Car News: Pune-Delhi-Sangla-Back to Pune.

The events in this travelogue have happened during April 28th 2011 till May 31st 2011. The journey experience was shared with my wife and 2 year old son Himaank. Total distance covered is approx. 7000 Kms. I would divide the travelogue into 3 parts.

Part 1: Pune to Shimla
Part 2: Shimla - Kalpa - Kaaza - Sangla and back to Shimla
Part 3: Shimla to Pune
PART 1 Starts:

Groundwork
some dreams are meant to be realized. And when you have support from your family, there is nothing that could stop you.
It all started some 2 years back. I am still not sure the genesis of this idea, but it was always a dream to go out on the endless highways and drive long distance. Dissect all across Maharashta, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, and Punjab and reach Himachal. Go further north and enter J&K through Leh.
However all this required a detailed planning w.r.t. equipment (A trustworthy Car) and leaves. The preparation started somewhere in middle of 2009 when we started checking out the cars. The budget was 10L with a cushion of 15% either side. SUV was a preferred option because of their ability to take all kinds of roads. Within a span of 3-4 months there was no showroom in Pune who did not identify me. We had shortlisted Safari, Innova and Scorpio. After a lot of comparison and test drives etc, we finalized on Scorpio SLE and got it delivered in first week of Jan 2010. Meanwhile leaves were also planned and May 2011 was decided as the month when I would take an off for one month.

Homework
We had ensured the first servicing was done. We had upgraded tires to Yokos. There was equipment for tire inflator. GPS was enabled with maps from Map My India. We had ordered the book 'Highway on my Plate' to check out all the places to eat.
Here it goes.

Day 0 – Pune to Mumbai
We started on April 28th in the afternoon from Pune. Drive till Mumbai was usual cursing on expressway. Within no time we reached Mumbai and checked into Infosys Guesthouse located in Andheri. Driving Scorpio into those narrow lanes in Andheri was easy and did not require any additional skills.
(This was an official visit aligned with the journey to add more leaves to our plan)
Day 1 – Mumbai to Surat
The official work finished by 12 noon and we started for Surat. Moving out of Mumbai itself took us 2 hours when we stopped for lunch. Highway joints for food falls under 2 categories – extremely good or very bad. This one was good. After a nice heavy meal, we started towards Surat. The distance was close to 300 Kms and with some sections of highway under the enablement of 6 lanes. Some sections were closed for repair. The drive was nice and pleasant and within 6 hours approx. we reached Surat boundary. It took us another 1 hour to reach Ginger Surat which was located in the heart of the city.

Surat scores high on infrastructure. My comparison is w.r.t. cities in Maharashtra which I thought to be best in India. However Surat was way beyond my expectations. We checked into the hotel and stretched our legs for a while. Himaank also got himself loose, and we moved out again to check out the city. That is the intent of doing a road trip. We went to all the recommended eating joints in the city. Had traditional Gujarati dinner and came back.

Day 2 – Surat to Udaipur
With no alarm clocks we were up by 8 and checked out by 8:30. While moving out of the city we stopped over for breakfast at 'Jani Pharsan' (Recommended by Rocky and Mayur). This was the most popular joint among locals too. I took stood up in the queue and ordered for what everyone was eating- Locha. It looked like a thick creamy paste made of gram flour scoring not too high on visual appeal. However as they say, looks could be deceptive. When we started eating it we were amazingly surprised of the simplicity and tastefulness of these traditional dishes in India.
Since we had to travel 600 Kms this day, we started our journey. Surat to Barauch is a nice and easy stretch. Then came the worst 4-5 Kms of the entire journey, the Narmada bridge at Barauch. This 3-4 Kms of stretch could take 3-4 hours on a weekday and even more in the weekend. We tried some off-roading capabilities of Scorpio and were able to cut across 1-2 Kms, for the rest we had to be a part of the queue and spend some 2 hours to cross the bottleneck.
The journey post Barauch is nice and easy. And once you hit NE1 (Vadodara- Ahmedabad Expressway) there is nothing that can stop you. Even the legal speed limit is 100. We drove at 120 average and cruised the highway. For a while just to test the capabilities of the car I took it to 160-170 types and stayed there for 2-3 Kms. It was an experience to drive at that speed.
We reached Udaipur around 6:30 in the evening with enough of daylight. Checked in the hotel "Padmini Palace" which we found out easily using the GPS. First impressions of hotel is pathetic. The pictures in makemytrip and looking at it in real had huge variations. However there was nothing much we could do, so we checked in and immediately came out for city tour. Udaipur is a city with narrow lanes and small roads. It made more sense to hire a rick and do a city tour, providing some rest to our Scorpio which has still a lot of distance to cover. We went for some local shopping and then went for dinner at Hotel Ambroi. Anyone who goes to Udaipur should not miss this restaurant. Excellent ambiance.

Day 3 – Udaipur to Gurgaon
We were up and ready by 7 AM. Wife had some unpleasant arguments with hotel staff related to breakfast for our two year old son. Those buggers were not ready to make anything not in the menu card even when we had our own raw materials to cook. Somehow we kept our patience and moved out.
As soon as we were moving out of the city, we realized that one of our travel advisors 'Rocky and Mayur' were missing. By mistake we dropped then on a local jeweler store in the evening. We decided to check it out and try our luck. We had already used this book for making choices for eating joints which had worked perfectly. While we reached to the shop we found it closed. It was supposed to open at 8 AM and the same was also confirmed by the shop owner on phone. We used the time for local breakfast and diesel refueling. There is a small sweet shop named 'Jodhpur Mishthan Bhandar' which sells local breakfast. I have never had better chaurois in my life.

After having a good heavy breakfast we went back to the shop to check the book. It was around 9:30 by this time. Surprisingly the shop was still closed and was supposed to take another 30 mins to open. We decided to let it go and start our ongoing journey.
Road from Udaipur to Delhi is full of patches of good and bad roads. The road till Ajmer and Kishangarh is full of some rough patches. Also the month of May is not a good time to travel in Rajasthan specially with a 2 year old. The mercury was touching 48, however the A/C in Scorpio works like a wonder and keeps you cool. While we stopped for lunch on highway the sun was at its peak. To make it more worse, the restaurant had some issues with power. We were losing more water through sweat than replenishing it with mineral water. We swallowed some food without enjoying the taste and immediately got back to car.
It was already dark by the time we reached Jaipur. We were repenting our decision we made in the morning. I was also tired by then. Vidisha took over the wheel and drove for some 2 hours. While she was driving I was handling our kid, answering his questions, playing his favorite songs etc. I realized that getting back to the wheel is a comparatively easier job
With traffic jams all along the way we managed to reach Ginger Gurgaon around midnight. There was no available dinner so we had to eat some biscuits etc which we had kept as SOS.

Day 4 – Gurgaon – Shimla
I was expecting this to be the easiest stretch for this journey. Also since I was grown up in this region I was more comfortable with roads, people, food etc. Unfortunately we misinterpreted the GPS and went on wrong direction resulting in getting inside Delhi roads and loosing 2 hours. It took us quite a while to move out of Delhi and take the highway for Chandigarh.
We had heard a lot of hype/fancy about 'Haveli' which comes near Panipat/Karnal. We were calling all our friends to understand the location but it was not helping much. Also another interesting thing on Indian highways is that once some restaurant/dhaba becomes popular all other dhabas in close vicinity rename their hotels to same name. This adds to lots of confusion for people like us who want to go to the authentic one.
After a lot of effort we finally located this, and ate like pigs. This place rocks.

The drive post lunch was fun. Driving in the hills is an entirely different experience. We rolled down the windows and enjoyed the fresh breeze. Kalka to Shimla is an extremely scenic and pleasant drive. Finally we reached home by evening 6.