Churning out miles.....Day 3

The alarm rings at 5:30 am. I do some calculations and decide its okay to pamper myself with some more sleep. 6:15 am, I cannot sleep anymore and am up. Khatri repeats the same story again. I am ready at 7:15 am, think of Mishti, biwi and all the cautious faces at office and pray really hard and honest.
7:30 am, car ready, tea and faafde breakfast later, we get on the highway. The deserted highway of the night is suddenly overcrowded and slow moving now. There are a lot more diversions and jams. Progress is slow. We finally manage some premium petrol at an Indian Oil pump at Rs. 51.69 a litre. Corsa returned some 15.18kms/ltr on normal petrol and the AC on. The speeds needless to say were 3 digit.
The first 120kms from Surat take 3 hours. I am drained in the traffic. To make it more worrisome, Jaipur has shifted 300kms further in the Sun. At night we calculated it to be some 770kms. Its now is some 1000kms and I am worried. We have not touched 1000kms in the last 2 days.
10:30 am, we reach Vadodra.
10:56 am, we get on to the Expressway to Ahmadabad. NE-1 is a dream. Its got rails on both sides and is absolutely straight. The toll is Rs. 72 and it is just to little for the experience it offers. The trucks and most of the vehicles stay away and the six lane highway offers too much space.
As soon as we get on the expressway, Khatri wants to stop for a pee, food and fags. The toll collector had told us that there's a Reliance A-1, 60 kms down the road. But Khatri is restless, he wants to get down and pee immediately. The expressway is inviting and I press the pedal. Khatri jumps around the first ten minutes and then looks into the speedo, we are doing some 140 kms/hr, he no longer moves, all his urges are left behind somewhere. I switch on the headlights, shift to the fourth gear, the engine grunts and I floor the pedal again. The needle goes past the 150 mark. Khatri is on a one track, "Paahji.......paahji......paahji.......paahji". People keep giving way as they see the headlights in their rear views, Farhan shouts "Rock on!!!" and we go past 160 and Khatri just manages to take a pic. Then, I decide to drop it off. I shift back to 5th gear. 120km/hr looks like 60 now and all cars look like they are crawling. We continue to whizz past them. We do 60 kms in 27 minutes. Ohhhhh, what a feeling!!!!!
Khatri no longer wants to pee but we still stop at the Reliance A-1. All three of us refuel. Corsa gets the clean Reliance petrol at Rs 48.59 a litre and air check for the tyres and we fill in idlis, samosas and bhajjis. The stopover costs 30 minutes and we are on the highway again.
Now just before the expressway ends, there is a exit for the Ahmadabad bye-pass. Khatri has misplaced the toll chit and while looking for it at 100km/hr, we miss the only sign board for the bye-pass and miss the exit. At the toll, we convince the collector that we had paid the right toll at the entrance and then regrettingly enter Ahmedabad city. But, somehow, we realise that we are on the wrong road, take a right at one of the cross sections in the city, keep going straight till we get to the ring road again. Google maps did help again, but half an hour is wasted.
Some 20 kms from Ahmedabad to Himmatnagar are double laned, then you get on to the toll road again. The traffic is light and the towns sparse again. Jaipur is some 650kms away. Its already 2 and the noon Sun is beating the tarmac. The AC is pressed on, the heat is shut out and the speedo continuously shows 110kms/hr. I am dead worried about the lack of time and stop listening to Khatri's blabber. Its a race here on. Karnataka Express is pressing on!!!!
2:25pm and we enter Rajasthan at Ratanpur. The road is still smooth but its a ghat section. We still are at 90km/hr and we manage an exceptional 80km an hour average till Udaipur.
At 5:00pm, we turn right to get on to NH76 to Chittaurgarh. The board reads 102kms. 6:00 pm and we enter Chittaurgarh. This stretch is I believe was the best road of the entire route. The traffic was non-existent and we hardly had to break. We dinot cross 115-120kms/hr anywhere still managed to do a 105 kms in an hour. But Chittaurgarh doesnot have a bye-pass and we have to go into the city. Khatri wants to take a break again. He is desperate, but so am I. He finally makes me brake at a small dhaba. He just has aaloo parantha and tea to offer.

It takes him 30 minutes to get the parantha in shape. I take a 10 minute nap and clean the windscreen. A 40 minute break and we are back on the highway. Its jammed, dusty and filled to the brim. Somehow, we get back on the four laned road again and break at Indian Oil pump. A Qualis comes and bangs us, from the side, at the pump. We get into a fight. He sees the Punjab number plate and threatens this is his area and then starts acting funny as we get on the highway. He keeps slowing down, lets us pass and then cuts past trying to hit us. Well, we stop at the toll naka, get to the police, they give us an emergency number, take down the idiot's number and tell us there is nothing to worry. We get on with munching miles.

We mistake and enter Bhilwara and waste a precious 20 minutes. Its almost 8 pm and Jaipur is some 250 kms away. We press on. I am fatigued. I call it the highway factor. After continuously loooking at the highway for hours, there comes a time when you can't concentrate any more. I want to stop and take a nap somewhere. I tell this to Khatri and he switches off the stereo and starts his commentary. He mimicks my director, manager and who not. He recounts his college life, funny instances, jokes and I am fresh and alert again.

Somewhere around 9:30 pm we hit the queue at the Kishangarh toll naka. Its a long queue, takes some 40 minutes for our turn to come. 20 minutes later, we stop for a quick tea. Khatri smokes as I tell Biwi that the train has hit fog bigtime and is going to be late. Fog does start coming on to the highway.

Sometime around midnight we reach Jaipur. I want to carry on, but Khatri's company ends at Jaipur, I will be alone from here on and I am tired. I decide to stay at Jaipur. Khatri says that he will stay with me and move on in the morning. This Khatri, after the initial jitters, has been most amazing. He stuck with me throughout, kept me entertained and even though getting down at Udaipur suited him most, stuck with me till Jaipur and then instead of getting on with his planned stop with friends at Jaipur, stays with me at the hotel. Amazing!!!!

We find a place to stay at Bikaner road on the Jaipur bye-pass and at 1 go about looking for a place to eat. Khatri only wants shahi paneer. The whole town is shut, the roads are deserted, hardly any soul in sight and then a miracle happens, just 100m from our hotel, a small shop is still open. We get amazing, shahi paneer. I eat 4 rotis inspite of no hunger and Khatri who looked like he would devour a lion, had just 2. Rs. 70 for the dinner and we get back and hit the mattress. I had decided to start late the next morning because of the fog at Delhi. Again, I sleep well.

And yes, the 1k kms barrier still remained. We just did 930 kms. Well what can I say, tomorrow is a new day, though with just around 350kms to go.

Tips:

Drive safe and within your limits. In the longer run, reducing stops helps more in increasing average distance per hour than over speeding. So on day 1, I was taking a break every 2 hours. Early on day 2, we started taking breaks every 3 hours and then every 200kms. On day 3, we were breaking every 300 kms.

Be very cautious off funny movements on the medians between lanes, especially in Rajasthan. Most of these creatures trust you with saving their lives!!!

Keeping the headlights on even during daytime helps. The people in front vacate your lanes well in advance and you do not need to slow down and honk endlessly.

Road conditions on NH8 after Baroda are fabulous. The road is four-six lane through out and traffic becomes sparse after you enter Rajasthan.

Beware, about the exit for the Ahmadabad ring road towards the end of the NE-1 expressway from Baroda. It just vanishes in a second and there is no way of getting back to it again. Similarly, at Bhilwara, at the Y junction, the right side road leads into the town and the left one is the bye-pass. The instructions on the board are a little confusing.

Even the smallest of dhabas in Rajasthan and Gujarat serve fabulous stuff. So feel free to stop anywhere.

Goto Final Day (Day 4)