After feeling diesel and restroom breaks, we were ready to leave. Another 900 clicks.
As such I did not feel very drowsy, but two things bothered me much. Eyes were kind of getting fixated on the white lines on the road, and hence reflex was slowing down a little bit.
Secondly, my shoulders were aching a little. Especially one small muscle which takes all the load when you flick the dipper/dimmer switch with your middle finger. That was aching like hell.
And, here one realizes the great benefit of over the top luggage. We had all kinds of stuff - iodex, move ointment, move spray, volini gel, relispray, amrutanjan yellow, amrutanjan white, amrutanjan roll-on... you name it.
So the ladies rubbed all of them on my shoulder, back, neck, throat (Why did they do that!), forehead, nose... and we started back on the road. In less than three minutes, I pulled over. My whole upper body was set ablaze.
Ofcourse nobody could see the flames, but I could feel that my skin especially near my neck and my shoulders were being peeled out, tata salt was being rubbed on my flesh and then my peeled skin is being put back. I jumped out of the car and started jumping and yelling on the road itself!
I splashed some water and tried to rub off all that grease using a towel, only to increase the burn. What was only in contact with my outer skin, penetrated the skin pores. I can little express the feeling!
We spent a good 30 minutes there, pulled over by the dark highway.
By the time it was 12 o'clock. So everyone got out of the car, wished "Happy Diwali" to each other and ate the sweets.
Post the sweets, we also set the rockets out using empty cans of Red Bull. It was a feast to see the fireworks in that dark Rajasthan sky! Pity I packed my camera earlier. The sheer brilliance of the rockets against the pitch dark sky made me forget my pain for a while.
We got back to the car by 12:30 AM. All this burning and celebration had actually done us real good. None of us were feeling sleepy anymore and everybody boiled with a wave of renwed energy.
I didn't even notice when I crossed Udaipur. I took notice only when the twisties started again.
However, this was kids stuff compared to my recently acquired twisty killer driving skills. a few cans of Red Bull saw me maintain an average of 120 kmph till Ahmedabad.
I took a ten minutes break before entering NE1. Had two three bananas (I was kind of hungry), a few apricots (to elliminate the slightest chance of dozing off and to offset the throat burn with sour teeth).
I entered the NE1 around 3:45 Am and completed the 80 kilometers in 35 minutes flat. The Safari surely pulls when asked to!
However, this speed burst took a heavy toll on my energy and I could feel reflexes slowing down a little. But the fact that I had crossed Vadodara and home was just about 400 Kilometers, kept me going.
The Sun rose somewhere after Surat.
I kept going till Valsad. It was the period when everyone switches off their headlights, but the visibility is not that great. The overnight drivers crash most frequently at this time.
So, we pulled over in a "Hotel Decent" and had some nice Masala Dosa and hot tea. The food did real good, I haven't had anything meaningful since yesterday breakfast. I also took a 15 minutes power nap in the car seat.
Post breakfast, we were a little energized. The daylight was up, so chances of dozing off was much less. Still for precaution I asked all the ladies to keep strict watch on me and to keep talking to me.
We reached home by 10 o'clock. My wife still had a few hours to prepare for her flight!