[Fordmanchau]

So you really didn't sleep for 24 hours and drove all through the night and still not tired. great man!!Continue and finish that log with that speed too.

Originally Posted by pkumar

The learning from Day 1 was that when you are not travelling alone, you have to take lots of breaks to cater to needs of other passenger(s). Lunch, dinner, breakfast, everything has to happen on time. Thus i realized that for the future days i have to tweak my xls to accommodate more break time.

Very interesting lesson you learnt the very first day.Except for the steering, control of everything else remains with the other half.

[milindajp]

Congratulation PKumar!!! Nice images - but we demand more.

[akas_chauhan]

Congrats man for your GQ drive. We are expecting lots of snaps and some words to describe those.

[B.R.S.Rao]

Thanks for excellent pictures. Tajmahal was lovely.
regards

[pkumar]

Driving Day 2 :
The original plan was to start early morning from Mumbai and target Kishangarh in 16 hours. Stay put at Kishangarh for the night and reach Jaipur the next morning.
But given that we had “wasted” so much time as “break” during Day1, I thought it is better to start from Mumbai at night. Also I was not very sure of my liking to stay at Hotel Panghat at Kishangarh. So I wanted to have extra time at hand to reach Jaipur if needed.

So the drive started from Virar(Mumbai) at 11:10pm. Mumbai was full of Ganpati bappa and we came across 2-3 groups in Virar while exiting.


Virar is very close to the Nh8 and within 10 minutes we were on the highway.
The problem was that it was raining very heavily. We were advised to wait till the rain stops.
My belief has been to never delay the long drives because of rain. When you have travelled some distance, rain not happening in the new area is always true, the only factor being how much you had to travel to see no rain. But the chances of the rain subsiding in a static area is very probabilistic.
Speaking of rain, I faced rain while starting on 6 out of the 7 driving days in this trip.

So against popular demand we started the drive.
We quickly reached the Virar toll gate.


Camera issue with night mode, so not many pics for next few hours.

The area around the road throughout the night was very very lively. I have never seen so much lights and buzz across any highway during night. Lots of petrol pumps and eateries and decorations and people.
I had thought of reaching Ahmedabad in 6.5 hours. I knew that it was an aggressive target and that is why I was pushing hard. The road surface till Surat BP was patchy. There were no potholes but the patch work done on the road was uneven. And on top of that, it was raining. These roads were not the best of the GQ roads for sure and if one did not care about the bouncy nature of the surface, car could be driven fast. With 14 minutes of break time in between, we reached Surat Bypass at 2:40 am @ 225kms.
After Surat I was expecting some bad section, but to my surprise I found only a 1-2 km repair work area. We quickly reached Vadodara. All the 7-8 Flyovers on the Baroda BP were fully functional.






We stopped on one of the Flyovers


One of the many interesting truck backs.


After Baroda started the Baroda-Ahmedabad Expressway.
I would rate this stretch of 92kms amongst the best that I saw on the whole trip.
One could continuously do very very high speeds, even at night time. Almost completely straight road for the whole of 92 kms. Occasionally there were few buses driving on the right lane which spoilt the party, otherwise the drive was fast.
At the end of the expressway you come to the Sardar Patel Ring road intersection.
Here we have to head towards the right going road. To do this we forked on the left exit, which looped around to go right.
Another 2 kms and a Toll gate comes. Go another 13 kms to another toll gate. 2kms after this toll gate you would find a right turn towards Himmatnagar. Take the right and you are back on Nh8. From here it’s a 2 lane road.


I did not note this exactly, but I think the 2-lane road continues for some 10-15 kms.
Following picture show the roads between Ahmedabad and Himmatnagar.
Somewhere here we had our breakfast break of 30 minutes.








The roads from Himmatnagar to Udaipur were also vey nice.









Road section around Shamlaji are twisty, be on alert if on high speed.

And we entered the state of Rajasthan, the 4th state of the journey.


Rajasthan is dry land? Well, not everywhere.

[pkumar]

Driving Day 2 continued :

Nice roads continue further till Udaipur.









The Arravali mountains.








And we are at Udaipur bypass @ 710kms, 9:35am.



[FONT=&quot]For the next 11 kms you would travel on roads like these.[/FONT]




Watch out for a Blue colour board marked as right turn for Chittorgarh.
This turn has to be taken for continuing on GQ. Otherwise you would be on NH8 to Ajmer. The NH8 joins GQ at Kishangarh.

From here onwards we traveled the next 50kms in just 24 minutes, an average speed of 125kmph. The roads were very good and one can manage even higher pace.





After another 7kms there is a left turn for Chittorgarh. Straight road goes to Nimbahera town.



Looks like there are fort like structure almost everywhere in Rajasthan.



The stretch after this is completed unpopulated and roads are excellent to say the least. Any lag in your schedule can be made up here if you want.






We had a very early breakfast, so we immediately stopped for lunch when we saw the BPCL Ghar after Chittaurgarh. This place is around 34kms after Chittaurgarh Bypass starts.
Food was very good and the nice Rajasthani cuisine was a welcome change. Also topped up Petrol.





Back on the road after 1 hour break.




What are these camps for??




Journey continues.

[pkumar]

Driving Day 2 Continued :

Fevicol advertisement ?


I really fear overtaking these kind of trucks.


Rajasthan istyle mountains.




This is where the GQ merges back to NH8. NH8 is coming from the left side via Ajmer.


It was 3’o clock and we reached our planned destination of Hotel Panghat after another 1 km. We had already called the Hotel a day back and confirmed our arrival. But we were in for a surprise. We were told that Power supply is down and generator is not working. Thus there would be no electricity through the night.
Nothing to think, we started heading towards Jaipur.
Another 2 kms we are at Kishangarh-Jaipur expressway toll plaza.



We paid toll and immediately started feeling cheated. Out of the 3 lanes, 2 lanes were blocked for repair work. It looked never ending.




But few kms later things were ok and all 3 lanes were open again.




Toll Expressway ends.



And we are in Jaipur.



I had an idea that I need to go to the area around the railway station and Bani park, to locate a hotel. We found one and the drive concluded for the day.

Next day is for roaming around in Jaipur and reaching Delhi by late evening.

[Indizen08]

Pune Expressway is a dream run. The highways in Rajasthan seem to be particularly well maintained.

[prince_pervez]

The roads look beautiful. Very inviting. This GQ and Leh are a must drive. Bring it on. I am looking out for the roads after West Bengal and my F5 button is going to fail me soon

[akroy]

Just saw the thread, read just half but I am glued. Will check it after office.

Wonderful pkumar, really excited to read the full trip. Keep the pics and travelogue flowing.

Abhi

[Indizen08]

Which hotel did you stay in Jaipur?

[pkumar]

Originally Posted by Indizen08

Which hotel did you stay in Jaipur?

I randomly came across a hotel named Meenakshi Palace in Bani park, very close to the Railway Station boundary wall.

[Gandhi]

Awesome triplog and awesome photographs.

Can you share more details about litres of petrol consumed, any breakdowns etc?

[pkumar]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Awesome triplog and awesome photographs.

Can you share more details about litres of petrol consumed, any breakdowns etc?

I would be posting the statistics and logs at the end.
But to give you an indication, the mileage i got was around 16+ with 30% AC. This included 150 odd kms driven in Delhi traffic.
No breakdowns. One puncture on that last day, and that too was not a problem, since i just topped up the air and drove 1000 kms to bangalore.

Originally Posted by prince_pervez

I am looking out for the roads after West Bengal and my F5 button is going to fail me soon

When this travelogue is on Day5,6,7 you would realize that i did not drive on the GQ roads in West Bengal.
The only WB roads i was on was few 10s of kms around Purulia.

Note from the Team-BHP Support Team : Please use the "edit" button if posting within 20 minutes of the first post, instead of creating another back-to-back post.

Also use "Multi Quote" option for quoting Multiple posts.

[skartik2]

Pkumar,

Can you please post the link to Hvkumar's logs which you used for trip planning?

Thanks,

K bhai