A DREAM WE NEVER GAVE UP, in-spite of many twists/turn of events.
Year end of 2012:
A seed was sown in my mind to travel to the northern most destination in India and get LEH'ed. Along with this thought many questions cropped up in my mind at the same time too.
- Wife was expecting in Jan, 2013, could I travel in mid year living her and my kid?
2. Should I take my i20 car or bike?
3. Who would be my companions? or would it be a Solo journey?
4. Would I be granted with sufficient leaves from my company?
Many plans to realize this endeavor was hatched, plot set, date finalized, Leaves applied, my friend Tejesh confirmed he would be joining me too.
Plan was to drive from Bangalore to Leh, but not in car, but in MM540 4x4. He was crazy to think so, but that thought was an catalyst to sell my existing MM540 and thought of buying THAR CRDE developed.
Finally all paper work was completed on 29th December, 2012 and THAR arrived on 3rd January, 2013 and trust me all, I was bowled over by this monster.
HERE COMES NEW YEAR 2013:
Now one step closer to realizing my dream to drive down from south to northern most part of India.
Couple of months passed and here comes March, 2013, where I had to resign from the company I used to work for while sitting in Goa. Yes, that's my first long trip in THAR, Bangalore - Goa. This brought a jolt to my plans.
Major worry factor now was, if I start looking out for new job, would my new employer grant me leave in such a short time of my joining. At one point of time, I even thought of taking a break for 6 months, finish my trip and then look out for job. As usual such callous attitude, that too after your son is born wasn't advisable by many family members.
Finally in May, 2013 I get a new Job with a superb paycheck, but with a condition, NO VACATIONS TILL DECEMBER, cause that's when my assigned Project end date was.
Now, I considered my trip to have been cancelled and my dream shattered. Somehow, back of my mind I used to think, "Lets not GIVE UP like that, let me wait and watch how the project progresses"
Joined new job and ensured I get kickstarted into the project process within 2 days of my joining.
My actual plan for travel in the month of July was seeing ray of light as execution of job assigned was going on smooth without any single issues. Being a Project Manager, you get to take the credit of this small success. Taking this as an opportunity I applied for Leaves of 15 days, and VIOLA, it was granted after a meeting to analyze the impact on the project in my absence.
Now we were back on track, all purchases, checklists, and vehicle readiness was put into top gear.
Now comes the twist in the tale. My friend Tejesh slipped over the stairs and fractured his ankle.
Now back to circle, all plans and dreams shattered. I went ahead and cancelled my leaves. As anyone could have been, I too was disappointed, felt depressed of not achieving this dream. But, that's when my friend gave me enough confidence to endure on this journey, but couple of weeks later than actually planned.
We decided it would be August 9th. A week prior to travel his cast was removed and he started Physiotherapy. His driving was doubtful in this journey, so we discussed to have another driver other than me and add another companion. It was my cousin brother who answered our distress call to join us.
Finally we were back on track.
This is the first onward journey route we endured on.
While return journey Included this route.
Our DRIVE which had an APT saying on it "LIVE TO DRIVE"
Many folks might have experienced on what it feels like being on top. But, I am one among the few who SAW HOW IT LOOKS BEING ON TOP.
We tasted SUCCESS TOO, it looked chocolaty yummy
This is how inspired we were.
Now, how our Journey started:
DAY1: Bangalore - Hyderabad - Adilabad - Nagpur - Seoni - Pench National Park (Bison Retreat Resort)
Total: 1290 kms
Day 1: We had all packed our baggage's onto THAR previous night (8th August) itself. We wanted to leave home by 4am on 9th August.
We just ensured we were bang on target. We left home at 4.15 am. We wanted to cross Kurnool and enter Telangana before 8am due to disturbance in Andhra region over new state formation. We were Lucky, due to Ramsan the tension around Andhra was nill. We reached Hyderabad by 9.30am.
Here desire to have Hyd Biryani was high among us and decided to visit Paradise. Upon reaching paradise, we got to know we still have 1 hr for the restaurant to open. So we decided to wait and refill diesel tanks and check tyre pressure. During this, we noticed a nail in the rear tyre and immediately got it removed and all those tubeless tyre puncture kit we were carrying came to use for the very first time (It was never used again though).
While we were done, all my cousins in Hyderabad knew I was in town and everyone wanted me to visit them. I informed everyone to come to one of my cousin's place on Adilabad highway. Now due to this we lost precious 4 hours of our time.
We started our journey by leaving Hyderabad around 2pm in the noon.
We reached Bison retreat resort at around 12.30am in the night. This is due to 4 hours we had lost in Hyderabad.
The Journey till Seoni was smooth, but the last 80kms to reach our destination, the road conditions were bad and on top of that, our trusted GPS played too many pranks on us on re-routes. We followed our LOCAL GPS (Transport/Lorry Drivers/Local police) to reach the destination without much hassles.
Finally we reached our destination Bison retreat resort. Lot's been said about this resort in some threads here in this forum. For reference, here is one link.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...strict-mp.html
Now lets add some colors to these text. I meant Pics
Day 1: PIC
This is how the Bangalore - Hyd - Adilabad Highway looks like
The vehicle though exceeded even this barrier, and trust me THAR was as stable as any other vehicle. Braking too was good. I am not marketing this vehicle nor endorsing it.
One pit stop at outskirts of Hyderabad.
Tyre pressure and Puncture removed from the tyre while we were waiting for Paradise to open its restaurant.
I did mention that the last 80-90 kms stretch of road to Rookhad was pathetic, and this is how the muck had got my Jeep transformed to.
The Canopy
The Body
For all those, who wanted to know how was the seating for the third person arranged, this is how I got it done.
Now, it's DAY2: Rookhad - Sagar - Jhansi - Gwalior
Total distance covered: 678kms
We got up late around 8am. Cause? We slept late in the night. We finished our breakfast and commenced our Journey to Gwalior between 10-11am.
Now the real drive starts from here. Rookhad to Sagar, the roads were pretty good and we had covered distance within the planned time. We reached Jhansi, and this is how we were welcomed to UP on highway.
Now the tricky part starts, the distance between Jhansi - Gwalior is around 100kms and this is the worst part of the stretch with literally NO ROAD.
If any Offroading event needs to be organized, then all that organizers have to do is to announce to all the participants to just drive to and forth from Jhansi - Gwalior, a round trip. This stretch is best suited for OTR.
Such is the condition of this route, which is NH3.
For all those who had enquired about this route, my only advise is to avoid this route.
Even though we knew about this road condition, we still wanted to travel for 2 reasons,
1. We wanted to cover in 2 different routes
2. Another since we had Thar, it didn't bother if the roads were bad.
In such excited trips, there is always possibility where one's mindset doesn't want to be on Practicality mode.
I realized, it's not the vehicle which gets tired under such road conditions but its the driver.
My cousin, was in deep sleep and there was no point in waking him up for driving, another had fractured his leg and it's not good for him to drive, where maximum number of times one has to keep using the clutch and brakes.
I was getting tired badly. A pit stop with RED BULL and few situps we started again. We might have covered this 100kms stretch in 4-5 hours, yes that's long.
Finally after the most tiresome journey, we reached Tansen Residency, MPTDC, which we had booked over phone while we were half way to Gwalior. The hotel accommodation was very good. We had restaurant staff waiting for us at 12am mid-night and served us dinner at that time.
The rooms were very well maintained and on par with any 3 star hotels. We crashed immediately after dinner our our rooms.
I would recommend this hotel for a stay to anyone who wants to visit Gwalior as tourist.
DAY3: Gwalior - Agra - Yamuna Expressway - Delhi - Chandigarh
Total: 600kms + 230 kms (This is additional kms we had to drive. Reason? You shall find out why)
We had a pretty good and SOUND sleep the previous night. Next morning we had to start early to reach our destination early. (Atleast this time we wanted to reach early, sleep early and rise early)
But, as usual we got up late and by the time we started from Hotel in Gwalior, it was 10am. We started towards Agra, which was 120kms.
Our luck ran out within 30-40mins after driving around 45 kms. There was a huge traffic pile up of trucks. We were told by few trucks drivers, "Aage gaadi nahi jaathi, aap log vapas mudo", which meant, no way further turn back and go.
We were taken back, now taking reverse wasn't an option or rather was impossible. I crossed my vehicle over the median and drove on the opp side of the traffic. The pile up was not just for some distance, but it ran into nearly 5-6 kms. I am not exaggerating, but that the fact. I saw in distant the cops were making the motorists to return back, the same was told to us.
We stopped at the curb and checked with them the issue. Due to heavy rains the Chambel River was overflowing over the bridge and no sign of relief on when shall the water reside and when the traffic will be allowed. We were told to wait for 3-4 hrs, which was not an option to me.
I checked with locals and with their help started looking out for alternative routes to Agra.
The route was finally chalked out, Morena - Ambah - Porsa - Bhind - Etawah - Agra. This route after Etawah was GQ.
What was the distance of 120kms to Agra had now become 360kms to agra through this route. This explains why was 230kms mentioned as additional.
Just to give you all the glimpse of the river I mentioned about.
Now we were on GQ cruising to reach Agra. We had a deviation towards Yamuna Expressway as we were nearing Agra. The expressway was bliss to drive throughout till Delhi.
TO BE CONTD