Bangalore to Gir National Park & Rann of Kutch Happy New Year to All. I just finished a trip to Gujarat and wanted to share the experience. Gujarat is an amazing state with lots of places to visit. One must plan to visit Gujarat in life time.
For the year end shut down we wanted to drive through the coast and reach Gir to spot the Asiatic Lion at their last home. It was unplanned drive with ON the go planning. Though we enjoyed, I would not suggest people to do that. We had to skip lot of places due to poor planning. The best route to Gir National park from Bangalore is. Bangalore-Hubli-Pune-Thane-Vapi-Surat-Vadodara-Borsad-Tarapur-Rajkot-Junagad-Gir. We deviated at Belgaum towards Ratnagiri to stay at coast. This is a wrong thing to do
as per our experience. You can try Murud instead, which is 30+ km detour from Pune Highway after Satara.
Ratnagiri to Mumbai is the Goa - Mumbai Highway and is poorly maintained, heavy traffic road. So avoid this path if your destination is not among these route. Mumbai-Ahmedabad is an Express Highway. From Thane you can connect to this road and is ok with few traffic signals. You will be avoiding Mumbai traffic.
Mumbai-Ahmedabad Express Highway is 6 lane highway and is very good. You can avg out to 90-100kmph. Note: Just before Baruch, there is a bridge which is under construction. This will eat lot of your time. Hence add 1 hr to your avg speed. It took us 1 hour to cross the bridge due to traffic and poor management at the toll.
We stayed one night at Vadodara(Baroda). There is a beautiful palace to see in Vadodara in case you have time. To reach Gir, you need to reach Borsad-Tarapur and catch the Rajkot highway. From vadodara it is around 60-70Km away. This route is also good and will avoid touching Ahmedabad city.
Once you hit Rajkot Highway the road is 4 lane and smooth. The road will not enter any town/city. You need to take deviation at jetpur towards Junagad. From jetpur the road is 2lane and is also descent. From Junagad, Sassan Gir is 55Km.
We stayed in a beautiful farm house which is located inside the forest. DineshBhai owns it. The food was very good. Since we had not booked safari in advance, we were among the unlucky to not get safari. However, we did feel the jungle while going to the
farm house. Experienced Lion calls on the way to farm.
There is a bordered safari open for all at Gir where few animals are left free. Its similar to Bannerghatta national park safari. We saw Asiatic lion in that safari.
From Gir we went to Somnath Temple, which is just 45 Km from Gir.
Our next Destination was Rann of Kutch. There is Little Rann and Greater Rann.
Little Rann is the Wild *** Sanctuary, which is black desert. This place is between Bhuj and Ahmedabad. Devjibhai provides accommodation and Safari. You can stay either at Dhrangadhra or at Kobo. Dhrangadhra accommodation is in the town Dhrangadhra. The feel is like a stay in an old apartment. Food was Ok and the rooms are average. Devjibhai son Vijay took us to the Wild *** Safari. Wild *** Safari is very nice. Vijay made us forget the bad stay experience. Its a beautiful place. You get to see, neel Gai, Pelicans, common crane, wild ***, and flemingos. We also saw how salt is made. Suggestion: This place is very close to Ahmedabad. Around 120 Km from Ahmedabad towards Bhuj. So Plan your tour well. If you are coming from Gir/Somnath, this should not be your first place to visit. Plan while return. Make use of Google maps and decide the places before you decide on your next destination. There are lot places in and around to visit. Check with local people or friends for routes and directions and optimize your route here. Our stay at Dhrangadhra after somnath was a bad move. We came back towards Ahmedabad around 100+ with a plan to visit Greater Rann which is away from Ahmedabad. So plan well.
Greater Rann or Rann of Kutch: We left Dhrangadhra at 3pm after having lunch at Devjibhai's house. We had booked night stay at Devpur Homestay very close to Bhuj. Bhuj is the capital of Kutch. Rann Utsav and white desert is close to this place. You need to reach here for these places. The connectivity is very good and we reached Bhuj at 6pm, which was around 250+ km from Dhrangadhra. We detoured to Devpur Homestay. Mr KrutharthSinh owns the place and trust me, you should plan to stay in this place if you visit Bhuj. A warm welcome with thilak and Garland makes you feel great. Food is very good and hospitality cannot be questioned.
White Desert: There are two places where you can see the white desert. The rann of Kutch, Khavda is the place where Rann utsav happens. Its north of Bhuj. The white desert is nice but we heard that Dolavira white desert is the best. If you plan to plan to spend few days at Kutch, then there are beautiful places to see.
Pakistan border, Harappa, Mandvi beach, Hodka village are some of the places that should not be missed. Since we were almost done with the time, we could only make it to Rann Utsav and White desert(not the Dolavira).
Return to Bangalore from Kutch: After the full moon experience on the white desert we headed back to bangalore. We started Khavda at 8Pm. Ahmedabad is around 350Km from Bhuj. We reached Ahmedabad at 3 am. We refreshed ourselves in friends house. And started our journey back to bangalore at 6am. We reached Mumbai at 3 pm.
Like I said, the bridge construction at Baruch is a pain to cross. Find out if there is an alternative to avoid this.
One of our friend had not seen Mumbai and we thought will drive through Mumbai and halt at Pune. Got stuck in Mumbai traffic, we managed to see Gateway of India, Taj Hotel, Marine Drive and Sea link. Horrible drive inside the city. We were lucky to reach pune before Night.
Worst thing to happen at Mumbai is the Traffic police, they just block you everywhere seeing KA registration vehicle. Though I carried all the documents I ended up paying 300Rs. We were stopped 5 times in 2 hours for no reason. Its really a shame. Carry Originals. I dont see a point why, but I was fined for not having original document. I had clear photo copy of all the documents and was not accepted. I'm
sure it was just a reason to fine. We dint wanted to argue and waste time, hence paid
and moved on.
We reached Pune through Express Highway. Express highway becomes bottleneck at uphill. Heavy trucks block three lanes and cant move beyond 20km. You will loose lot of time there but we managed to reach Pune in 2 hours.
From Pune there was nothing but to drive on highway to reach Bangalore. We halted for snacks, breakfast and lunch in between places and reached bangalore in 16 hours. |