Christmas 2016

The plan was to travel to see the remaining places in Rajasthan during Christmas of 2016.

Following itinerary was followed for this trip.

• Day 1 -- Bengaluru to Nagpur
• Day 2 -- Nagpur to Bhopal
• Day 3 -- Bhopal to Noida
• Day 4 -- Noida to Hanumangarh
• Day 5 -- Hanumangarh to Bikaner via Kalibangan
• Day 6 --  Binaker to Jaipur
• Day 7 -- Jaipur to Agra via Bharatpur
• Day 8 -- Agra
• Day 9 -- Agra to Sagar
• Day 10 -- Sagar to Bangalore

The distance covered was  5476 kilometers. Approximately 3000 rupees of tolls were paid during the journey and approximately 550 liters of diesel was consumed. This was the first trip after the demonetization so the cash expenses had to be kept to a minimum.  All the fuel expenses were done electronically by credit card and most of the toll expenses were done using FasTag. Wherever FasTag was not working, PayTM was used.
I had booked quite a few hotels with Hotels.Com. Couple of those booking were with Hotel LemonTree in Jaipur and in Hyderabad. Both of these hotels called me and wanted me to tell them my credit card over the phone. I refused to give the card because I was not sure who called it. Both the hotels told me that they would cancel my bookings.

Day 10 -- Sagar to Bangalore

31-December-2016
The original plan was to drive up to Hyderabad on this day. We started early at around 5:15 AM.
During our last drive, we had taken this route till Nagpur, but the road was pretty bad 100 kilometers around Nagpur. We were advised that it is better to take Narsingpur-Chhindwara route.
7:00 AM We reached Narsingpur. We were told to find breakfast in Narsingpur, but we ignored that advice, at our own peril, thinking that we will find something on the way to Chhindwara. There is practically nothing on this route till Nagpur. Few dhabas that you see on the road don't open before Lunch.
8:25 AM Crossed Chhindwara.
10:00 AM We reached Nagpur. We were hungry, and we straightway drove to this place called The Breakfast Story. Unfortunately, that was an unfortunate decision. We waited there for quite some time, but the place was completely booked.
We finally left that place and reached Le Meridien at around 10:50 AM.
Five-star hotels are not good for doing things quickly. Since we had reached after their regular breakfast hours and before regular lunch hours, they told us they will cook something for us but it took quite some time. We could get out of this place only by 12:20 PM.
1:10 PM Crossed Hinghanghat. Bad roads start, at least some construction work is in progress, so there is hope that this section would improve in near future.
3:00 PM Crossed border, we see good roads again.
3:15 PMWe crossed Adilabad
3:55 PM We reached Singh is King Dhaba just around Nirmal. This has become our favorite place to stop on this section of road. The food is hot and quick.
At the time we also decide to not stop in Hyderabad. Even though we are running late, we decided that since our hotel has anyway canceled our booking and this is new year eve, it is better to continue driving and stop at Bengaluru.
7:15 PM Entered the ORR in Hyderabad and exited at 8:00 PM.
8:40 PM Stopped at Cafe Coffee Day near Mahboobnagar for dinner.
11:10 PM Crossed Kurnool

Just before Gooty, we ushered in the new year.
12:50 AM We crossed Anantpur
1:33 AM We crossed Penukonda
2:30 AM We crossed Chikkaballapur
As we crossed the Airport, we realized that traffic police had closed all the flyovers as a precautionary measure on New year eve. So we had to crawl through till Hebbal.
3:30 AM We reached home.

Day 9 -- Agra to Sagar

30-December-2016
9:30 AM We started from Agra after the breakfast. The roads were foggy and the progress was slow.

11:20 AM After two hours of driving, we were near Gwalior. This section of the route has pretty much zero facilities on the highway, so we decided to take a small detour towards the Gwalior town and stop at the Barista.
The place is good, and it is around one kilometer from the national highway and the approach road to the place is not crowded at all. So this makes for a good stopping point particularly if one is traveling with the family. Here are my thoughts on the place.

We continued after a small break at Barista and soon hit the bad Gwalior-Jhansi section of the road. This road is pretty bad and shows no sigh of being improved. 

1:20 PM We realized that we were near Datia and decided to stop at MP Tourist motel for a lunch. That would save us from going into Jhansi city to look for food. When in Madhya Pradesh, it is always a good idea to look for MP Tourish Motels, they are pretty good for small breaks and food.

Jhansi Fort

2:30 PM We started after lunch.

3:10 PM We crossed Jhansi

4:10 PM We crossed Lalitpur

4:40 PM We crossed Malthone

5:20 PM We were in Sagar.

Day 8 -- Agra

29-December-2016

This day was reserved for sightseeing around Agra. We just got lazy on this and decided to not hurry up. The end result was that we reached the Taj at 1:15 PM only.
The place was crowded, I never expected it to be so crowded. After we took the tickets and walked to the east gate of the Taj, we found that there was almost one kilometer long queue. It took us almost an hour to actually get into the Taj.
After that long queue experience, once we reached inside the Taj, it was another painful experience. There was a long queue that we had to stand into to reach the platform of the Taj. We finally gave up and just took some pictures. It was too late to go to the fort that we were keep to visit, so we decided to just go back to hotel and call it a day.

The moral of the story, don't go to popular historical monuments during the holiday rush.

Day 7 -- Jaipur to Agra via Bharatpur

28-December-2016
05:45 AM We started early from our hotel, the plan was to spend the whole day in Keoldeo National Park, Bharatpur and then reach Agra for the night.
08:15 AM Reached Keoldeo National Park Bharatpur.

Finally, we left the park around 5pm. Since we hadn't had any lunch, we stopped at this pizza place just outside the park.
The place serves  reasonably good pizza. Here is my review of the place.
6:30 PM We started from Bharatpur towards Agra. There was huge traffic jam on the toll gate just outside of Bharatpur. No management was in place. It took 20 minutes to get out of that toll gate.

8:15 PM Reached The Gateway hotel in Agra. Here is my review of the hotel.

Day 6 -- Binaker to Jaipur

27-December-2016
10:20 AM We decided to leave little late after breakfast.enroute to Jaipur. The place was newly opened and toilets etc were clean.

Drive for three hours and stopped at Hotel Royal Palace

We decided to directly go to Amber Fort and check-in to the hotel later on. Since Jaipur was just an enroute stop for us, we did not have detailed plan on visiting Jaipur. we just decided to roam around the Amber fort and then check-in to the hotel.
3:30 PM We reached the Amber Fort.

Roof

View of garden from Amber Fort

Seesh Mahal

Mirabai Temple

We finally reached the hotel at 8:30 PM and checked in. My review of the hotel is here.

Day 5 -- Hanumangarh to Bikaner via Kalibangan

26-December-2016
We had plans of starting early so that we can reach Bikaner early after visiting Kalibangan. Unfortunately, the area around Hanumangarh and Kalibangan was fogged out with zero visibility.

We waited till almost 9 AM and then slowly started moving. The visibility was still almost zero meters.

We took little more than one hour to drive a distance of  35 kilometers because of bad visibility due to fog. As we arrived at Kalibangan, it was another disappointment. Most of the artifacts from excavations were removed into the museum, and the excavation site was covered with polyethylene, and there was literally nothing there to see.
The museum on its own was closed for long duration for renovations. We walked around the site for some time and then headed towards Bikaner.

Kalibangan  Excavation  Site

Kalibangan Excavation Site

11:30 AM We crossed Suratgarh
1:40 PM We were in Bikaner. While searching the internet, we had found that the fort closes quite early, 4 PM, I think. So we decided to first visit Fort and then go and check into our hotel.
We did not know that the Fort has facilities to park inside the premises, so we parked near the court parking and then walked to the place. Actually, there is sufficient parking within the fort premises so one can safely park there.

Rao Bikaji, the son of Rao Jodhaji, established the kingdom of Bikaner. He founded the city of Bikaner in 1488 AD. He constructed his fort at Rattighati, now known as Bikaji Ki Tekari and brought the heirlooms of the Rathore Dynasty from Jodhpur to Bikaner, giving up the claim to the Jodhpur throne.
Foundation of this magnificent and imposing fort was laid by Maharaja Rai Singhji, the sixth ruler of Bikaner in 1589 AD. The fort has been the residence of 20 rulers of Bikaner till 1902 AD. Many important places were added to the original by various rulers.

• Karan Mahal : Built by Maharaja Gaj Singhji, the 14th ruler (1745 AD to 1787 AD)
• Anoop Mahal: Built by Maharaja Surat Singhji, the 17th ruler (1766 to 1828 AD)
• Gaj Mandir: Built by Maharaja Gaj Singhji, the 14th ruler (1745 to 1787 AD)
• Phul Mahal: Built by Maharaja Gaj Singhji, the 14th ruler (1745 to 1787 AD)
• Chattar Mahal: Built by Maharaja Dungar Singhji, the 20th ruler (1872 to 1887 AD)
• Maharaja Anoop Singhji, the 10th ruler of Bikaner brought statues of various Gods and Goddesses from the Deccan during his campaigns with Aurangzeb and also brought Sanskrit manuscripts and other valuable books.
• During the tenure of Maharaja Ganga Singhji, Ganga Niwas Durbar Hall was built by the Regency Council in 1896 AD. The Vikram Vilas Durbar Hall was built by Maharaja Ganga Singhji in the year 1935. The Silver Jublee Durbar of Maharaja Ganga Singji's reign was held in Ganga Niwas Durbar Hall in the year 1937.
• Maharaja Ganga Singhji continued to live at Junagarh fort till 1902 at which time to Regency Council commissioned dSir Samuel Swinton Jacobs to construct the Lalgarh Palace. The window of Maharaja Dungar Singhji, Rajmata Mahtab Kanwarji continued to reside at Dalel Niwas till her demise on 19th November 1959.
• Maharaja Dr. Karni Singhji, the 23rd ruler, out of his benevolent nature created Maharaja Rai Singhji Trust in 1963 and donated the Junagarh Fort to the trust. Since then the fort has been open to visitors from all over the world.
• Junagarh Fort has seen many battles and nobody has been able to conquer the fort.

Gallops Restaurant

We finally finished with the fort and crossed the road to grab a bite. We went to Gallops Restaurant and Coffeehouse for a late lunch. Here is my review of the restaurant.

Hotel Laxmi Vilas Palace 

Hotel Laxmi Vilas Palace

Dance Performance

We finally reached our hotel. We were booked for the night in Hotel Laxmi Vilas Palace. Here is my review of the place.