[Vijay.Krishnan]

Hello Fellow Team BHPians,

As I have heard; Man proposes, God disposes! Such has been the case with me whenever I try to post my travelogue on Team BHP. So finally, to overcome this hurdle, I will write my first travelogue before I even begin the trip.

Here are the details of this trip:

What caused me to plan for this trip?
What started off as a two week business trip to Jaipur has now turned out to be 7 weeks and still counting. In the meanwhile, I went back to Delhi and got my two wives (my car and actually my wife) here. Now, with the better half with me and several weekends gone by, I was given an ultimatum of either fighting with my Manager and heading back to Delhi or making the most out of this stay in Jaipur and exploring different places nearby. The radius of these nearby places soon expanded, taking into its fold - Jaisalmer!

What happened thereafter?
"Jaisalmer??!!" My initial reaction was "We just have the weekend. I don't know how late I'll come back from office on Friday. Would 2 days be enough?"

Immediately switched on the laptop, typed in maps.google.com and checked the distance and approx driving time from Jaipur to Jaisalmer - 575 kms in 8 hours 22 minutes. "Hmmm! That's doable. After all, I have driven 15 hours at a stretch in the U.S. and that too night driving. 8.5 hours is certainly doable!"

Reality check. We are in India. Night driving with trucks on the highway and vehicles with high beams on. "Not a problem. We can do it." And there started the planning for the trip.

Itinerary
To be honest, the only itinerary we have in mind till now is:
1. Leave Jaipur for Jaisalmer by 11pm on July 22, 2011.
2. Leave Jaisalmer for Jaipur by 3pm on July 24, 2011.

Isn't that quite a plan??!

What Car?
My trusted companion for the last 5 years - My 2006 Alto Lx done ~42,000 kms.

Who all?
My colleague who's stuck in Jaipur along with me, my wife, and I.

What's been done till now?
1. Got screws fitted on both the bumpers. Don't want the bumper to hang loose lest I run over potholes at relatively high speed.
2. Car serviced just last week. So all oils, coolant etc. topped up.
3. Talked to a few hotel guys and all of them have said they have plenty of rooms available. We can reach there and check out the rooms and then pay up.

How is it like out there?
The weather is supposedly nice out there right now. Not much of tourists either, so rooms are available in plenty. And now being the off season, can get good deals too.

Alright, guys. Just a few hours to go. I'm all excited. Hope to keep updating this travelogue on the go. Let's see how the gprs works. Time to put it to test.

Ok. Just got an update from the better half. Got a list of things to be bought for this trip. So, heading out to grab these.

[Vijay.Krishnan]

Alright people. I just typed in quite some information and lost the complete text. So re-posting whatever information I could recollect.

I can still feel my legs pressing the clutch, brake, and accelerator. Guess this is what happens after ~25 hours of driving in the last 50 hours!

Finally left Jaipur at 12pm Friday night and reached Jaisalmer at 11am on Saturday. Darn google maps for showing ~8.5 hours. Darn google maps again for showing us the wrong route. We took the Jaipur - Ajmer - Falodi - Pokhran - Jaisalmer route instead of Jaipur - Ajmer - Jodhpur - Jaisalmer route. The state highways on the Falodi route are virtually non-existent and more than 100 kms of this stretch is through villages. And trust me, I have seen better Village roads than this state highway!

Anyway, not venting my frustation much, here are some pics for you guys to enjoy. Will upload more pics and other details tonight!

[Vijay.Krishnan]

Here are some more pics from the trip. Since this is my first travelogue, I do not know how to provide captions for each pic. So, I have included the captions in the pics itself. Hope you guys like these.