16th March 2010, 11:42
| #331 |
| BHPian Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Kottayam
Posts: 588
Thanked: 8 Times
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16th March 2010, 13:50
| #332 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Chennai
Posts: 441
Thanked: 12 Times
| One more Nano encounter.. I can see that the guy driving the Nano was desperately trying to pull away form you.. Ha ha ha. Thats fun. Some more note worthy snaps are * The guys doing a foot board on the Jeep * As usual Morans drving on the wrong side of the NH * usual construction hazzles * lots of camel Photos which I am going to share with my son today evening. * You always tend to capture the movement of Army tanks  * Lots of cheerful photos of Mr & Mrs Carol I hope your Chevy is back to pristine condition. Especially after the morans put scratch on your car. |
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16th March 2010, 14:52
| #333 |
| Senior - BHPian  | Thanks Hari. We loved seeing the Nano again. But we were surprised to see the family panic seeing our camera. We had to let them go to avoid an accident!  We have always been big fans of the Indian Army. And we both are die-hard patriots. So anything related to the army always catches our eyes! There were hundreds of camels on RJ highways. It was the most common sight we saw during our drive. And one just cannot take ones eyes from the road. God knows when you will see a vehicle coming straight at you! We were very sad seeing the scratch on Chevy's bumper. I am planning a good paint job soon. Another moron had broken our crash guard earlier!!!  @ Majic. Thank you very much for the compliments. Night photography is most difficult, especially when a tripod is not used. I am happy that you liked my snaps. And yes, we had a wonderful time! I was wondering where you were! We did not go for another trip yet. But another looooong drive is planned down south immediately! @ Raj, there are more pics coming up from our return journey. |
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16th March 2010, 18:54
| #334 |
| Senior - BHPian | Our drive continues..... We continued our drive on the butter smooth highway and greatly enjoyed the experience. There were no potholes at all and the road condition was superb throughout. We maintained a speed of 110 – 120 kmph and reached the Ramol toll booth at 4.13 pm. We just had to show them the receipt from the Ranasan toll booth and they let us pass through. We had covered 252 kilometres till then, with one food break. We were very relaxed after enjoying a wonderful holiday and the last thing we wanted was to reach home very early!!! As decided earlier, we did not increase our speed to more than 120 and enjoyed a sedate drive.     We saw a huge statue of a devil, en-route. It was very skillfully made and was very attractive!  We touched the Ahmedabad – Vadodara expressway at 4.18 pm after covering two more kilometres from the Ramol toll booth.    We paid a toll of Rs. 69 for using the expressway and started our drive. We were very excited at the prospect of driving on the NE 1 and I let my Chevy run as he pleased. Soon I was cruising at a steady speed of 140 kmph. We saw some amazing scenes en-route. Natural beauty was at its best!         We also saw a truck with a beautiful painting on its rear! These paintings tell a story!  Then we saw a race between a Skoda and a Volkswagen. They zipped past us at close to 180 kmph, I guess!  The drive on expressway was simply superb. We covered 70 kilometres in 42 minutes and reached the Reliance Fuel Pump at 5 pm.     I filled in 46.95 litres of diesel @ Rs. 36.64 per litre. I got a feeling that there is some malpractice running in Reliance pumps on the E-way. My fuel level indicator was well above the ‘E’ mark. Considering that the total capacity of the fuel tank was 55 litres and there were at least 15 - 20 litres in Chevy’s belly, I could not fathom how 47 litres could go in  ! I had the same doubt when I filled in fuel, the first time too, when we were on our way to Udaipur! Well, there is definitely something wrong in the math! We took a small break at the pump and freshened up and stretched our tired legs. The sun was very intense and we were driving with our sunglasses all the time. The time was 5.27 pm when we re-started our drive. We exited the expressway toll booth at 5.30 pm and we had covered 339 kilometres from Mount Abu! The end of the expressway was another 8 kilometres away.  The national highway was brilliant and we cut down on speed due to very heavy truck traffic. We also had to be very careful of vehicles taking a U-turn everywhere and vehicles coming into our lane from the opposite direction. The sun had begun its descent from the sky and we witnessed the brilliance of the Sun God!       The light faded quickly around us and we switched on our lights. Driving in twilight was always tricky and we had to be very careful till it was completely dark. Our headlights were pretty useless because of the setting sun and we had to strain our eyes to see vehicles driving without switching on their lights. I must say that it was really irritating to see most vehicles driving without their most important tool for night drives, their headlights!! I have a feeling that some people have a belief that they can save on fuel if they do not switch on their headlights. I heard this myself from one taxi driver a long time back.  We passed the Vadodara bypass by 5.49 pm after driving another 14 kilometres from the end of the expressway. We got used to the fading light very soon and drove carefully, maintaining a steady 120 kmph, whenever possible. There was heavy truck traffic on the highway and we had to blast our horns most of the time, to get those behemoths to move aside! Our headlights weren’t doing the trick for us and I switched on my projectors too. The road was well lit up by my Hellas and we enjoyed a super fast drive till L & T Bharuch toll booth. We reached there at 6.15 pm after covering 51 kilometres from the National Expressway 1. We were greeted by a huge traffic jam and were stuck in the toll booth for close to ten minutes! The staff members were taking their own sweet time and we lost valuable time there!  |
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16th March 2010, 19:15
| #335 |
| Team-BHP Support   | |
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16th March 2010, 19:24
| #336 | |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| Quote:
Chevy just keeps his windscreen clean I guess. There's always the wiper with the cleaning liquid to use while on the fly. Anyway every pitstop, we have attendants at fuel pumps to help clean as well. | |
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16th March 2010, 19:29
| #337 |
| Team-BHP Support | |
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16th March 2010, 23:37
| #338 |
| Senior - BHPian | |
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17th March 2010, 06:35
| #339 |
| Team-BHP Support  | Wow steady snaps at 120 is great. @Cat you only have 9 lives, so beware before you hit the pole ! |
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17th March 2010, 10:39
| #340 |
| Team-BHP Support | |
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17th March 2010, 12:03
| #341 |
| Senior - BHPian | |
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17th March 2010, 13:15
| #342 |
| BHPian Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: hyderabad
Posts: 239
Thanked: 48 Times
| Very good pics CL, Another trip to south ? So we would be expecting another incredible trip some time soon  ...Thanks for sharing all the pics and I enjoyed this log right from day - 1..As someone already mentioned, it is like a tour with you all the way...If at all you go through Hyd during your south trip, it would be glad to meet you ... Let me know... Thanks, Srini... |
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17th March 2010, 14:24
| #343 | |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| Quote:
Most of the photos I've seen the sun at 90 deg to the angle at which the cam is held. So there's no interference with light and the shadows are perfectly oblique moving away to the left. Now your wife's advantage. She's on the passenger side and most photos I find the sun beating hard from your right side (the driver's right). Along with that, her framing is the key. Finally the windscreen of a tavera is at a lesser steep angle than that of optra. So dashboard reflections would be lesser due to the design of the car itself! But nice to see your wife picking up in short time! Way to go. | |
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17th March 2010, 17:17
| #344 |
| Senior - BHPian | |
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18th March 2010, 16:29
| #345 |
| Senior - BHPian | A brilliant drive till Surat!!! We were able to wiggle out of the toll both after a delay of over ten minutes. There was dense truck traffic all the way till Ladeshwar Chowk, Bharuch. We had to literally crawl between those huge trucks and lost an awful lot of time. We planned on halting in Surat for the night. We reached the Narmada Bridge by 7 pm and ran into a huge traffic jam. There were at least a thousand vehicles stuck in the jam. The new bridge on the right side was totally blocked and the traffic was at a standstill. I guess there were more Lorries on the bridge than we could ever figure out. We were warned by HVK sir to take the old bridge on the left side and my wifey remembered his advice at the right time. We narrowly avoided getting stuck in the jam and with some expert maneuvering, I was able to get out of the mess. I gunned my Chevy forward and with the help of two construction workers, who were guiding the smaller vehicles to the left bridge, we drove onto the bridge. There were lots of smaller vehicles ahead of us and we were able to cross the bridge in 3 minutes flat. We had to be very careful and kept to our right, as there were hundreds of vehicles coming towards us, from the left lane in the bridge. We were happy to be finally out of the mess and were greeted by super smooth roads. If we had got stuck in the melee in the new bridge, I was sure that we would have been glued there, for at least two hours. Such was the intensity of the traffic jam. We kept up a steady speed of 100 kmph and with our projectors doing an incredible job, had a safe drive till Ankaleshwar and bypassed the city at 7.28 pm. My odometer read 83,469 km and we had covered 451 kilometres till then. The highway was pitch dark and we had to rely entirely on our headlights all the way. There were some street lights near the numerous bypasses, but they did more harm than good. They cast some nasty shadows and temporarily rendered our headlights ineffective! We reached the Choryasi toll plaza in the Bharuch – Surat section of the highway by 8 pm, after covering another 39 kilometres. We paid a toll of Rs. 45 and quickly sped off towards Surat. We wanted to reach there as soon as possible as both of us were quite tired after the energy-sapping drive in the blazing sun! But what fatigued us the most was waiting in the traffic jam earlier, doing nothing! We drank lots of juices during our drive and kept ourselves alert. That highway is a killer stretch and even a second’s lapse in concentration could have dreadful consequences. We were very cautious of the truck drivers who used to change lanes without any indication and without even looking at their rear view mirrors for approaching vehicles. I have developed a habit of honking twice before overtaking any vehicle, even if it on the left lane. This is my way of letting the other driver know of my vehicle’s presence. I made this a practice after noticing many drivers talking to their family members and driving blissfully unaware of the surroundings. I have also seen drivers drifting into the right lane because they were busy talking or fiddling with their stereo systems. The remainder of our drive was pretty monotonous and we reached the outskirts of Surat at 8.20 pm. We had covered 507 kilometres from Mount Abu and were very happy at the thought of finally ending our drive. We wanted to check into a good hotel and call it a day as soon as possible. We took a right turn from the highway and entered the town streets. Our nightmare started almost immediately. The road was pitch dark and it was completely crowded. It was mayhem at the junction with lots of buses coming from the wrong direction, auto rickshaws parked in the middle of the road, cows chewing their cud in the middle of the road and causing a traffic jam, people occupying 80% of the road to catch their bus home, policemen standing by the roadside doing nothing but blowing their whistles, roadside eateries doing brisk business and causing a roadblock, etc. There was a mad mad rush at the junction and we were shocked to see such anarchy in such a big city! We still had to drive 18 more kilometres to reach the centre of the city and the very thought of experiencing all that chaotic traffic again gave me a splitting headache!  We wiggled out of the jam at the junction and drove the remainder of the distance very slowly and reached Surat city at 8.45 pm. We still had a daunting task of finding a good hotel to stay. We enquired with some auto drivers and went to the main road near the railway station. We found many hotels on the street, but most were outrageously priced for very little comforts. After checking out ten or twelve more hotels, we finally settled on Hotel Stay Inn. We finally switched off our engine and our odometer read 83,541 kilometres. We had covered a total of 523 kilometres in a little over 8 hours. We were exhausted after the taxing night drive. My wifey has been my trusty navigator and a brilliant 'co-driver' all through our numerous drives and I couldn’t risk letting her run out of steam. She has the uncanny ability to warn me of potential traffic hazards in advance, when I drive fast. We felt that we chose the best city possible, to rest for the night!! The Stay Inn’s room was really good and I got an AC room for Rs. 1400 odd. We were finally at peace and quickly pulled our luggage out of our car and went to our room, which was on the third floor. We freshened up quickly and decided to satiate our screaming stomachs. We had had just one meal that day!!! I called a room boy, who happened to be very efficient and soon gave us a recital of the full menu in one breath! I was astounded to find out that non-veg food was available in Gujarat!!! I was always under the impression that non-veg food and drinks were prohibited there. :-) We soon had delicious chicken biriyanis and chicken tikkas and some soft drinks. The food was real value for money and we enjoyed it tremendously. We soon settled our bill and retired for the night. We were so tired that we dozed off almost immediately! I think the time was close to 10.30 pm then. Surat’s weather was very balmy and extremely humid! We thanked our lucky stars that we chose an AC room! |
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