Road trip to Rajasthan: Delhi – Chittorgarh (Part 1)

To get a perspective, there were multiple reasons of doing a family road trip:

• Having denied my 10 year old twins an opportunity to go on excursion with their school
• After so many road trips in US, I was etching to go on another
• Give insight onto Indian history to the young ones

Planning

I started planning for the trip a couple of months before and decided on Rajasthan since it had all the aspects that we wanted from a trip. The best preparation was to read few blogs on ghumakkar and identify the places etc. After some research and my childhood memories I decided on visiting Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Mount Abu, Ajmer, Jaipur. All of us – me, my wife (Teena) and our 10 year old twins were very excited to begin this journey and just couldn’t wait.

I scouted various sites for hotels and attractions at all these places and tripadvisor.in was one of the good sites apart from our very own ghumakkar J. Day wise planning was done using google maps so as to break down the journey into near equal parts. After many discussions and disagreements with Teena I somehow managed to convince her with the following itinerary (with approx. distance):

• Day 1 600 km: Delhi – Chittorgarh, site seeing and stay at Chittorgarh
• Day 2 300 km: Chittorgarh – Mount Abu, site seeing and stay at Mount Abu
• Day 3 200 km: Mount Abu – Udaipur, site seeing and stay at Udaipur
• Day 4 400 km: Udaipur – Ajmer – Jaipur, site seeing at Udaipur and Ajmer
• Day 5 280 km: Jaipur – Delhi, site seeing in Jaipur

We did not book any hotels except for Chittorgarh, for others we decided on few options. We also wanted the trip to be flexible and decide on run-time (excuse the IT jargon!). We realized that first day would be hectic and we would need to start very early in the morning from Delhi.

We prepared a list of items we need to carry like sunglasses, caps, song collections, chargers for various gadgets et al.

Day 1: Delhi – Chittorgarh, 25th March 2014

Packing done! Fuel topped! Excitement denied sound sleep; thereafter we were all buckled up in our Swift Dzire and ready to roar at 3:15 am from Patparganj, Delhi. The initial journey was cool with few hiccups on Ring road blocked for metro constructions. We hit the Jaipur highway and there we were hit with hordes of trucks, bad roads, diversions etc. Somehow the conditions improved once we were near to Jaipur. And once we hit the Ajmer expressway, my! my!! It was smooth as butter. We hit out first stop at Highway King around 8 am on the Ajmer expressway half-way to our destination. We spent good 30 minutes and had our breakfast, clicked few pictures and moved ahead.

Break for Breakfast near Jaipur

Good roads helped us to maintain momentum and we expected to reach Chittorgarh around 12:30pm.

On Jaipur-Ajmer Expressway, one of the best!

Somewhere around Ajmer our GPS asked us to take a left turn on an elevated road and we dismissed it to continue ahead. We stopped about 25 km ahead from that point for petrol and enquired about directions to Chittorgarh. To our dismay, we had missed the turn and this mistake could cost us over an hour. With no other options we took the detour and we were in for further disappointment as the detour was a 40 km drive across a single lane road fit enough for a car! Anyway on the positive side the drive was around small hills without much traffic. The road lead us to a non-descript village Bijaynagar (Bong name in Rajasthan! J). We were back on NH 79A on the way to Chittorgarh. Later I realized that we continued towards NH 116A when we should have taken NH79A from Kisangarh and this mistake cost us additional hour of driving on a long day!

Finally we reached Chittorgarh around 1:30 pm and checked into RTDC Panna (having checked the reviews on tripadvisor.in). The hotel was bit below our expectations but clean so we checked in and freshened up. Quickly looked on net to find a good restaurant nearby – Hotel Meera and had sumptuous mughlai food. It was surprising to note that with over 600km and 10 hours of driving none of us really felt tired. The hotel manager offered us services of a guide for Chittorgarh fort for a fee and we lapped it up!

Historically Chittorgarh with 1300 years of history has a very important place in Mewar’s history as it bore the brunt of many attacks by Mughal forces and Jauhar’s committed by the women folk. We were looking forward to grasping this history by the help of our guide.

We met up with our guide – Manish at the fort. The entry tickets were dirt cheap, Rs. 5 per person and Rs. 20 for car. In Rajasthan most forts and places have number of points and you move or drive to each of them 1-by-1. Our first stop was Kumbha and Meera Bai temple. It is of note to see that Meera bai was one lady who has made her presence felt with her bhakti so much that she is revered with Lord Krishna.

Kumba Temple, Chittorgarh

The next stop was Victory Tower or Vijay Stambh, Kirthi Stambh and finally the main palace. There are around 80 water tanks of varying sizes. It amazes us as to how so much water is available on a hill top? As per Manish these tanks also supply water to the Chittor town below.

Pose n poise, Vijay Stambh nee Victory Tower

We were also taken to RTDC handicraft shops which were selling saris made from Custard apple and rajai’s for relieving body pains.

The view of Chittor town from palace ruins with sun setting over the horizon was breathtaking.

View of Chittorgarh town from the fort

We wrapped up the tour with the sound and light show which was very informative and reaffirmed the history of this great place. There are separate charges for this show (Adults – 75, Children – 40).

Chittorgarh Fort, Sound & Light show

While we came downhill back to the sleepy town it was dinner time. Found out a great place named Café Mocha with good cappuccino and fast food for kids (strongly recommended). We tried dal baffle at a famous but common man shop but found it tough to get through.

Local Rajasthani cuisine – Dal Balfle!

And that’s how we called it a day. One city completed, it was time to move on to our next destination.