[mayankjha1806]

The Beginning
As an avid fan of Phantom (Chalta phirta pret – The Ghost that walks), Toofan (Hero), and Shera (Devil), I used to spend most of my summer vacations procuring the comics and then reading them. Sometimes we would have bundles of them. One such was Corba Ke Heere.

As a child you tend to connect the dots a lot more but never want to reveal the source or from where the idea came (as someone might just laugh), hence asked dad.

Me – Do we get diamonds in Korba?
Dad – No
Me – Are you sure?
Dad – Yes, we only get Coal & Water in Korba.
Me – But Diamond is also a form of carbon and so is coal, is there a possibility that in the plant we would burn a few diamonds mixed in coal?
Dad – (Smiled) No

I was not yet convinced and thought if luck goes my way I will hit upon some diamonds and be famous in near or distant future.

As someone who has spent his complete childhood here, this town always had a special place. The surroundings, the upbringing, the safety and comfort it provided, and finally the facilities it provided (Which were unmatched at that time).

The Planning
It was holiday’s time, my office was on shutdown for a week and my daughter also had her Christmas holidays. After our Chennai trip on 25 December 2011 we were wondering where to head to spend the rest of the holidays. Taking 2 or 3 days off from office was not that big a problem hence in a jiffy we decided we would do a Korba trip on car this time.

[mayankjha1806]

The Drive

26 Dec 2011
We started from Bangalore Bellandur at around 1430 hrs. the plan was to start by 1300 hrs. so as delay of over an hour was worrying me as we would not be left with enough time to have a good sleep.

The Bangalore – Hyderabad NH7 highway is a dream to drive, one can cruse at above 120 speeds easily. I consistently maintained speeds above 120 as the traffic was sparse and roads were good, we were making good ground until.









Anantpur I saw a reliance petrol pump which was on the other side of the highway. Decided to exit the expressway and go under the bridge to get to the petrol pump. While filling up fuel noticed a hiss sound from the tire underneath. First felt that it’s a puncture but was not sure as I have not come across any place where in one could have a puncture but anyway decided to show it to a tire shop nearby.




He was busy with looking at other Scorpio tire change hence we waited. In about 10 mins the tire was flat, it had lost all the air. After we pulled out we found a 1-inch bolt had made a 3mm wide hole. Was not confident if this could be fixed. Anyway he fixed it after wasting 45 minutes we continued. Drove slowly for sometime as was not sure if the tire would loose pressure again. When everything was in order pushed harder to get to Hyderabad in time. In between we stopped for 15 mins to finish dinner that we had packed along.



Reached the Jawahar Lal Expressway at around 10 in the night, it had speed limit of 140, saw everyone zooming past me. Pushed the car harder, touched speed of 180 and then decided to slow down to 100-140 ranges.

Wasted some time in finding out the hotel for night stay. Sitara Residency was not so easy to find. Finally the guy on phone understood where I was and asked another hotel boy to accompany me to the Hotel. Reached hotel at around 11 in the night. Freshened up and crashed on the bed.

WELCOME TO HOTEL SITARA GRAND
Decent hotel, decent place to crash out at night. For anything more please look elsewhere. We did not try food or breakfast.

The Hyderabad highway is a very good highway, saw well behaved trucks, following lane discipline, well behaved two wheelers they would wait at the center before crossing the road if they see you coming at decent speed. Only spoilers were the tankers and tractors who surprisingly decided to come in the same side of the road in the opposite direction. Fortunately my speed was not very high and brakes are good hence never had a hair raising incident.

27 Dec 2011
Plan was to start at 6 in the morning to get to Nagpur in time. We planned to keep the kiddo sleeping and carry her to the car and let her sleep in the back seat. We all would finish the morning chores and let her finish if needed on some good place on the highway. Decided to sms/call Kumar sir. Somehow calling to his phone gave a message All lines in this route are busy, its been many years since I have heard these lines. Anyways, messaged Kumar sir. In the meantime the kiddo also got up and she was willing to get ready.

By the time everyone was ready and we started it was 730 hrs. and we were late in starting again by and hour. The mapmyindia played erratic, kept saying searching for GPS, was almost lost and dependent on phone Google maps and asking people around and kept getting confusing answers. Decided to reset the Caska, and give it the Indian style fixing, pulled out the SD card and blew some air and re-inserted it, and it started working again.

From there on sailing was smooth, was outside the HYD city within 30 mins and within and hour or so found a decent restaurant so finished breakfast there. After sometime got a call from Kumar Sir, explaining there would be a AP Tourism hotel which is decent, but I had already done over 100Kms from Hyderabad and if felt I might have already crossed it. Thank you Kumar sir.






Not sure if it was the GPS playing prank again or the road construction that we were on NH16 for sometime, and the GPS showed we were going to join back NH7. I guess we wasted some more time in this and eventually joined NH7 about 300Kms before Nagpur.

Saw some of the most horrific roads ~200Kms before Nagpur. Although the car did not scrape anywhere I was down to under 10 speeds on these sections of the road. Worse then the roads it was a bigger horror awaiting us, when we reached a check post and he asked us to pay toll. When I asked What for he said there was a bridge that you crossed (I don’t remember crossing any bridge, or even if we did it must have been very small. The toll naka looked like a shady one temporally built hence felt something fishy but kept moving, as we had to make it to Nagpur in time. The bad roads continued for quiet sometime, and ~80Kms before Nagpur the good roads were back. Decided to push and was in Nagpur at around 1400 hrs.

Reset the GPS to show me route to Raipur, and it worked well, it did not recommended me getting into city and wasting time. Were out of Nagpur in no time. At around 1430 we stopped at a Reliance Petrol pump which had a eat out next to it. Had some quick Dosas and moved out by 1500 hrs. Word of advise for travellers, keep enough cash, as most of these petrol pumps do not accept cards, and Reliance does accept card but says they would only know after filling up petrol whether card worked or not. So one needs enough cash on in wallet.

The Nagpur-Raipur was uneventful, although at start the road was single lane, hence we could not maintain decent speeds, as one has to follow trucks and cannot overtake them, after driving about 100Kms we had decent divided roads (4 lanes, i.e. 2 lanes on each side). Did some decent speeds and covered good ground. Arrived at Raipur by 1930hrs. Freshened up, had Dinner and crashed out.

The Chhattisgarh highways are good and the places they are good we did not had to pay toll, but when the roads were too narrow to do any speeds we had to pay toll. Did not understood the logic, decided to ask the toll plaza guy and he said the toll is for the bridge. It’s really painful to pay toll for such bad highways in the name of paying it for the bridge.

[mayankjha1806]

Nagpur Raipur Route Pictures

[mayankjha1806]

The Town

Korba city is the Power Capital of India. Its the largest power producing district of India. NTPC's Super Thermal Power Plant in Korba is working at 90% Plant Load Factor (PLF), and the plants of the Chhattisgarh State Electricity Board (CSEB) are also highly efficient.

Korba, Chhattisgarh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The drive to Korba was a pleasure; the jungles roads with lots of greenery. Only pain point was it’s a single lane road and the truckers aren’t the best. More then once I found them not watching their rear view mirrors. Had to honk most of the times before overtaking them, as this was the only safest option given their dislike of the OVRM.

Korba is much bigger and developed now as compared to twenty years back, lot more crowd lot more traffic and lot more dust. The CSEB (earlier MPEB) township thankfully is almost the same. Nice clean surroundings, good roads and negligible traffic, to top it all absolutely quiet and zero noise pollution. One can still roam around on foot without any problems.










My School, Looks too small now

My Brothers School

The famous Red Ground, played many cricket matches here.

My Brothers School

One of the house we stayed in (B8)

Another House (B3)

Club house, end of day hot spot. Learnt Badminton/TT here and won many matches.

The Swimming pool

My Gold medal that i won in the pool above

The Steed
Ohhh she was plain awesome, Someone asked if she would scrape on the new Bangalore airport road, now I can confirm over a 1300 Kms drive she did not scrape anywhere at all. She was very well planted and gave me confidence till speeds upto 150. The braking was pure bliss, gave me more then enough confidence to stop in time. I now believe my next car should have a Disc/Disc combination. Its so much more better any day, and the speeds that I touch it only increases my confidence.

[mayankjha1806]

What about the Diamonds

It took some time for me to realize that people and places close to me were instrumental in building my character are the real Diamonds. This thread is a thank you gesture to all those places and folks. My parents, My school, my teachers (especially Mrs Netam, my chemistry teacher whom I was not able to trace), my friends, the locality, and most important of all, my Dad, who made all this happen, cant thank you enough. Hopefully I can do the same with my daughter.

Attachment 865452
The return
The return trip has got to be the most exciting one, ever. We planned to start form Raipur at 600hrs in the morning on Wednesday, get to Nagpur and have lunch, and then get to Hyderabad and get some sleep, Start again next day morning and arrive at Bangalore sometime in the afternoon of Thursday.

Morning chores delayed our start, hence we started ~700hrs in the morning, and then on the way to Nagpur we had some rains which slowed us further down. Arrived at Nagpur ~1100hrs, finished Lunch + Breakfast. Started from Nagpur at 1200hrs hoping to arrive at Hyderabad ~1700hrs.

The bad roads section after Nagpur, and NH7 completion work near Armur delayed us and finally we reached Hyderabad at ~1800hrs passed Dhola Ri Dhani thought of having dinner there, but it would have been time consuming hence stopped at Dominos pizza to finish dinner. By the time we finished Dinner it was 1900hrs.

Decided that we would continue to Bangalore as we were two drivers (Me and my wife) and were not very tired, thought of taking another call at Anantpur. It took us two hours to leave Hyderabad which is painful in my opinion, my guess is either we took the wrong route as suggested by mapmyindia of if its always going to be like this then we need to figure out another way to skip Hyderabad completely. By around 2100hrs we were out of the city (2 hours of complete wastage) on NH7 and continued our journey towards Anantpur. Drove slowly and at sedate speeds staying ~100 and never crossing 120 as there were many buses and trucks playing on the road. The truckers are some of the best behaved drivers I must add. We crossed Anantpur ~0100 hrs and reached BIAL ~0300hrs, and at home at 0345hrs. Overall the return statistics

RPR-BLR 1400Kms in 20hrs flat (0700hrs - 0300hrs)

In process beating Rajdhani timings (NGP-BLR) 20hrs Vs 15hrs.
Top speed in the process 190Km/Hr.

[mayankjha1806]

Some Fishy Toll Booths

On Nagpur-Hyderabad Section these Toll Booths, ask you for paying toll for the bridge. Its been long-long time since i have seen/paid toll for using the bridge. Felt something fishy hence decided to take a picture, Not sure if it really is fishy.

Paying toll for good, and well maintained highway is painless, but paying for roads like these and bridges that are difficult to spot is painful. Saw multiple instances like this in MH and CG.

Also from the looks of it, it looks like a make shift arrangement where in they would close shop and scout if someone reported.

[mayankjha1806]

Some more pictures of Korba

The Dam that powers ~half a dozen power plants, few from CSEB (erstwhile MPEB) and NTPC. There are some private ones also coming up. The plant behind was the one Dad helped build.



Entrance to Korba West


Conveyer belt that brings in all the coal needed to get the power plant working.


While returning met these beautiful birds

[NPV]

@Mayank - Thanks for sharing. Lovely pictures, you had a wonderful drive down nostalgia lane and 'Civved' your way through (@laluks may not like me borrowing that term !)

Curious to know how the tyre puncture was fixed - a patch or the regular tubless tyre puncture ?

[mayankjha1806]

Originally Posted by NPV

@Mayank - Thanks for sharing. Lovely pictures, you had a wonderful drive down nostalgia lane and 'Civved' your way through (@laluks may not like me borrowing that term !)

Curious to know how the tyre puncture was fixed - a patch or the regular tubless tyre puncture ?

Thanks, the puncture was fixed in a normal way as other tubeless punctures are fixed, initially i was slightly apprehensive as the hole seemed wider, but the glue sticks that come with the tubeless puncture repair kit come in various thickness and he used the thickest one to fix this one. Anyway no loss of air since then (2 weeks) hence quiet confident he has fixed it for good.

Living in apartment you never get the charm of cleaning your car yourself which i got when we were at Raipur. Washed my car almost every alternate day. Some more pictures of the car at my hometown.

[rahul_sinha]

Thanks for a lovely travelogue down your memory lane. Its an inspiration for me to do Pune-Bokaro Steel City drive, not sure when though.
Lovely writeup Mayank, straight from the heart!
Rated 5 stars!

[mayankjha1806]

Originally Posted by rahul_sinha

Thanks for a lovely travelogue down your memory lane. Its an inspiration for me to do Pune-Bokaro Steel City drive, not sure when though. Lovely writeup Mayank, straight from the heart!

Thank you for the encouragement, yeah this was a long dream to get to Korba again, now my cousin being there will most probably do it again.

Pune-Bokaro is ~1600 Kms, if you have your own house, or some relatives then its much easier. You might need one stop in between (somewhere in Durg/Bhilai/RPR)

[mayankjha1806]

Was searching for this picture, asked wife to specifically take one of these instances. They come from everywhere sometimes on the rightmost lane, sometime on the leftmost lane, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, and sometimes without any indications. Maintaining safe speed is the only safe way out.

Fortunately in the night driving we did none of such nut cases were found.

[mayankjha1806]

Was searching for some good picture that can be posted here, found this in old album. Scanned and posting here.

One of the many awards that he got, i believe from MPEB chairman on achieving something (we do not know as we were never told, only when others came and gave us the pictures or details we came to know)

In this picture, late Shri Vinay Kumar Jha, on right.

[absynthguzzler]

Wonderful ! ...... one team-bhp'ian leaves the place and another seems to be spending his next 20yrs working here . It was interesting to see your perspective of the power city.

[ambivalent_98]

Nice photos. Thanks for sharing. One quick question. What is approx toll amount you paid from Bangalore to Hyderabad ? Actually I am planning to drive to Bangalore from Hyd and back so I am generally curious.