[ShaileshHinge]

Disclaimer - Attempting to write my first travelogue here. I am not an avid photographer. So photos might not look professional.

Trying to describe our trip to Rajasthan from 22nd December 2015 to 1st Jan 2016.

We did 3400 KMs starting from Mumbai - Vadodara - Udaipur-Jodhpur - Jaisalmer- Tanot-Ahmedabad- Mumbai.



Dividing the trip into following sections
1) Planning the destinations/ hotels to stay
2) Choosing the vehicle for the drive
3) The trip itself.

[ShaileshHinge]

Planning the destinations/ hotels to stay

We were 2 families, mine and my cousins and had doing Rajasthan trip mind since May 2015. We were4 adults and 3 kids (age 11, 7,6).

We started looking for route options, hotels, places to visit etc pretty early. I must say i read through quite a few travelogues on team-bhp which helped me a lot to plan my trip. Its payback time now.

Places to visit were finalized. It was Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer. We dropped Jaipur from this trip as we thought of doing Jaipur-Delhi-Agra triangle next year sometime.

After doing a lot of reading on various sites we finalized following plan

23rd Dec - Mumbai - Udaipur
24th Dec - Site seeing in Udaipur
25th Dec - Chittodgarh
26th Dec - Drive to Jodhpur ( Do Kumbhalarh, Ranakpur on the way)
27th Dec - Jodhpur Site Seeing
28th Dec - Drive to Jaisalmer - Site Seeing in Jaisalmer
29th Dec - Tanot/ Longewala
30th Dec - Drive to Ahmedabad
31st Dec - Site Seeing in Ahmedabad
1st Jan - Ahmedabad - Mumbai

Since 22nd Dec was only Christmas party in Schools we planned to start the trip a day in Advance and planned for a halt at around 2300 hrs depending on where we reach. Took risk on this stay as we didn’t know how far we could drive with kids on board.

Choosing stays:
We started looking for options in September and looked at all travel sites. Wanted good deals.

Jaisalmer - Cleartrip was offering excellent discounts on Thursdays. So this worked for us to begin with. One of my cousin had recommended Hotel Kalyan Bhavan in Jaisalmer. Cleartrip was offering 60% discount for this place. Since my cousin had stayed here and we knew what to expect we did our first booking on 3rd September for this hotel. 2 standard rooms for INR 4882. Surprisingly calling the hotel we were not getting the discount and hotel was asking for INR 7000 for this place. We closed the deal on Cleartrip. Our bookings had begun.
Note: We figured that this hotel doesnt have jet sprays in the toilets ! no rooms have it.

Udaipur – We were looking at various home stay options. We zeroed in on Raaga Homes - http://www.raagahome.com/ . Read through reviews on tripadvisor. Had all Excellent reviews only !.
Called the owner and blocked the whole 3BHK for us. Owner stays on the first floor itself.
This was our BEST STAY OF THE TRIP. Very clean house and Mr Sultan Singh Deol & his wife take amazing care of the guests. Mr Sultan Singh himself is a German spoken expert and is in hospitality industry long enough to take care of you. Special mention of the excellent Punjabi Parathas and food cooked by Mrs Deol. LOVED IT ! I would strongly recommend anyone visiting Udaipur to try out his place.
We called the owner directly and did the booking by transferring amount to his account.

Jodhopur – We again were looking for homestay options. We zeroed in on Apple home stay. This place had decent reviews on tripadvisor.
Again cleartrip Thursdays offers helped us get pretty good discounts and we blocked 2 rooms. Decent place to stay. Again the food was a highlight at this place.

Ahmedabad - GoIbobo helped us book Country inn and suites for 2 nights. Again got excellent deal for this place. Was a decent place. Typical business hotel

[ShaileshHinge]

Choosing the vehicle to drive:

This was our plan. We were planning for around 3200 kms depending on what we could gather from the maps.



Since both of us own smaller cars a hatch and a sedan, we wanted a 7 seater so that we could travel together. Option was to rent our an innova( with driver) or look for selfdrive options.

Going with a driver was never an option for me. But we didn’t want to rule this option out if it turned out to economical and comfortable. We got a quote for an Innova for INR 12 per Kms + INR 300 per day for Driver. This also meant we had 1 additional person in the car & had to take care of the driver for the 12 days we are going to drive.
We thought it would be around INR 45000 for this option + the discomfort of having a driver in the car.

Started looking for selfdrive options. We were planning for an XUV 500.

Zoomcar – This was turning out to be around INR 60000 for an XUV500 and INR 50000 for an scorpio. So this was clearly the costliest to begin with.

Myles – surprisingly all the Innova’s were showing up as sold off for our planned dates. So myles was out for us.

JustRide: Was a good experience dealing with Justride. We managed to reach the fleet manager for Justride – Mr Jitesh. Works out of Powai, Mumbai. He managed to get us an unlimited Kms offer for an XUV500 for INR 34500( + Fuel charges to be borne by us) + Promised us a rooftop career. Was a good deal so we booked the car and paid the whole amount. The whole transaction was good. Mr Jitesh also promised us a fairly newer vehicle too.

While all this was being worked out Zoomcar announced an 50% off day. We browsed through the offers and zeroed in on a Scorpio for INR 30000 all inclusive for 3200 KMS ! We had to book the car from 21st Dec to 3rd Jan to get those many Kms free.
Was too good an offer to not consider. We spoke for a while if we can cancel the XUV and book the scorpio. We lost Scorpios in Navi Mumbai in the process. We finalized and went ahead to book a Scorpio from Domestic Airport. We cancelled the Just Ride XUV. JustRide charged us INR 1700 for the cancellation. Sealed the deal.
So Zoomcar Scorpio it was !

My Zoomcar experience is written on the Zoomcar thread on TeamBHP - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/street...ml#post3882309



Converting the boot seats into a bed. Since it was a long drive we thought it might be good to get this done. We went to a ply shop and got an 18mm ply cut for exact size of the Scorpio boot. Put a mattress on top and the boot was ready.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 1
22nd Dec - Mumbai to Vadodara

Since we had got the Scorpio( we named it Tatya Vinchu) on 21st itself we had got the vehicle ready for the drive with checking all the lubricants, Tyre pressure, etc. We had managed to get in touch with the Zoom car Fleet Manager Mr promod and he had helped us get an car which had done just 14000 kms on the odo.

Kids were supposed to be home by 1230 hrs due to Christmas party. We planned to leave immediately post lunch.

As we started loading the car we realized that we have a lot of luggage. Thanks to anticipation of extreme cold in Rajasthan we had extra luggage of the winter clothing. The space in boot below the ply and the rooftop was all loaded completely. Wives were a little concerned about how we would manage space for shopping to be done in Rajasthan.



Drive started well. We started at around 1530 hrs from Chembur, Mumbai.
I was worried about traffic at 2 locations. Fountain junction at Vasai Creek and the Narmada Bridge at Bharuch. We were monitoring traffic situations at these points for 2 weeks and traffic was bad on multiple occasions.

As we started from Eastern Expressway to Thane we were looking at google maps for the vasai creek traffic and it was green. We went past first tension point pretty easily. We stopped for tea at around 1800 hrs just before entering into Gujrat border. Had a 30 odd minutes break and we were back on road. The hotel had a good facility of cleaning the car front glass and this helped as we were about to switch on the headlights.

The car was behaving well and our anxiety of getting a good car was over. Both of us felt confident about the car already. As soon as we got on to NH8 and had been past the vasai creek, my cousin took the driving seat. My Cousin was enjoying the ride much more than me and wasn’t ready to quit the driving seat. We were doing 90-100 kms per hour and both had agreed to stick to these speeds. Zoom has a fine of INR 750 if you breach 125 KMpH and INR 250 for everytime you do it again.

We entered Gujarat, paid the tax for tourist cars INR 60 for a week. This was pretty quick and we were off in less than 10 mins.

We were making good progress and it was time to keep an eye on the google maps for the Narmada Bridge traffic. Was yellow with some red patches. But wasn’t very long on the maps. We took the chance and got onto the bridge. While the trucks were stuck in a long queue Cars were making good progress from the left side and was moving traffic. We got onto the old bridge and had crossed the traffic zone in 20 mins. We felt lucky and were past our 2nd tension point by 2100 hrs.

Was time for Dinner now that there was no worry of the traffic. We pulled over at a hotel after travelling for around 20 kms from the Narmada Bridge. Had good dinner (got Chapati’s, kids and their moms were happy). While at Dinner were talking about our halt for the night. We thought of pulling through to Ahmedabad but then we also had to look for a hotel so decided for Vadodara. Planned to take the Godhra route to Udaipur instead of going to Ahmedabad.

We were in Vadodara at around 1130 hrs and managed our night stay by 0015 hrs. Hotel Ambassador is a good place for staying in Vadodara. Since we had just the night to spend we chose to stay at Hotel Saffire just besides Ambassador and got the rooms for half the price.

While the Scorpio was good, I personally felt it has a lot of body roll. My Rapid feels much more solid on the road and the drive is a lot smoother. You feel lot more confident on the steering with Rapid. The ABS and Airbag presence also helps. We were missing these in the Scorpio.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 2
23rd Dec – Vadodara to Udaipur

We had a decent breakfast at the hotel, loaded the luggage again on the rooftop and we were on the road by 0930 hrs. I was driving today. We headed for Godhra. It’s a 4 laned road and you could do 90-100 kmph pretty easily. Decent road and less traffic on the road.



By 1300 hrs we were at Shyamalji. We visited the Shymalji temple but it was closed till 1430 hrs for some reason. We saw the temple premises, clicked some photos and off we went again. We had lunch immediately after the temple and we entered Rajasthan border.

We had to look for tax paying booth as it was a small place. We paid INR 1560 for 2 weeks in Rajasthan. The cop here was trying to get us to pay some extra money. Asked for all the documents and when we presented all the documents he still trying to something to charge us. Finally he was asking for INR 100 for which he would not give us receipt. Since my cousin is a central government employee he spoke with authority and we didn’t pay anything extra.

We reached Udaipur at around 1530 hrs. As soon as we entered Udaipur city area fleet of “guides” on bikes surrounded us and were asking if we needed hotel and guides for the site seeing. I had to roll my window down and convince them that we had bookings for everything. They still asked us to keep their cards and call them if we needed anything.

Mr. Sultan Singh was around the place and he asked us to wait at a spot and he then lead us to his homestay. He mentioned that getting such a customer on bike is called “lapka” in Rajathan.

We had a good warm tea and we settled in the house. Kids loved the place, and got friends with Mr Sultans Kids.

It was very cold in Udaipur and the temperatures were in single digits around 8-9 degrees C. We had to get all our winter clothing out. We were enjoying the cold weather as we never experience this cold in Mumbai ever.

The dinner was delicious and the warm phulka’s kept coming. We did eat a lot and Mr Sultan Singhji planned the next 2 days for us. We planned to see the Udaipur area on 24th Dec and do Chittod on 25th Dec

We retired for the night post dinner.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 3

24rd Dec – Site Seeing Udaipur

We had a heavy breakfast at the homestay. Delicious methi Paratha’s on the menu. We all loved it and ate it till we got full.

We decided to do the site seeing in Udaipur in Auto as recommended by many on the forums. We booked an Auto for the whole day. Mr Sultan Singhji helped us block the auto and the auto was at our doorstep at 9 am. Auto was not a typical Bajaj. It was made of a company named “ATUL” and was big enough. Wasn’t as smooth as the bajaj though.

Plan was to cover City Palace, Moti Magri, Fatehsagar Lake, Pichola lake, Saheli ki Badi and Bagore ki haveli.

We were at the Palace palace at around 9.30 am and this was the best thing to happen. There was no rush at the ticket counter and in the palace. We saw huge queues later when we were exiting as all the tourist busses had landed up there by then. Our auto also was not able to reach us and we had to come out of the palace to take the auto.

City Palace: - Must visit place. Take the Rs 250 ticket and Camera tickets as per your wish. The palace internals are worth watching. They are very strick about the camera’s so do take the ticket if you wish to take the pics.

The palace is well maintained and is absolutely worth to spend the time and money for the visit. Palace will take about 3 hours of your time.





Lake Palace is beautiful but is converted to Taj Hotel. You can only see it from outside during a boat ride.



Moti Magri – This is a memorial made for Maharana Pratap. Has this statue of Maharana on his Chetak and a museum which has models of a few forts, some paintings of important occasions in history.
The statue visit is about 15 /20 mins and the museum about the same.






There is a photo shop here where you can take photos of yourself in Rajasthani outfits. Charges INR 250 for each snap. I recommend do this in Chittod fort as the costumes there are better and charges are in the range of INR 50 for each snap.

We had lunch at a local restaurant and went to saheli ki badi. Just a garden. Only attraction being the naturally operated fountains. These don’t have any pumps. The fountains operate due to the pressure from the lake at the higher levels. But you don’t get to experience the engineering at all.

Next we went to a Folk/ Cultural museum. This is just opposite to the Saheli Ki badi. We saw the puppet show here. It running whole day with 20 minutes interval. So do not miss it. Also grab the front seat, make the kids sit on the mattress in front of the chairs. They can enjoy the show better from there. The puppet show could have had a better story line etc. Its just 3 songs and the puppets dance to it.

We skipped bagore ki haveli too as we had seen the puppet show at the museum and were going to see the cultural dance at Jaisalmer. So I cannot comment on this front.

We went to Lake Pichola for the boat ride. Kids were tired by this and wanted to head back home. So we went home post this boat ride.

I would recommend all not to target all the tourist spots. Target the main places. My recco will be City Palace, Moti Magri, walk at the fatehsagar & picholaa lake, puppet show at the museum and that’s it.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 4

Chittorgarh Visit:

Chittor was one of my personal must do list given the huge history around this fort. And I was flattered by the engineering of this fort.

Its about 120 Kms and 2 hour drive from Udaipur. Four laned tar highway. Good roads all through till the fort. We started at about 9 from Udaipur and were in the fort at 11 am. The fort is visible from a long distance. Its HUGE ! its at a decent height and the fort has a view of the whole city pretty much. Must have taken some effort for Akbar to actually enter and conquer the fort. Difficult to lose a war if you are in this fort.

It’s a big place spread over 690 acres. Its mostly in shambles now but a few key monuments are maintained.

Car goes right inside the fort and you can travel though the fort in your own vehicle. Again we got surrounded by guides right at the place where you take the entry tickets for the fort. We took the tickets and decided against a guide. We kind of knew the places to be seen in the fort.
1) Eklingji temple
2) Gaumukh Water resorvier
3) Vijay stambh
4) Jauhar place
5) Meera Temple
6) Rani Padmini Palace
7) Rana Kumbha palace

The first for are located very near to each other( actually next to each other).

The temple is a must see and is maintained pretty well.
Water Reservoir is next to the temple. Water didn’t look clean as of now but it seems this was one of the main water sources to the fort.
The Vijay Stambh still stands tall. There is some history to why many Muslim invadors didn’t destroy this tower. Do read about it.
Meera Temple, Rani Padmini palace and Rana Kumbha palace have their own significance ( rich history around each. Some of the structures are still very strong and give us a taste of the engineering then !

Eklingji Temple




Vijay Stambha


Goumukh Lake














We were done by 1400 hrs. Our wives did take photographs in the rajasthani outfits here at the fort. Both me and my cousin did not ! we had lunch after coming down from the fort and we headed back to Udaipur. Drive back was smooth too given the road was good. We got some traffic while entering into Udaipur, Lost about 30 mins for 3 kms drive.

We were at home at around 1730 hrs. Had tea. Evening we had a walk post the lake pichola and some shopping there.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 5

26th December

Drive to Jodhpur – See HaldiGhati war museum, Kumbhalgarh fort and Ranakpur Temple on the way.

This turned out to be 1 eventful day for us. We started at around 8.30 from home and were exited to visit Haldighati as this is where the famous war was fought. We had read/ heard of heroics of Chetak during this war and how he laid his life saving Maharana in difficult terrains.
We started with visit to Haldighati. We got to know why the name is such looking at the color of the ground here. We could see a lot of cops on the way to haldighati and were not sure what had happened. This is where it all started to go wrong this day for us.

Governer of Rajasthan was to visit haldighati and the memorial was turned into a fortress. We were not allowed to park our car near by. We sensed that this could cause delays for us and decided to skip the museum in favor of time. But more bad news was in store for us. We were not allowed to go back the route we had come in. We were asked to take another route to Kumbhalgarh fort. Now this went through villages and through very narrow and kacha roads. After about an hour we got back on main road headed for Kumbhalharh. This was again hilly section and small roads. The Body roll started to get to people inside. We dropped Kumbhalgarh when we were just 7 kms away from the fort. But we already had 2 vomitting breaks through the way. We didn’t want the kids to be sick and decided against this. I think it was more of the Scorpio body roll than the road itself which got to the people inside.

The snaps will give you some idea of the roads. One downhill slope was very very steep !











As we were getting away from Udaipur the temperatures were feeling more like Mumbai. The car AC also was not performing well. We were at Ranakpur temple at about 1300 hrs. Nice temple, beautifully built and well maintained. Some Monkey menace here. Monkeys were sitting on car roofs almost on every vehicle in the parking lot. They didn’t harm anyone but these were big monkeys. Kids enjoyed this though.

We had lunch at a dhaba nearby ( again nice phulka’s). Food all over Rajasthan was good. We started again from here at about 1430 hrs and were at Jodhpur ( Apple homestay) at about 1630 hours.

We settled in the rooms, freshened up and planned for the next day in Jodhpur. Dinner at apple homestay again was good and we retired for the night.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 6

27th December

Site Seeing at Jodhpur –

Plan was to see the Mehrangarh fort, Palace, Vintage cars and wives wanted to do lot of shopping at the clock tower market.

Mehrangargh Fort.

This is one beautiful fort. MUST SEE. Its upkeep is pretty good and its carvings on the windows etc is very very beautiful. This fort has markings of canon attacks and the walls still doing strong. Again no need of guide here as all important places to see are marked and all information documented on in English and in Hindi. Do see older canons, the silver chairs which kings used to sit on elephants etc in this fort.

I will let the pictures do the talking here.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 6 - contd...


Jodhpur Palace

This a more modern palace. Build in 1944 if i am not wrong. A small portion of the palace is open for viewing as the royal family does occupy the palace and half of it is turned into a hotel too.
for me this was a quick walk through and we went to the vintage cars parking lot. about 7-8 cars are parked there. These have featured a lot on our forums so i will skip adding the snaps here.

We had lunch post the palace and then the women were off to clock tower while the father's took the kids back to the homestay.

Clock Tower - This is the place to do shopping in Rajasthan. SO plan for atleast half a day for clock tower visit if you plan on shopping. We dropped our better halfs at clock tower at about 1530 hrs and they were back at the hotel by 1900 hrs. As usual "time kam pada" but they were happy to do the shopping and ventured on their own in an unknown area. We were in touch with them frequently over phone. Return journey they managed in an auto.

Climate in Jodhpur was warm and we didnt need any winter clothing. It was a little cold in the evening though.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 7
28th December
Drive to Jaisalmer & Sam dunes( Khuri)

Plan was to start at around 8.30 am and reach Jaisalmer by 1300 hrs. have lunch, Checkin, freshen up and head towards the sam dunes for the evening.

We did start on time and the drive was wonderful. It was a single lane highway( No dividers) but the road was wide enough for you to drive comfortably at 80-100 kmph and traffic was sparse. You could notice the transformation of the surroundings to a more desert kind area. As you start getting closer to Jaisalmer you start seeing a lot of Army/ BSF presence. You see army vehicles on the road and camps around in the sand. The Road is excellent right till Jaisalmer.

We did reach outskirts of Jaisalmer on around 1200 hrs and we saw “Jaisalmer war museum”. We stopped at this place as there were army tanks, trucks, fighter jet etc at display here. They also had models of the war are and information of the 1971 war mentioned there. Enjoyed the tour here, spent about an hour and headed for Jaisalmer.

A few pics of the museum

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 7 Continued

Sam dunes( Khuri)

We checkedin in to Kalyan Bhawan hotel, freshened up, had lunch at a nearby restaurant and at around 1530 started for Khuri.

We wanted to fill in diesel and wanted some cash from ATM. This took us about 1 hour. There was huge queue at the diesel stations and no cash in any ATM given the tourist season. We were running from ATM to ATM for the cash and we knew that cards wont work at Khuri.

So recommend you fill up Diesel and have enough cash at these tourist spots.

After any hour hunt we finally got some cash and off we went to Khuri. We had not booked anything for the sam dunes. My cousin recommended going directly to Mr Badal Singh at village Khuri. And this turned out to be a fantastic decision. Mr Badal Singh is a genuine personality. His son was with us for the whole evening. Very humble guy and no greed for money. This was not at all a commercial place.

We made it to the sam dunes just in time for sunset. Fantastic view of the sun going down. Witnessed it sitting over a camel. Kids enjoyed going to the sam dunes riding a camel. We spent about an hour there. Kids enjoyed playing in the sand, clicked a few photos and we went back to Mr Badal Singhs house. We headed to watch the cultural dance program. The folk music was played using traditional instruments and was good. We enjoyed it for 1.5 hrs and went back to Badal House for dinner. Enjoyed the dinner there and headed back to the hotel in Jaisalmer.

This was possibly the best experience of the trip for the kids.

Few clicks.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 8

29 December

Tanot / Longewala/ Patto ki haweli

Plan was to go to Tanot/ Longewala( about 120 kms from Jaisalmer) and see Jaisalmer tourist points in the evening.

This was the best drive of the tour. Surrounded by sand all around you drive through straight roads towards tanot.












We managed to cover the distance in about 2 hours. Some stretch of the road was being worked on but then was manageable in the Scorpio.



Tanot and Longewala are historically important points. The 1971 war was fought here and this is the exact story shown in Movie Border. Amazing to see how deep had the paki army penetrated and how our solders held on to the point whole night.



Tanot has a temple which took a lot of shelling on the war night but it seems none of the shells exploded. The shells are kept in the temple on display. Heavy army presence in this temple.






We made a huge mistake of not taking the border visit permission from Jaisalmer. Actually we were not aware about it. The permission is easily available it seems. Missed an opportunity to see the real border.

Longewala is about 25 kms from Tanot. This has a lot of Pak tanks and other vehicles put up on display for civilians. Took some snaps here and we headed back towards Jaisalmer.





On the way we saw stopped a couple of times for kids to play in the sand. Kids did have fun here.

Saw one Fortuner driving into the sand and getting stuck there. He was stuck till the point we left from there.




We had lunch on the way back and were in Jaisalmer back again by 1700 hrs.

We did bada bagh on the way back.



Evening we went to the patto ki haveli and did some shopping. The Tibetan refugee market is a good place to shop for winter wear at very reasonable price.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 8/9

We had started to think about the 10 hour drive back to Ahmedabad next day. We were feeling fresh and were worried if the kids could travel 10 hours in the heat.

Our checkin at Countryinn was at 10 am and we could actually reach in the morning. We had a quick huddle and decided to start at midnight for Ahmdedabad so that the kids could travel while sleeping.

Day 9

30 December

We started from Jaisalmer at around Midnight. kids were already asleep in the car. We drove through the night via Barmer, Patan, Mehsana and reached Ahmedabad at 9.30 am. The decision paid off as we drove through comfortably.

on the way we paid the Tax entering into Gujrat. INR 60 again for next 1 week.

post lunch we headed for Adalaj step wells & Akshardham temple. We were back at hotel by 1800 hrs. Had early dinner and retired for the day.

[ShaileshHinge]

Day 10\ 11

31st Dec

Ahmedabad

We went to the Kankaria Lake, kids enjoyed the toy train, looked at the zoo, had lunch at the lake itself.

Post lunch we headed for Gandhi Ashram and then went back to the hotel.

The site seeing plan was over.

Day 11

1st Jan 2016

It was time to head back home. We started at around 10 am from Ahmedabad for Mumbai. Was a smooth drive back home. Got lucky again at the Bharuch tension point and at the Vasai creek. We reached vashi at about 8..45 PM and chembur at 9.30 PM.

2nd Jan 2016
My cousin actually cleaned up the vehicle again and returned it 1 day in advance. The return process was smooth and we got the refund for fuel also pretty quickly. We had completed 3400 kms and had to pay for extra 200 kms.



Trip was over !

Missed an important update.

At Gandhi Ashram I saw thread being made from Cotton using a Charkha. This was the first time i was witnessing this. attached is a snap for this. They allowed our children to hold the cotton which was being converted to the Thread.