News

5000 km road trip: Kolkata to Rajasthan and back in our Maruti Baleno

27th October 2024, 13:19 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

We spent around Rs 33,000 on petrol and the average fuel economy that the car returned was 16.3 kmpl.

BHPian arnab.i@gmail.c recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Kolkata (West Bengal) to Tanot (Rajasthan) and Indo-Pak border via Kanpur, Agra, Jaipur, Bikaner, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Sam and return via Lucknow

By the numbers:

Team size - 4. 2 daughters (aged 12 and 19), Mrs Wife and Myself.
Total Drivers travelling - One
Total human weight - ~270 Kg.
Luggage weight - ~60kg.
Vehicle - Maruti Suzuki Baleno (2016 Model - Odometer between 60k-70k)
Distance from home to Indo-Pak border (stretch) - 2400.2 km
Total distance covered - 5124 km (up and down)
Number of Days - 11
Total Toll Paid - Rs 6230
Total Fuel Cost - 32896
Fuel Economy - 16.3 kmpl (min - 14.68 kmpl; max 19.39 kmpl)
Fuel Used - 326.5 Litres
Fuel Price Avg - Rs 100.26 (Cheapest in UP ~94 and most expensive in Bihar ~109)
My driving experience - Novice / Newbee to long drives

Our annual Durga Puja vacation led us to set off on this unplanned journey. My silent plan was to hit the places of the famous Bengali movie ‘Sonar Kella’ by Sir Satyajit Ray.

Well, perhaps there was actually a sketchy plan, but no bookings or targets as such. In this thread I plan to document my travel details for travelers who would want to read, understand and discuss their experiences.

The starting post would be about the summary of the trip and the following threads would be about finer details about the day to day events.

Our Vaahan in the beginning

Day 0 - Start from Kolkata at 2:30PM (minor incident about a dog hit and car being stalled)
Day 1 - Car repairs and reach Jaipur at 11PM (leaving 2 car repair halts for 6 hours it took 28 hours to reach Jaipur non-stop including fuel and food hails) - Checked-In Hotel Jaipur View
Day 2 - Sightseeing in Jaipur (Nahargarh, Jaigarh, Rajasthani Lunch, Amer Fort)
Day 3 - Rest and Sightseeing in Jaipur (City Palace, Jal Mahal, short birding in Jal Mahal - Pelicans, Jantar Mantar, Royal Gaitor, Elephant Village, Gem cutting demonstrations, Hawa Mahal, Shopping)
Day 4 - Drive to Jailsalmer (via Kishangarh, Ajmer, Jodhpur and stop near Sam) - Checked in Kohinoor desert Camp - Visit Jaisalmer Fort and Gadisa Lake on the way
Day 5 - Birding in Desert National Park (Saw 3 critically endangered Great Indian Bustards). 2nd Half with desert activities
Day 6 - Start early and drive to Indo-Pak Border via Gamnewala, Longewala, Tanot. Then drive back Via Ramgarh and Ramdevra to Jodhpur. Visited Kuldhara while return. Checked-In Durag Niwas GuestHouse in Jodhpur
Day 7 - Half day sightseeing in Jodhpur (Circuit House, Mehrangarh Fort, Shopping) and start for Bikaner. Reached Bikaner before sunset and Checked-In Hotel Harasar Haveli
Day 8 - Morning Birding in Jorbeer till 10AM. Visit Junagarh Fort and Rest in the evening
Day 9 - Drive to Lucknow (950Km - about 15 hours). Minimums stops for food and fuel. Dinner at Barkaas Lucknow. Checked-In our usual Indraprastha Inn
Day 10 - Car Care - Raj Motors (heavy bill but needed before return as cost and spares are way more easy in Lucknow, more importantly, 1050km return includes bad roads of Bihar)
Day 11 - Lucknow to Kolkata (1050km - 18 hours including fuel/food breaks) - minimum stops. Discovered some issues in the car.
Day 12 - At home in Kolkata. Changed temp sensor in Dewars (300Rs spare and 900Rs Labour). Painting the lower front bumper Garnish 4500Rs) – In Lucknow, the estimate for both these repairs was Rs 2000

Start Odometer reading

GPX file for the whole trip, documenting route speed and elevation is attached (File is rather large, in case anyone needs I can share smaller parts too)

Route map

Some findings about road conditions

Roads in West Bengal have improved drastically from what it was a year back. Diversion work in Bardhaman is almost complete except for 3 pending in Bardhaman Bypass and a couple around Dankuni. Quality of service- roads around diversions is also very good
Jharkhand roads are good but I feel many of the roads are accident-prone specially before Bihar Border. Some diversion work in Jharkhand and Bihar is ongoing
Bihar roads are comparatively in the most uncomfortable state with many diversion work in progress (I lost count after 20) and the service road quality beside diversions are not at all good.
Trucks are just too many around all highways compared to a year back. Truck movements even during the day slows down small cars quite a bit
Trucks in Purvanchal Expressway, Agra Lucknow Expressway and Amritsar-Jamnagar Expressways have increased multifold. All these expressways' middle lane has several patchworks and repair work is continuing so movement is slower than usual
Stray dogs crossing roads in frantic movements are something to look out for especially in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. I saw at least 50 dog corpses and saw one such incident live just in-front of my eyes in Varanasi where a dog was crushed by a truck
Cattle issues in Rajasthan is common as we all know, there are cows, goats, sheep, buffaloes, stray horses, and camels. We saw a few controlled elephants in Jaipur too.
Agra-Jaipur highway is the best road surface I found on this entire trip. However, the entry connector Agra-Lucknow expressway isn’t complete so Google Maps has a tendency to drive through a very narrow village road some part of which is through a field. The alternative option is to make Google Maps drive through the ring road. However, the ring road connector is also extremely broken in parts and has truck traffic snarls. So it is difficult to weigh which one is good. I did both and each time I thought the other option would have been better.
Some State tolls in Rajasthan are still not fast-tagged. The deal with cash. I remember a few during the trip from Jodhpur to Bikaner and one from Sam to Tanot
There is a free pass from Tanot Mata Mandir (adjacent Dharamshala) to the border. The pass is free but The Indian Army takes meticulous details of all travelers and their vehicles. They verify all paperwork and check in-person presence. Due to all this the queue is slow and prone to queue breakers. Recommended to have time in hand for this. It took us 45 minutes for a 10 feet queue.

I will continue with day-by-day details in the following post with geo-tracker details and some pictures.

Thanks, personally to Rishiraj Das (from Team BHP). He had packed a lot of courage, confidence and advice for me to complete this trip

Day 0 - Start of the journey

We had an early lunch and started from our home in Behala. After filling petrol, air and verifying all papers are valid we reached the school to pick up our daughter. We started from Khidderpore at 14:30 hrs and planned to travel to Aurangabad around midnight.

Early excitement was enough to keep the mood right for a long journey ahead. Bought 4 bottles of Sting (surprisingly it sufficed my whole trip; now I feel tea, water and 3-hour pauses work the same. Perhaps Sting is overrated a bit)

We paid Vidyasagar Setu toll at 12:44 PM and started off. A sudden heavy rain slowed us a bit until Dankuni. Pre and post Dankuni toll there were some diversions due to road works. Bardhaman bypass, Durgapur, Panagarh, Raniganj, Asansol all roads are in good condition and after Burdhaman there are almost no diversions in Bengal.

Vehicle and Driver

First stop for fuel and tea was around 300 km away in post Dhanbad (Jharkhand). Around Dhanbad, there are a couple of spots (one of them is Gobindpur) where the road is single-lane through heavily populated bazaars. I would recommend carefulness here as kids and humans crossing the road is erratic and trucks are often stalled. Overtaking is nearly impossible. But reasonably safe. I had driven earlier through these places during late nights and early mornings. At these odd hours, the places are way less crowded and trucks will block one way or the other.

We were crossing Bagodar (Jharkhand) around 20:30 hours when a stray dog suddenly came in front of our vehicle at around this place (3VC3+JF Ghaghra, Jharkhand). There was a sudden noise and I had to stop. Speed was around 60kmph and I also braked but I think the duration was not enough so the bumper had broken and the radiator/condenser assembly was hanging. The fan was broken and the grill which holds the radiator assembly in place was bent and broken badly. I will share the technicals of the damage and repair in a separate thread, but apparently, it was not conducive to continuing the journey in this state.

Extent of damage to the lower grill breaking the support for the radiator assembly

Bent grill (different angle)

Net effect was a short moment of panic but we had (Indian Oil Pump Balwant fuel Indian oil retail outlet) just opposite us and I walked there to find a tyre shop still open and a bus was repairing a broken tyre. On enquiring and requesting they contacted a mechanic. He came to the rescue in about 45 minutes and inspected the damage. He offered to drive the car to his garage inside the Bagodar town with stops every 5 minutes so that the car will not overheat. I had little option to not agree.

Thankfully we arrived at his garage and he offered reasonable seating to my family and they repaired the car in a couple of hours and got it rolling. He charged us 6500 which I think was a bit too much. But I did not negotiate much considering the time and responsibility he rendered. Our daughters had finished their packed dinners there in the garage. His name was Saddam and his number is 7004629728. I am posting his number with his permission on a public forum and also for the fact that someone might need it someday for any unfortunate events.

So after a couple of hours wasted here, it looked like the trip was intact. Kids’ faces had no more tears and they were worried that we might have had to turn back home. I am happy with god’s grace I could bring some solace to their hearts.

Our plan of stopping in Aurangabad had to be changed as we would reach there around 2:30 AM and it would not be reasonable to stop at such hours with 3 ladies in the car and a nimble weak man who can’t support much. Only option was to keep driving till dawn.

Mrs Wife and I finished our packed dinner shortly before midnight the previous day in the darkness of a closed petrol pump. The rest of the journey until midnight was uneventful. Day 0 ended on the highway with slight fear (I hid inside me) of whether I made the right decision to carry on what seemed like a very long journey ahead.

Route Kolkata to Bagodar (Jharkhand) and Bagodar to Varanasi

Day 1 - Drive nonstop from Jharkhand till Jaipur (Rajasthan)

Shortly after midnight, we crossed Aurangabad. I took a look at Budda Hotel in Aurangabad opposite the road (PCCQ+9P Karahra, Bihar) as we had stopped here on some earlier trip. It was dark and perhaps everyone was sleeping. I realised that everyone else in our car was snoring heavily. Given the conditions and what went a few hours back, I would respect the fact that their body clock needs some cut-off.

Rangeela Rajasthan - this truck popped in and repaired my mood

The only thing that kept me going was the frustrations of innumerable diversions of Bikar highways. I don't remember it was as bad a year back, when we came through here last time. At around 3 AM, while crossing Sasaram there was a sudden broken patch where the car fell down suddenly, perhaps a foot. The patch had a potato-like hill in the middle which was high enough to hit the bottom of the car and there was a very loud thud and I had to stop to see if all was okay. Everyone woke up. It's sometimes very disturbing for people sleeping in the car to wake in such shock, but the kids and wife had been very cooperative and controlled their irritation well. Night driving through bad roads is challenging in the sense that the depth of these broken patches cannot be understood. There are flashing lights from the other lane making visibility a pain. Also, the broken patches are in darkness and quite sudden. I was driving at 60 kmph but still could brake in time for this.

I kept driving, but I was worried that something was wrong. But the risk of any untoward incident gave me enough courage to manage going forward till the first light.

At around 5:15 in the morning, we crossed Varanasi and there was a Jio BP here (7M8X+79R, Thatra, Uttar Pradesh 221313). I stopped here and took the bonnet up to have a look at what happened. To my nasty surprise, the radiator assembly was hanging again. I remember the pothole at Sasaram and replayed the video in my mind. That was perhaps the culprit which broke the under-radiator grill support again, when it was already too weak. I wondered why would Maruti stabilize such an important component on such a weak support system and not have any connected strong joints above the assembly.

At this point, I was really thinking of changing my vacation plan and modifying it for Banaras. I would leave my vehicle in a Maruti workshop somewhere and let them repair it for good when I could take my family to visit places in and around Varanasi. Sounded like a reasonable vacation but not the one I wished for. Everyone in the car was still asleep and I grabbed a cup of black tea (from the flask I was carrying from home). I was not willing to give up yet so went to the petrol pump people and kept requesting them persistently to call for mechanical support. I ran from one person to another when one person called someone and let me speak with him. He turned out to be an electrical guy and was not able to help. I continued my requests when suddenly one of them found another mechanic on the phone. Please remember it was 5:30 AM and I was pleasantly surprised that they were accommodating my case at such early hours. In Kolkata, people’s phones are usually switched off. I can't but respect the alertness and responsibility of these people from small towns who value unknown peoples’ emergency needs and respond to them.

This second guy agreed to come in and I was waiting. After about half an hour he came on his bicycle with some plastic ropes (like the ones used to tie new furniture cartons). He tied the radiator assembly and told me to drive to his garage a kilometer away.

By then it was 6AM and there was enough light around. Everyone in the car woke up and was quite dazed at what happened after midnight. We reached his garage.

The man offered a room to my family to freshen up and informed me he would need 3-4 hours to fix everything. I kept wondering about this humble man. He had a couple of daughters and his wife and they all lived in a roofless shack beside the broken garage. Perhaps the kids would not have a chance to go to school, but they helped their father at work and in the short while prepared tea for us and served us with whatever they had.

He did everything by hand and all alone. This time I saw him gas-weld the broken metal parts under the radiator-assembly. He fixed the broken fan with fevikwik and cement (he taught me his trick to prepare locktight adhesive with cement and fevikwik which is very strong). Then he straightened the grill with a hammer and set everything in 3 hours. [Again: I will share the technicals of the damage and repair in a separate thread. There are too many things about these ‘jugaaroo’ repairs]. I got the radiator assembly and fan tied to the grill with those plastic ropes for safety and additional support.

He assured us of safe travel ahead and what looked like a cancelled plan suddenly shined bright in front of our eyes. It was later than 9 AM and we all were starving. I think hunger kicks in more when we are stressed.

We stopped at Om Dhaba for a quick breakfast and toilet (87PM+55 Chhini, Uttar Pradesh). They served puri sabji (Rs 140 per plate) and chai (20 per cup) for the 4 of us. We finished and started off again in better spirits. I was much relieved that it was daylight and visibility was good. I could see a dog being smashed by a truck right in front of me. It was a painful sight and the sound of it was scary. But I feel that's what their destiny is. Stray dogs on the highway are a menace for everyone (and even for themselves; perhaps for them, vehicles are a menace).

At this point, I had no specific plan for doing anything. I convinced myself that I was at the mercy of the car’s durability and that I could do as much as it supported. The next obvious spot was Kanpur. Being a bigger town and reaching there during daylight, I was a little confident that if anything happened there would be help on the way.

With a few more stopovers, we were crossing Kanpur around 2PM. The problem we faced here was that the entire road through Kanpur was elevated and there was hardly any opportunity for a stopover for lunch.

Finally, there was a narrow break in the highway and we stopped for a quick vegetarian lunch at Sagar Dhaba (F645+GRH, NH 19, Bhautipratappur, Uttar Pradesh 208020). From here on Non-Vegetarian food was not an easy find anymore.

Eating lunch in Kanpur

Unsure even now, I made it a point to keep a watch on the radiator every time I stopped. So far it was intact. The next point we planned to hit was Agra and then decided what to do later. Agra was around 250 km away and looked like a doable drive till evening. We eventually reached Agra around 6PM and stopped for a tea break and was wondering if we can reach Jaipur so that it could be our stop for a couple of days.

This is how a 100kmph looks on ALE

Reaching Agra close to the evening

Agra to Jaipur is again around 250 km and looked to be reached by 22:30 hours. We all discussed it and decided to go for it. It would save us one unnecessary night halt and some money and we could start sightseeing in Jaipur from early next morning. Also, the fact that when we reach Jaipur at night traffic would be less and spare us from negotiating with stiff city traffic of the day or evening.

Avoid the interior Agra road and take the ring road. The connector of Agra from ALE to Jaipur Highway is not complete yet

Starting of Agra to Jaipur via Google Maps was a challenge as Google navigates through a very narrow village road since the Agra ring road connector work is not complete. I wished later I had taken the connector via the opposite director through Ring Road and not this shorter option. But since I did not know the difference it was something I needed to deal with. It was around 6 km through a very narrow village with almost no light. There were tractors coming from the opposite side and occasional villagers or cattle. There were some cars too who wanted to connect to Agra and perhaps Google played the same way with them. Not worrying too much I said to myself that I had to go. So I had to go. Eventually, we were out of this place and the beautiful Rajasthan highway greeted us.

My car pen drive randomizer suddenly started playing "Hotel California" the starting line is 'on a dark desert highway' and we had just entered Rajasthan. It seemed like a divine signal. Perhaps I was not thinking well after a longish drive in the past 30 hours or so

I remember we travelled through Bharatpur (a renowned Birding hotspot) and Keoladeo National Park. Roads kept becoming better and better. The first toll gate of Rajasthan in fact looked like a palace or a fort. The rest of the highway was butter-smooth. It was 2 lanes but no cattle and very few vehicles on the way made travel very easy. At 9 PM we were less than 100 km from our destination and we thought of stopping for a short dinner break. Since I had not stopped after Agra it was something I needed the most. It was 32 hours I was going without any sleep or night halt. One part of me wanted to end this leg of the trip as soon as possible. But dinner was also important and I would give Jaipur some more time to clear the road of traffic. So be it.

Food in Rajasthan is truly ‘king size’. I got the first glimpse of it with the size of their portions here and especially the size of their papads. Every papad was 12 inches in diameter. Food was great with mix-veg, rice dal and salad. Costed us around 800 for the four of us. We restarted after an hour and reached “Jaipur View Hotel” (WRH9+C6 Jaipur, Rajasthan) at 11PM sharp. The phone number on Google wont work but Davvrat’s own number will help here (9314076031)

Jaipur View Hotel is not something you will find in common but the owner manages it himself. It’s basically a homestay with a hotel feeling. They have clean AC rooms, a restaurant (vegetarian of course, but they let you order swiggy or zomato), WiFi. The owner Devvrat is a gem of a person. He organised night parking for the next 3 nights at a government parking lot about 300m from the hotel.

Day 1 ended in peace with me looking forward to a good night’s sleep. But unusually I remember, I was not feeling sleepy at all, perhaps due to excitement or my age-old insomnia had set in.