[motoholic31]

I am writing my first travelogue on Team-BHP, it is for my first car, Chevrolet Spark, which I bought five years back, and is now with my sister in Gurgaon. I recently made a trip from Mumbai to Delhi in my 5 year old Spark with a friend. It all started a month ago when my sister who is in Gurgaon wanted to buy new small car for herself for daily running as a second car. My brother in-law has VW Polo 1.6 which serves as their primary car. At the same time, I too had plans of upgrading to some powerful hatchback.

One day my dad called me up and said why don't you give the Spark to your sister and buy yourself a new car. I was immediately convinced as this paved a way to keep the car in my family. Then he told me that I may need to send it in the weeks time. Well, I was not prepared for that!

Everyone in the family was inclined towards sending the car to Delhi through movers and packers except me. I couldn’t let go of my Chevy like that, it needed a good farewell ride. Also, I was more comfortable with driving it down to Gurgaon as recently I had a very long road trip to Coorg, which increased mine and everyone’s confidence in the car as well as perked me up for a new journey.

Now another long pending thought was an all guys trip. I am glad that my wife happily agreed about this idea. I instantly messaged a good friend and he was kind enough to come along. We started discussing our itinerary and were super excited. Once the plan was confirmed, I gave the car for scheduled servicing, and got the balancing and alignment done. Bought some snacks and coke, kept the torch and Michelin tyre inflator in the boot, filled the petrol tank from the near by bunk and we were all set for the trip.
The intial plan was to leave early in the morning and reach Udaipur in the evening, stay there and next day drive straight to Gurgaon. However, due to excitement we were not able to sleep and decided to start the journey in the night itself.

After reading all the threads related to the Mumbai-Delhi route we decided to take the below route.

Thane – Surat – Vadodara – Halol – Godhra -Udaipur – Ajmer – Jaipur – Gurgaon.

As we did not have any leaves and had our return ticket booked for Monday morning we had to reach Gurgaon in two days time.

Day 1

We started from Mumbai on 23rd September at 11:00 PM in the night and reached Varodara at 3:00 AM in the morning. It was raining quite heavy on that day.That did not dampen our spirits but added even more to the excitement.

Drizzling on Mumbai Surat Highway

http://youtu.be/A7-t5gbegow

There is a McDonald's in Surat which opens 24X7. This is where we took a short break. I was a bit worried about the infamous Golden Bridge which connects Ankleshwar and Bharuch. I quickly checked the google maps and it suggested no traffic on the bridge which later came out to be true .We crossed the bridge in a few seconds.

Starting from Surat at around 3:40 AM in the morning we were on Varodara Halol road exactly at 6:00 AM. The roads in Gujarat are excellent and most of the state highways in Gujarat don’t even charge toll for cars.

Some of the roads in Gujarat

http://youtu.be/hguelthfxk4

After non- stop driving ,reached Rajasthan at 9:30 AM, took some pictures at the Rajasthan milestone and started again for Udaipur. The plan was to reach Udaipur and spend some time there and may be to have a night stay there.

One milestone achieved


The roads in Rajasthan were good but not as good as the ones in Gujarat. Also, you’ll find loads of toll booths in Rajasthan.
We reached Udaipur at 10:45 AM in the morning, and were feeling sleepy as well as needed some break after the non-stop driving. We stopped at a road side dhaba just at the starting of Udaipur where we had some tea and refreshments.



As per the plan we went straight to the famous Udaipur Lake and Palace.Now we did some boating and snacked on samosas and tea again there.The boat ride was a unique experience as we were able to have a glimpse of the grand palaces from the lake side.The weather was not very hot and it was overall an enjoyable spree.

Udaipur Lake and Palaces






We were free by 2 PM after all the sightseeing. We then decided to stay somewhere in Udaipur itself. Just before the search for an accommodation, I realized that the AC was not cooling at all . We went to a nearby AC shop whose staff was quite polite, they were very amazed that we came to Udaipur all the way from Mumbai in a Spark. While discussing our journey he told us that the road from Udaipur to Jaipur is fantastic and it takes only 4 hours to reach Jaipur from there. We suddenly decided why not reach Jaipur so that we can stay there and will also get a chance to have dinner at Chokhi Dhani. We immediately started for Jaipur.

The drive from Udaipur to Jaipur was really smooth but till the time we reached Jaipur there were traffic jams at the entrance. We had booked a hotel in Jaipur online on our way and reached there at around 8:00 PM. I was very tired and driving to Chokhi Dhani from the hotel at that time looked like a huge task.We took a quick one hour power nap and were all set for our next pit-stop, Chokhi Dhani. Reached there at 10:30 PM and had a delicious dinner. That place is amazing and gave us a chance to feast on the authentic Rajasthani delicacies in a regal style. They presented us colorful turbans to wear and presented the food in a royal elaborate thali style. Soothing local music added to the overall warm feel.We came back to the hotel at 12:15 AM and dozed off like anything.

Chokhi Dhani Jaipur



Day 2

We woke up late ,around 11 AM, checked out the hotel and decided to visit the Amer fort before leaving for Gurgaon. Google maps routed us to the fort through some winding roads of Jaipur where we lost quite a good amount of time. We reached Amer Fort at around 1:15 PM in the noon and were told by one gentleman there that the fort would be open only after 2 PM. We already had lost a good amount of time so decided to move on to Gurgaon. Nevertheless, I insisted to take some snaps with the majestic fort that stands tall representing the land of Rajputana.

Jaipur


Amer Fort Jaipur


Post that it was a smooth straight drive. We reached Gurgaon at 5:30 PM.

Jaipur Delhi Highway. Changing Lane



I went straight to 3M Gurgaon to give it a quick wash before handing it over to my sister. It deserved all the pampering after 2 days of non stop driving without giving a single issue.



Finally the enjoyable journey was over and it was time to say good bye! I handed over the keys to my sister and she was really excited about her new ride .