We had a massive gathering during our last
Team-bhp Monsoon meet. It was the largest Team-bhp meet East India or for the matter of fact any part of India has every seen. Last winter few bhpians have arranged for a
overnight meet at Gadiara which turned out to be a successful overnight road trip. But the count was less than the day meets we have. Well why am I talking so much about head counts ? Because it is not easy to manage 40 cars and 90 people in a convoy and have a wonderful weekend trip. We did it.
There are lot of people are who aren't registered as bhpians. They are regular visitor of Team-bhp and follow each and every threads. I know many of them are still trying hard to get in while others have lost hope. Nevertheless there are still a large number of auto enthusiast who are connected to us.
Few of them went ahead and started planning for a weekend trip. We usually meet for tea or sometimes over lunch but there was no meet arranged for everyone unlike Team-bhp meets. So it was a good idea to have a monsoon road trip where we can meet and greet everybody. But there would be a lot of people and managing them was not going to be a cake walk.
I would like to mention few names who started planning even before I knew them. The place decided was Dalma pahar, 300 km from Kolkata. But to decide and finalize the place Samaresh da, Chandra da, Arony da, Arunangshu da, Pushan da and others traveled to Dalma few times. Lets call them "Admin", it will be easy for me to refer them. First criteria was the place - we must go somewhere with high chances of rain otherwise cant really call it a monsoon drive. Dalma looked like a perfect place for that. Additionally the narrow road from the city to Dalma top was full of slush and rocks for the cars to have fun. Secondly we would need a large hotel/resort for a lot people to stay together. There are many good places around Kolkata but many of them got rejected only because they didnt have a proper hotel which can hold 90 people at a time. Asanbani has few large large resort - The Wave international which was large enough for all of us. So these guys went to Asanbani/Dalma multiple times to manage hotels and bookings. They also did check the off road to Dalma top and posted pictures so that everyone gets excited.
A whatsapp group was set up and everyone started adding people who might be interested. Many came and many went and finally there were more than 60 people and their families who seems to be interested. few guys from Odisha also joined. 60+ family in 40 cars was the final count. Planning for the roadtrip started almost a month back. While the admins were doing lot of hard work in background, we were simply excited.
To travel with 40 cars a lot of planning was required. The admins decided to do a convoy drive. Because the driving style and manner of so many people wouldn't match at all and it would be impossible to track everyone. Also not to mention it was risky as well. Convoy drive was the best idea so that an average speed can be maintained and all cars are tracked. A convoy has a lead, a Marshall and a tail. Leads responsibility was to maintain speed, if the lead car goes too fast the convoy would break, but if the lead car goes slow we wouldn't reach Dalma in time. The marshal was there in the middle of the convoy. We decided to give numbers to every car. There was radio available for the lead, marshal and the tail to communicate with each other. Then comes the bikers. We had two bikers and it was decided that they will be the sweeper. Their responsibility was to keep the cars going and stop in case of emergency. In case anyone stops for a reason the sweepers would stop with them and when he/she is ready to drive again it would the sweepers responsibility to take him back to his position. Well, there was a list of rules we have created so that the convoy drive can be a successful one. New tee shirts and car stickers were also printed for everyone.
Day 1- Timings for the road trip was set and circulated few weeks before 30th. And when 30th came we met everyone at Highway Rainbow dhaba which is 22kms after Dhulagar. Initially we planned to meet at Rajarhat but as there are lot of people coming from almost all over Kolkata we shifted the meeting destination to Highway Rainbow. This dhaba was large enough to park all the cars and still have huge space left. At 7am when I reached there I was the last person to come. We met with as many as we could and had a delicious break fast. Tee Shirts and car stickers were distributed at that time. Also the car numbering stickers were handed over. After breakfast Samaresh da came and briefed everyone about convoy rules. Lot of people were new to convoy driving including myself. We started our convoy at 8:15 am.
Till kharagpur it was 6 lane golden quadrilateral. We stopped for few minutes after a toll booth before Kharagpur. Once everyone crossed the toll booth and gathered we started once again. We were maintaining speed around 60-90 so that everyone is close to each other. From Kharagpur we took right on NH6. The road condition of NH6 has improved a lot from my last trip 5 years back.
The first place to see was Galudih barrage. Its a dam on Subarnarekha river in Jharkhand. We stopped there for a photo session.
The weather seemed to spoil the essence of Rain drive. It was very hot without any sign of clouds anywhere till we entered Jharkhand. Just before Jamshedpur it started raining heavily. Thus making the rain drive a successful one. The rains was quite heavy to make us slow. So instead of driving faster we enjoyed the rain. The admins were already in contact with the hotel so that they know when we would reach.
At 2pm we reached Hotel Wave international. The hotel at first didnt look large from outside. But once we entered the campus it was huge. After entering we were showed the way to the parking. The parking was large enough to park 100 cars. The parking also had space for other fun activities. The hotel staffs were ready with our room keys. They and the admins already had a printed paper with room number and names written on it. After we parked our hotel we took the keys to our room. There is a large pool on the way to the rooms. The pool was super clean and so was the resort. The rooms were very good and large.