Wow!!! that’s a beautiful travelogue. I never visited north India. I have only visited Mumbai that too when I was very young. I always thought that roads in north India are in very bad state and roads in south are much better but on the contrary it seems that roads are good. The GQ is an amazing journey and we should thank Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji who initiated the Golden Quadrilateral.
Driving Day 6 :
Party is over and it is time to go home, Bangalore. We have 2000kms to cover and got 2 days for it. There is a 3rd buffer day too, but I do not want to use the buffer.
Today I would be running on the mediocre roads of Jharkhand and bad roads of Orrisa. Therefore it is not possible to maintain high average speeds. If I could reach Bhubaneshwar very fast then may be I could target Vizag(1000kms) by 10-11 in the night.
But that was not going to happen. My planning of starting at 4am is changed by my parents. They are suggest me a 5’o clock start, since they do not want any night driving in the badlands of Jharkhand.
5’o clock it is then.
We pack the car with our luggage and more things that we accumulated on the way. As expected it was raining again, our lucky charm. We start from Bokaro at 4:52am. Purulia is around 50kms from here. Road is actually good and we are easily going at 70+ speeds and occasionally 100kmph. Despite the wet conditions the tyres were providing superb traction and 100kmph speed was not feeling unsafe at all.
We were going on smoothly when just 4 kms before Purulia we saw a fallen tree right on the highway. Highway is blocked and I am the first one in the line staring at it. No way would some help be available at this time of the day, to clean up things. It is raining heavily. I get down with an umbrella and see 2 villagers on bi-cycles. I start talking to them and they suggest that there is a village on the right side and a small kuchha road goes through that and connects to the highway in few kms.
With no other choice in view, I decided to take the plunge. I dive into the narrow village road. 4 other cars and taxis start following me. I indicated them to overtake me but they do not want to. They have no idea about this road and they want me to be their pilot, or rather the guinea pig?
Each time I saw a big puddle filled with water, I just hoped that it was not deep to gobble up my car. The guys behind followed faithfully. And Bingo, after 4 kms or so we are in Purulia. Great, I am really relieved.
And now we are on the way to Jamshedpur(also known as Tata). The roads are nice and so is the scebery around. It is still drizzling though.
We reach a place called Chandil, 110 kms on the trip meter. It is 7:15 am. Here we have to go on the overbridge going to the left. The right going road goes to Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand. I don’t know how to get on to the overbridge. We again took some help from a villager to guide us to the overbridge.
Jamshedpur is hardly 20 kms from here. And suddenly after 15kms or so we are lined up behind a huge jam. The jam seems never ending. I stop a truck(PB registration) and talk to the driver about the jam.
Me : Praji, Kya dikkat hai aage?
Driver : Wo aage ek Dumper palat gaya hai. 1km aage hai accident. Thoda time lagega.
Me : Koi jam clear karwane ke liye hai wahan?
Him : Kuch Army wale lage hain clear karwane me. Danda wanda le kar khade hain, jaldi clear kara denge.
I tried creating a third lane to move quickly and could clear half the jam. I reach a point where I see a Scorpio ahead of me and he is not moving forward. I get down to see some heavy mud and slush ahead of him and so he would rather wait for the jam to clear. I too parked behind him. It took around 40 long minutes for the Jam to clear.
It is now 8:20 am and we have traveled just 130kms. We are now bypassing Jamshedpur. The traffic on the highway drastically reduced after Jamshedpur and now we are belting ahead. But the road is patchy now and occasionally there are small and big potholes too. Still I am driving fast jumping over everything. We reach Ghatshila , 172kms, at 9:10am. And then road surface improves and is very good 2-lane road now.
We take a 10-minutes break and continue our journey.
Bahargora is around 46 kms away. This is the T-junction where we meet the Kolkata-Mumbai highway NH6. The left would take us to Kolkata and the right to Mumbai. We reach junction at 10am.
Here we turn right. My google map research tells me that there is a river bridge after 6kms and finally a left turn at around 16 kms. And so it was.
At the river bridge we are entering into Orrisa.
As always near the State borders, the roads are bad for a while. And then it improves.
And we reach the point where we have to turn left. The board in the below picture says Baripada left 30kms. We would be joining GQ around 80kms from here.
Roads are excellent now.
These 80kms to the GQ were covered in 1 hour 8 minutes.
And we are joining the GQ at 11:25am with tripmeter at 314kms.
The left here goes to Kolkata via Kharagpur, and the right to Chennai.
The roads remained 4-lane for a couple of kms and then suddenly we are inside Baleshwar town with horrible roads. We got stuck into a minor jam for 5 minutes.
The roads were like the ones seen below, and even much worse at many places.
For the next 57kms we were on similar roads. We took some 25 minutes break in total for breakfast, we had home packed food.
After 57kms of very bad roads we were again on the super 4-lane roads 15 kms before Bhadrak. Tripmeter reads 376kms at 1:22 pm.
We started moving quickly again. Crossed River Mahanadi just before Cuttak. And Here we are in Cuttack at 2:45pm (490kms). And soon we are bypassing Bhubaneshwar. There were a couple of traffic signals on the bypass. We stopped at a place for snacks. The place was with an IOC pump.
After filling our stomachs, we resumed the journey at 4 pm (514 kms). We covered the next 80kms in 75 minutes when the road again turned into 2-lane.
We long ago knew that Vizag was out of the question for the day. That is why I called up the OTDC Panthnivas hotel in Rambha, 120kms from Bhubaneshwar. They had rooms available and quoted 990/- for AC room.
Soon we could see the Chilka lake on our left. The road surface was ok and we were not complaining. At 635kms, 6:20pm, we entered the Rambha town. After the town we could clearly see the marking for the OTDC hotel on our left. 200 meters inside from here and we were in the huge campus of the Hotel. It was a very nice place for stay. The attitude of the staff was very friendly. We quickly checked-in into our room. The room was very big indeed, and believe me the balcony was as big as many other hotels’ 2 rooms would be.
We ordered for an early lunch and tea before that. I also got one of the staff to clean the car for 30 bucks. Had nice food and closed the day.
Tomorrow is a tough day, the toughest day of the whole trip. We have to cover 1350kms. And out of that some 400kms are not GQ quality. We would have to start early and finish late.
Very interesting and informative trip log.
Hey nice pictures and a pretty descriptive narration.
good going...
reminds me of our GQII run, especially the hotels :)
pkumar, Just went through this thread in the last 2 hours. Simply speechless brother. it was a wonderful read. nice to see that Allahabad BP is complete.
Your trip took me back to memory lane way back in 2006 when I did the Blr - Kol - blr trip.
Also a good friend of mine is from bokaro and simply like the place. Also saw the Steel plant in and out with his dad (a mech engineer in SAIL).
Abhi
pkumar, this is astounding man. Congrats on this feat to both you and your wife. You are a lucky pair. The Pics and the narrative gives a good glimpse of the north to all us southies who haven't ventured there yet.
kumar sir, Your travelogue has been par excellence so far and I am sure most of us are awaiting an update. Your photos of the Taj are awesome. There are some monuments in the world like the Taj where one is mesmerised and beyond words. You just sit there taking it all in and wondering all the efforts the people who have done it must have taken. I mean seeing such magnificent monuments you just want to make memories of that piece of art in your mind.
I have gone through similar feelings when I saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I stopped taking photos and just sat on the lawn in front of the tower and just kept staring at that amazing piece of work.
Well hope to see many many more pictures !!!! Great going so far !!!!
