damned alarm didn’t go off as planned so slept till 7:00, left home around 7:45. We were 4 persons with 2 kids in the WagonR (Me, my wife and 2 kids aged 5 & 3, my younger brother and the driver).
Crossed Badarpur border in no time and was zooming thru as there was not much traffic on the road.
Decided to take some refreshment after Mathura. Be warned all dhaba walas on this stretch of road (Delhi-Agra) are looters. 5 rs per poori!!! 7 rs per tea!!!. We had a heavy breakfast here.
Anyway, crossed Agra around 12:30 and sped thru. Since it was festival time so policewalas on Agra Byepass were trying to earn that extra buck by stopping almost all cars with family having non-up registration number. To their disappointment they found all my papers in order.
The road is really very good, it was my first trip through this route, and I am happy and thankful to Ghumakkars who had posted their experience of this route earlier.
Since we had a heavy breakfast around 11:00 none of us were feeling hungry, and kids were fast asleep in the boot, so we pressed on. As we reached the outskirts of a small town called “Barrah”, 2 policemen stopped the traffic on both sides of the highway as it was the Barawafat procession which needed to cross the road. 40 minutes wasted. Once that hurdle crossed, we started again only to find one flat tyre, which replaced with the spare and in Barrah town we found a roadside Puncturewala who checked the flat tyre and said the tube is not usable and he sold us a brand new tube for 300 bucks. 30 minutes wasted here too.
A friend, who had taken this route earlier, had advised not to enter Kanpur city and take the Byepass (which is a 24 KM long flyover). We took that flyover, it was the longest flyover on which I have travelled so far.Entire Kanpur city is byepassed. One has to take a u turn at the end of flyover (you will find many signs warning and informing you about this U turn). Keep looking for the Chakeri U Turn signs, there are plenty you can’t miss them, if you missed that then you will be enroute to Allahabad.
After taking the U Turn, u will drive back below this flyover and reach a large crossing called “Rama Devi Crossing”, take a right turn from here and you are now enroute to Lucknow. It was on this road that we got stuck again in a traffic jam (again Barawafat procession crossing the road) for close to 2 hours. We were stuck in this traffic jam near Jajmau.
Once that traffic jam opened, we sped towards Lucknow. Roads till lucknow were really superb. The only problem was (as mentioned by other Ghumakkars) of people driving on the wrong side of the road. You will have to be very careful about that.
We reached Lucknow around 8 pm. Close to 12 hours.
Lucknow to Gorakhpur was highly troublesome as the roads are still under developments and there are lots of diversions, almost every 5 minutes you have to take a diversion.
The only good finding on this stretch was Hindustan Petroleum’s Filling Stations cum restaurents. Superb quality food, highly courteous staff, play area for smaller kids and reasonable prices.