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9 souls on board a Tata Safari on a road trip to Ajanta-Ellora Caves

26th March 2024, 18:00 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

With the planning done, I set about getting the old SUV serviced as it had clocked over 1.65 lakh km and was in its 16th year.

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After the successful long-range road trip of last year, it was more or less fixed that we would be doing a similar trip this year as well. After permutations and combinations of leaves and driving and school vacations across two states, we fixed our destination as Ajanta and Ellora Caves. The Gujarat trip of the previous year involved hectic driving and applying the lesson learned, the driving and destinations were kept as low as possible.

Looking at GMaps and reading through our travelogues sections, we finalized our plans and made hotel bookings accordingly. The travelers were dad, mom, me, wife, kid, sister, BIL, niece, and nephew; so six adults, one child, and two toddlers. This required a few pieces of luggage to be tied on the roof to make space available for all. Even then, adults would have to take turns sitting on the jump seat as it was uncomfortable sitting there for long distances.

The rough plan was thus: On day 1, me, mom, wife, and kid would drive to Bangalore and stay at my sister's home. Dad had already reached my sister's home a few days earlier to run a few errands. We would rest there on day 2 and start from Bangalore with the full complement and drive till Vijayapura (Bijapur) on day 3. On day 4, we would drive till Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) and stay there for two days and explore Ajanta and Bibi Ka Maqbara on day 5 and Ellora on day 6 and then drive back till Vijayapura and stay there. On day 7, we would drive till Bangalore, rest on day 8, and return home on day 9. We also hoped to squeeze in Gol Gumbaz on any one of our two stays in Vijayapura.

Hotels were booked accordingly through Makemytrip and we counted the days down impatiently.

With the planning done, I set about getting the Safari serviced as it was running at the 1,65,000+ km mark and 16th year and was at the precise interval for the periodic service. I took it to an FNG and got the filters and oil changed as well as checked and topped up the GB and diff oils:

A/C required a top up of gas and that was attended to as well. All paperwork was in order and did not require any special attention.

On the day before the trip, got the Safari a nice wash and cleanup:

Day 1:

Attingal to Bangalore via Thenmala-Rajapalayam-Madurai-Salem
0 km to 682 km.

This part is a familiar and easiest part for us as we have done this drive to and from Bangalore dozens and dozens of times. We started at about 4 in the evening after the kid had come back from school, the Christmas vacation had officially commenced. Me, mom, wife, and kid started the drive after our prayers.

The odo read 165345 and the trip meter read 0:

We filled diesel for Rs. 1000, just enough to get us to TN borders as Kerala had (has) the highest diesel rate of all the states we drove through.

The excellent road after Madathara:

A jaywalker near Thenmala:

We took a break at Thenmala for tea and resumed driving. We had to go through Tenkasi town as the bypass from Ilanji was closed.

Stopped for diesel at Chintamani:

Dinner break was had at Sivagiri. After Rajapalayam, the widening of the NH-744 stretch till Tirumangalam was going on. There were a lot of diversions and rough surfaces. This considerably slowed us down. We finally hit the four-lane of NH-44 at around 12 p.m.