(
After spending almost 2 hours from Pump-to-Pump at Udaipur and saving the car from stalling from those last few drops of fuel, we now continue the rest of our journey.)
Day 3 continues Udaipur onwards all the way to Delhi and beyond non-stop:
HVK who was constantly calling me to find out if I managed to refuel asks me about my tank's range now. I said, I am good for the next 450-480 kms depending on Traffic and road conditions. He says that may not be enough for me to cross the Rajasthan border and quickly gives me details of the next COCO outlet on my route ahead.
We start to drive with dark clouds suggesting that it may soon rain. Delhi seems like a long way ahead and we have almost wasted more than half of the day due to the strike We do encounter rain for around 25-30 kilometers which was a pleasant surprise for all of us.
We all sense very lately that we were humans and we need to eat our lunch though it was 4:30pm.
We pull over into a typical highway Dhaba at least for some Tea to rejuvenate our taste buds. Time to check for text messages and respond while the Tea arrives: Dad grabs some Biscuits and Theplas from the food container to complement the Tea:
We spend around 30 minutes and crank again driving further passing the next toll booth before Bhilwara:
On the 4 lane road, we are suddenly greeted by wrong side vehicles and many of them reversing bang in the middle of the road. We had absolutely no clue why but a gentleman in the Dzire waved at us to reverse too. We followed his advice and carefully reversed and started to follow the rest of the crowd by getting onto the service lane only to discover the reason behind the chaos.
The Best FE during the whole Drive:
We soon spot the BPCL COCO where we stop for refueling but I was sure that it may not be worth as the needle hasn't really moved since the past 100+ kms.
When we refill till Auto-Cut off, only 6.1 Liters go and when we calculate the FE since the last stop 124 kms before, it was a staggering
20.32Kmpl
Not that I was really surprised since I have achieved 19.2kmpl during my Bangalore-Pune drive. The reason for such an excellent FE could be due to the sudden change in weather conditions where the temperatures easily dropped by 8-10 degrees and we faced rains for 25-30 kms in between. Adding to this, it also could be a very good quality (unadulterated) Petrol we filled at Udaipur HPCL COCO and not to forget that we drove at a very constant speed of around 80-90kmph till here facing very thin traffic with almost zero braking and gear changes. Nevertheless, this moment was certainly a delight.
The road conditions after Udaipur also were fantastic and many sections were concretized almost resembling what Punj-LLoyd has done between Dharwad and Kolhapur on NH4.
Some PS "skills" here for that evening Sky and dark tarmac: The Sun was beginning to set, roads with considerably less traffic: We have advanced 56kms since the last signage Closing shots for the 3rd day: Rains again nearing Kishangarh:
We encounter rains again near Kishangarh and soon we get onto the Kishangarh-Jaipur Expressway which is a delightfully superb, 6 lane, almost arrow straight road taking you all the way through Jaipur Bypass where you take a left onto Jaipur-Delhi Highway.
The Road surface was one of the best I had driven and the banking and design was so evident that even in a Tallboy changing lanes at good speeds felt very well planted. The road had too much truck traffic in all the 3 lanes that I had to resort to video game mode switching lanes, flashing indicators and headlights and safely overtaking these monsters.
Crossing Jaipur on the elevated bypass was breeze at around 9:30pm.
Dinner Break:
Looking at the signage at the end of Jaipur bypass, we take left at a major intersection marked for New Delhi. We witness massive jams as soon as we take left and begin to recall that we were warned about the awful Jaipur-Delhi stretch which can be a driver's nightmare due to the ongoing 6 lane work in progress all the way till Haryana Border/Gurgaon.
We felt it was right time to pull over into another Dhaba for dinner and then continue. We ordered for typical Roti-Curry combo along with Tea to complement the stress/fatigue. While munching the Dhaba food, the thick traffic on the road gave us hint that we may not be able to easily manage reaching Delhi (another 260kms) in anything less than 5 hours.
We finish dinner, wash the windscreen and start all over again.
The Nightmare called Jaipur-Delhi Highway begins:
Terrible, Horrible or Worse!! Such was the traffic between Jaipur and Delhi that I may have never encountered in my life before. With absolutely no private traffic, it was just trucks, Delhi bound Private and Govt buses which dominated the road for the next 260 kms.
Multiple diversions onto the service lanes and back onto the main corridor ensured the body was charged up all over again. I had read somewhere in one of the Travelogues here that how aggressive one needs to be on this stretch, if driving at night.
With trucks in all shapes, length and sizes, they would drive parallel to you at almost 3 digit speeds making overtaking or lane changing a very calculated effort and to manage that, crossing the needle beyond the 3 digit figure was much needed for completing the overtaking. Speeds on main corridor was easily 90-100kmph or a little more while it was dropping to 55-80kmph on the diversions.
This is one reason why I had DIY Installed the 3rd Gen WagonR's Convex ORVMs into mine as the OEM mirrors were flat and offered a pathetic view which is very much essential on a 3 lane highway to evaluate traffic on other lanes behind you. They really helped!
4 Toll booths consume 30 minutes:
We could only find a tiny WagonR of ours in the sea of Buses and trucks near every toll booth. All the lanes were occupied by trucks and there was no special lane for cars. We had no choice but wait endlessly for almost 30 minutes in each booth with queues as long as 2 kilometers!! The story repeated for the next 3 toll booths.
We cross Rajasthan-Haryana Border and refuel:
After crawling, we manage to enter Haryana only around 2:35am. As soon as we enter, we refill the tank with 25.64 Liters paying Rs 66.34 per liter
(The cheapest is yet to come) Another Tea Break:
A quick 15-20 minute tea break and we conclude that the option to halt in NOIDA at my childhood friend's place was turning out to be impossible now since we had another 120 kms to destination and we are absolutely not sure about the jams nearing Gurgaon-Delhi Expressway toll booths and it would easily be wee hours and as late as 5-6am by the time we hunt for the address as per MMI and reach!
And then we again continue to drive and drive farther:
Jams greeted us almost every 10 kilometers and traffic now becoming very thick with a high concentration of private cars too along with the trucks even at 3am.
- By this time we had gotten used to the messy traffic and perpetual jams lasting kilometers.
- We were getting too comfortable with the situation and fatigue virtually was kicked out of our bodies with the adventure we were witnessing with so much chaos
- We were crawling after Haryana but Dilli Abhi door hai (Delhi is further away)
- Passing through what I may call the last longest queue in a toll booth of our entire drive till we complete the GQ circuit.
We take a strategic decision (Keep driving!!):
While we finally managed to get onto the Gurgaon-Delhi Expressway, my father intervenes to say that it doesn't make sense to stay in Delhi/NOIDA any longer and the mood is set sitting for more than 17 hours since we started last morning from Mehsana.
Lets hit Agra. Lets do THE TAJ!
The drive never stops
(Next: Taj, Kanpur till Varanasi all the way....)