Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip

Christmas 2013, we decided to undertake a road trip from Bangalore to Rajasthan. We had 21-December-2013 to 01-January-2014 at our hand to undertake the trip. Looking at the road conditions and time at hand, we decided following route.


The trip was split up in following fashion.

• 21-December-2013 Drive from Bangalore to Pune -- Day #1 of 12
• 22-December-2013 Drive from Pune to Mount Abu via Mumbai and Ahmedabad -- Day #2 of 12
• 23-December-2013 Local sight seeing at Mount Abu -- Day #3 of 12
• 24-December-2013 Drive from Mount Abu to Jaisalmer Sam Sand Dunes -- Day #4 of 12
• 25-December-2013 Drive from Jaisalmer Sam Sand Dunes to Jaisalmer town, visit to Fort -- Day #5 of 12
• 26-December-2013 Drive from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur, Visit to Mehrangarh Fort -- Day #6 of 12
• 27-December-2013 Drive from Jodhpur to Jaipur, Amber fort light and sound show -- Day #7 of 12
• 28-December-2013 Drive from Jaipur to Bharatpur, Visit to bird sanctuary -- Day #8 of 12
• 29-December-2013 Second visit to bird sanctuary, visit to Fatehpur Sikri -- Day #9 of 12
• 30-December-2013 Drive from Bharatpur to Indore via Jaipur, Chhitorgarh, Mandsaur -- Day #10 of 12
• 31-December-2013 Drive from Indore to Pune -- Day #11 of 12
• 01-January-2014 Drive from Pune to Bangalore -- Day #12 of 12

The trip was total of 5,637 Kms with total of approximately 88 hours of driving involved. Total of approximately 440 liters of diesel was consumed. Total amount of tolls paid was Rs. 4113/-. The details of all the tolls are here.

Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip, Day #12 of 12 -- Return journey continues, Pune to Bangalore

01-January-2013
Previous night ushered in the new year. We were ready to continue our drive back to Home.
8:45 AM Checkout after breakfast and started on final let of journey back to Bangalore.

9:50 AM Stopped a the petrol station to fill up.
11:00 AM There is a new complex with cafe coffee day and KFC near Surur. We stopped there for coffee break.

11:15 AM Started our journey back.
11:45 AM Crossed Satara
12:25 PM Crossed Karad
1:15 PM Crossed Kolhapur

New Goa Paradise Dhaba

2:05 PM Stopped at a road side dhaba called "New Goa Paradise". Was really useless place. But the security guard there decided to clean my car properly so we got the car cleaned and had something to eat.
We also saw a new brand of mineral water here called Bilori.

2:31 PM Crossed Nipani
2:45 PM Crossed Sankeshwar
3:21 PM Crossed Belgaum
4:30 PM Crossed the twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad
4:55 PM Stopped at the Kamat just after Hubli-Dharwad. The place was really crowded probably because of the last day of vacations and everybody returning back to Bangalore.

5:35 PM Crossed Haveri
5:50 PM Crossed Ranebennur
6:10 PM Crossed Harihar
6:20 PM Crossed Davangere
7:00 PM Crossed Chitradurga
7:25 PM Crossed Hiriyur
8:05 PM Crossed Sira
8:35 PM Crossed Tumkur
9:25 PM Got on to NICE Road
10:00 PM Got off the NICE Road.
Finally an interesting trip across six states of India spanning over 12 days finishes.

Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip, Day #11 of 12 -- Return journey continues, Indore to Pune

31-December-2013
11:00 AM Return journey back to home continues, we start from Indore and continue on AH-47.

11:30 AM Get off the Indore Bypass and continue on the national highway.
12:30 PM Cross the bridge on Kalaghat on Narmada.

12:43 PM Found a small dhaba and stopped for a small tea break. Not a great place really.

12:50 PM Started the journey back.
1:20 PM Crossed Sendhwa
1:35 PM Crossed Palasner
1:50 PM Crossed Shirpur
2:30 PM Bypassed Dhule
3:15 PM Stopped at Sai Car Family Dhaba just before Malegaon.

4:00 PM Bypassed Malegaon. Here we decided to leave the AH-47 and turn towards road to Manmad. This is where the road is not that great but drivable. We continue towards Manmad.
4:30 PM Crossed Manmad
5:05 PM Crossed Yeola
5:33 PM Crossed Kopargaon
5:40 PM Here we are supposed to turn into Nagpur-Aurangabad-Mumbai highway. But the road is so bad that I could not even take my car on this road. So we continued straight for 6 kilometres and then took a right turn and continued another 6 kilometres to join back the Nagpur-Aurangabad-Mumbai highway.

6:30 PM Reached Talegaon. The road improves but is still not great. It is just drivable two lane road and makes overtaking almost impossible.
6:52 PM Crossed Sangamner, now we join Nashik Pune highway. The road becomes better but it is still narrow two lane road.
7:30 PM Stopped at a place called Daulat refreshments for tea.
8:30 PM Crossed Alephata
8:45 PM Crossed Narayangaon
9:30 PM In Pune City
10:30 PM Reached Holiday Inn hotel and checked in.

Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip, Day #10 of 12 -- Return journey starts, Bharatpur to Indore

30-December-2013
Finally we had to start our journey back. We had originally planned on going via Kota-Ujjain but based on the feedback from hvkumar facebook page, we decided to take the longer route via Jaipur, Chittorgarh.

10:25 AM We left towards Jaipur on NH-11. Just after we entered the toll, saw something very interesting first time in my life. We were diverted to the wrong side of the road and I thought that it is just the regular road construction. After driving for a while we realised that the diversion was because a temple was feeding hundreds of people on the other side of road. Found it very interesting.

11:54 PM Crossed Dausa
12:30 PM Hit the outskirts of the Jaipur, Google map promptly navigated us to the ring road around Jaipur and apart from the fact that some portion of the road was bad it was a good idea.

1:00 PM Took left turn on to Ajmer - Jaipur Expressway going towards Ajmer.

Hotel Highway King

As soon as we turn onto the expressway, on the left we can see Hotel Highway King. We stopped there for lunch. It was good restaurant with decent facilities.
1:45 PM Finished lunch and left for onward journey.
2:30 PM Crossed DUDU
2:53 PM Turned left on to NH-79A going towards Chittorgarh just before Kishangarh. This road is narrower and not as good quality as Jaipur Ajmer expressway but it is still a decent road.

3:15 PM Crossed Nasirabad
4:50 PM Bypasswd Bhilwara
5:45 PM Crossed Bypass to Chittorgarh, As we cross the city, the road turns really bad. Lots of construction going on and most places the road just doesn't exist. The road is almost in the same state till Nimbahera.

7:30 PM Crossed Nimbahera. It took almost 1 hour 30 minutes from Chittorgarh to Nimbahera. Once we reached Nimbahera, we got stuck at the railway crossing for another 15 minutes.
8:00 PM Crossed Neemuch.
8:25 PM Just before Mandsaur, found a hotel on the highway called Hotel MP. It was decent hotel so we stopped for dinner there.
9:10 PM Left for onward journey.
9:20 PM Crossed Mandsaur
9:50 PM Crossed Jaora
10:15 PM Crossed Ratlam
By mistake we entered the Indore from the Pithampura side and that road is in really bad shape, actually it doesn't exist in most places.

12:30 AM Reached Radisson Blu Hotel and checked in. Here is my review of the hotel.

Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip, Day #9 of 12 -- Keoldeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary and Fatehpur Sikri

29-December-2013
We decided to visit the Bird Sanctuary once more. Actually to do justice to bird sanctuary one needs around three complete days. But we decided to just live with two half days. Here is a slideshow of birds that I saw on the second day.

2:30 PM Left for Fatehpur Sikri

3:00 PM Reached Fatehpur Sikri. As soon as you approach the area with monuments you will come across a large parking. You are supposed to park your vehicle there and then take a bus to monuments.
One needs to be careful here. There are people pretending to be guides who will offer to help you take you car right up to monuments. The problem is that these are not authorised guides and they can only take you to the Dargah. They are not allowed into the palace because that is ASI monument and only ASI accredited guides are allowed there. Also these people would make sure that you spend too much time in dargah while the palace etc. have more things to see. So my advice is that do not take any guide from the parking below and take the bus. In any case the walk is around 1 Kilometre.

Royal Gate to Dargah

Building below which anarkali is supposed to have escaped from

Courtyard

Gate

Gate from inside

Dargah

Courtyard

Corridores

People selling artifacts

Christmas 2013, Rajasthan Road Trip, Day #8 of 12 -- Jaipur to Bharatpur

28-December-2013
10:03 AM We left the hotel towards Bharatpur.

10:24 AM Stopped at a petrol station to fill up. The reason that I mention this is that this was the pump which first time in my life offered tea while I was filling up my car and insisted on me taking it.

11:20 AM Crossed Dausa city.

I found the drive after Dausa very scenic. The highway is lined up with mustard fields on both the side of the road, the road quality is good and traffic is comparatively low.

2:30 PM We reached the Hotel. We had booked in Hotel Surya Vilas Palace on the Bharatpur Agra road. My review of the hotel is here.

We had lunch, got ready and went straight to the Bird Sanctuary. Keoldeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary is really a fantastic place. I liked it for multiple reasons. This being the season, there were a large number of migratory bird and one could see many of them coming. Unlike many other national parks where one is confined to you vehicle, this bird sanctuary is different. You can walk on trails and go around at your own pace.