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3800 km road trip with family in Volvo XC60 and Toyota Innova Crysta

8th November 2024, 11:40 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

Both the cars were loaded to the brim with passengers and luggage. We could easily travel around 700 to 800 km comfortably without any issues.

BHPian Amek recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Hello everyone! I'm writing this post to share my journey from Hyderabad to Gujarat and back. I hope my experiences may be helpful to other readers in the forum who may plan to go to the places that I've been to.

The Dusshera break has begun, and me and my family wanted to take a break from all the list of responsibilities we had, and I myself also wanted to take a break from the ever-growing things that creep up when I'm trying to find my way into adulthood.

For this journey, we were accompanied by our cousins and their families. Our choice of transport was our trusty old 2014 Volvo XC60 along with my cousin's 2017 Toyota Innova Crysta.

We had done plenty of long trips in our car before, so me and my family are well accustomed to road trips and highway driving in general.

The itinerary for the trip:

Hyd-Shirdi
Sshirdi-Surat (Hazira port)
Surat-Bhavnagar (Ghoga port) (ferry)
Bhavnagar-Diu
Diu-Somnath
Somnath-Dwarka
Dwarka-Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad-Statue of unity (Kevadia)
Statue of unity (kevadia)-Saputara
Saputara-Hyd

The planned duration to visit all these places was approximately 10 days.

DAY-1:

On the first day, we were late by two hours compared to what we had planned the day before. We wanted to leave our homes by 8am, but it was 10am by the time we started. I guess it happens when ten adults try to move out of their houses. Once we hit the road, we decided to take the Nehru outer ring road to bypass all the traffic in the city. The planned route to reach Shirdi was to take the Indore Corridor, and from Nanded we decided to hop on to the famous Samruddhi Maharag till Shirdi. The Indore Corridor Route was simply amazing as it did not go through any villages and the roads were partly fenced up so no stray animals could wander, but since it is India, there was a fair share of people and cattle still wandering around the roads.

One interesting thing was the road conditions abruptly changed when we crossed the Telengana border and entered into Maharastra (smooth roads turned into bumpy roads). We went through some villages to reach Nanded. Once we reached the nanded outskirts, we took a diversion, which led us into a decent 4-lane highway (NH 161). At this point, everyone in both cars was hungry, so we went ahead and stopped for lunch. After we had lunch, we again got into our trusty cars and resumed our journey.

Once we reached Samruddhi Mahamarg, the real fun began. I slowly crept up the gas pedal to unleash all the 215 hp, and the car reached triple digits in no time. The road was really good, albeit a bit bumpy as it is made up of concrete. The car was set to cruise at 120, and we reached Shirdi around 7 p.m. We reached Shirdi and decided to take Baba's blessings and called it a day.

Here are some pictures:

DAY-2:

We started from Shirdi around 9 a.m. and decided to take the Nashik-Surat highway (via NH 953), which went through the ever-beautiful western ghats. The scenic beauty was simply wonderful to look at, and the passengers in the car surely had a great time. I tried to gaze at the views as much as possible without distracting myself. Everything was going on smoothly till we were stopped by a bunch of great Maharastra cops. They stopped our cars and pointed out ridiculous things that usually people do not carry.

As a dedicated follower of this forum, we had everything they asked for and showed them that. They still ended up pointing out a rear crash guard that my cousin's car had and ended up taking money from us. It was a small hiccup nonetheless, and we continued our journey. Around 6pm, we crossed the MH border and entered Gujarat, where we were stopped and checked for any liquor (as Gujarat is a dry state).

Then, around 6:30, we stopped in the middle of nowhere for a tea break. The place we stopped was very surreal, with stunning views all around. We quickly had some tea, and the journey resumed to Surat. We reached Surat around 10 p.m., and we were shocked to see so many people out in the streets wearing traditional clothes. Apparently, the place where our hotel was situated had multiple garba parties nearby, hence so many people. This information was given to us by our hotel management. As we had to catch a ferry early morning, we closed the day early and took some real-needed rest after driving through some scenic but bumpy and narrow roads.

Here are some pictures I took when we stopped for a tea break at Saputara

Beautiful scenario just beside the tea shop

DAY-3:

We woke up early in the morning to catch the ferry, as the reporting time was 8 a.m. We needed to go to the Hariza port, where we could board the ferry and travel along the Arabian Sea to the other side of the state. The drop-off point for the ferry was Ghoga Port in Bhavnagar. It was an exciting opportunity for all of us, as none of us had ever travelled by sea before. It was even special for me since this is the first time in my life our car was also travelling by sea with us. We went to the port, had our tags tied, and waited in line to get our cars onto the ferry. There we met Mr. X, who was also travelling along with us to the other side in his agony. He gave us some wonderful insights about what to expect once we got to the other side and let us know how the routes would be to the destinations we planned to travel. It's always nice to know things from the locals, I suppose.

After this, we boarded the ferry, parked our cars in the parking bay, and went to the passenger lounge to chill out. The trip was around 4 hours; the ferry started around 9 am and reached Ghoga by 1:30 pm. Once we got dropped off at Ghoga Port, we got back into our cars and headed straight to Diu. We took the NH51 and reached Diu by 7 p.m. The roads in Diu were not up to the mark, and the UT itself was under some heavy developmental work. We had a hard time navigating to our hotel and thankfully ended up finding it. We crashed into the hotel, had dinner, and called it a day.

Some pictures when boarding the ferry and inside the ferry:

Our cars waiting to get inside (beside is Mr.X's legendary wagon r)

Ride continued to Diu after getting off

DAY-4:

The first half of this day was completely dedicated to sightseeing in Diu. We started off by going to the Gangeshwar Mahadev temple, which was just beside the sea. When high tide comes, the sea water flows into the temple, covering all the five lingas present there. We took Lord Shiva's blessings, enjoyed the wonderful views the place had to offer, and went to the next destination. Next up is Nagao Beach, which was a 10-minute drive from the temple. The beach had various water activities, and me and my cousins went jet skiing there.

From there, we headed up to the INS Khukri. This was a battleship used by the Indian Navy till 2020 and retired and put up as a memorial to the original Khukri, which was sunk down by Pakistan in 1971. These were the locations we were able to cover in the limited time we had as we planned to go to Somnath following the sight-seeing. We again took the NH51 to reach Somnath. The quality of roads in this part was decent enough for our car, which has a hard suspension setup, to go through smoothly. We reached Somnath around 8pm. Since we had time on our hands, we went ahead and tried some authentic Gujarati food and took some really needed rest soon after.

Pics of the day:

Stopped for lunch

DAY-5:

We started off the day by visiting the Somnath temple to take Lord Shiva's blessings. Once we were done with the darshan and coming out, we met with a guy who told us he could roam us around Somanth and show us different places. We wanted to go anyway; hence, we took this opportunity to go with the locals and boost the travel economy there. We were greeted by two auto drivers who took us around the city in their autos. The places they showed us included the spot where Lord Krishna lost his avatar and Triveni Sangamam (where three rivers meet).

I will have to say it was a fun experience for us who had not ridden autos in a long time. The experience was made better when Mr. Rain showed up abruptly and decided to pour down hard. After the short trip, we were then brought to the car parking, where we got in and started our way to Dwarka. The roads here were not in good condition, and there was a fishy smell lingering around in some areas because of the large commercial fishing activity taking place. Here we also had the opportunity to try out Kathiyawadi cuisine, which was liked by all of us. We also planned to go to the Devilia Safari Park, but this was cancelled last minute as we did not expect Mr. Rain to stay for that long. We had lunch and proceeded towards Dwarka.

We again took the NH51, but this time The roads were very good, but there were some instances of stray cows coming onto the road. We were at Dwarka around 8 p.m. Since we were in Dwarka well before the time, we decided to check in to our hotel and go visit the famous Dwarkadish temple then itself. After Darshan, we had dinner and crashed into our hotel rooms.

Some pics from Somnath:

DAY-6:

We planned to visit Beyt Dwarka, but as everyone was tired due to lots of travel, we decided to take our own sweet time to go to Beyt Dwarka. We started around 1pm to beyt Dwarka; it was an hour's drive to beyt Dwarka from our hotel. We crossed the Sudarshan Setu, which was opened recently by our PM. Before that, one had to travel by boat from the mainland to beyt Dwarka.

Once we crossed the bridge, we were stopped by the cops and guided into the parking lot, where we had to park our cars and take the local autos to go near the temple, which is around 2 km away from the parking. We took the auto, went to the temple, and completed the darshan. The auto guy wanted us to see a temple, which is located at the tip of the island. Oh boy, this journey was rough. The roads were in really bad condition to the temple.

Only a single road, and the electric auto was also very slow to make the situation worse. It took a long time as the temple was far away, and by the time we completed the darshan and came back to our cars, it was already dark. We quickly got into our cars and headed towards the Nageshwar jyotirling. On the way to the jyotirling, I encountered a bunch of foxes crossing the road. It was a pleasant surprise for all of us. We had darshan and went back to our hotel and ended the day.

DAY-7:

It was Dusshera. We explored the Gomti River Ghat and visited the Samudra Narayan temple, which is at the point where the Gomti River converges into the Arabian Sea. One interesting thing we noted is that the waves around this area were very high. I would also like everyone to know that the Pandavas temple was closed at the time when we were in Dwarka. The next place we visited was the Rukmini Devi temple, but I have to say the road to the temple was filled with garbage and whatnot. I hope it gets cleared, as it is a well-known temple and many pilgrims visit.

After Darshan, we started our journey to Ahmedabad. We took the route that passed via NH151A and NH47. This route passes through the cities of Jamnagar and Rajkot. We also had a look at Mr. Ambanis emperor in person, which we had a brief look at just a few months ago online. Then we headed towards Rajkot and then to Ahmedabad. We reached Ahmedabad around 11 p.m., checked into our rooms, and snugged up.

Pictures from Dwaraka:

Beauty waiting to run on the highways again

DAY-8:

The main reason for coming to Ahmedabad was to have a look at the last remaining 70MM imax in Asia. As we were a bunch of automotive enthusiasts and also cinephiles, we were pretty excited to experience it for the first time. We also planned to visit the vintage automotive museum, but womp womp time was not sufficient. After spending some time in Gujarat Science City and experiencing IMAX, we went to the BAPS Akshardham temple. The architecture there was really nice to look at with pleasant surroundings. The main attraction at the temple was the laser show, which everyone in our group had a good time at.

After that, we had dinner, and a bug in me wanted to go out for a drive on those perfectly planned Gandhinagar roads. Me and my cousins took our car out and got some nice shots of the city and the government buildings. We then came back to our hotel to doze off.

Pics of the day:

Me and my cousins came out with this beast after dinner

DAY-9:

We started off early from Ahmedabad to Kevadia (a village near the Statue of unity). We took the famous Ahmedabad to Vadodara expressway. I've already driven on the southern part of the Golden Quadrilateral. It was nice to drive on the part of the same corridor here in the north. The road was very nice to drive in, and it's a natural habitat for European cars like ours, which perform best in such places. Once the motorway ended, the state highway started. It was decent till the point around 20 km away from the statue. The roads were all dug up, and there were potholes everywhere on the road. We only encountered good roads once we reached Kevadia. We reached Kevadia around 5pm, checked in, and rested.

DAY-10:

We started around 10 a.m. to the statue. Here we will have to park the cars near the ticket counter and board an electric bus (free) or take electric rickshaws (paid), which were entirely run by women. We took the bus to the statue, and once we reached the statue and the arrangement, there was simply the next level. There is a 5-minute (around 1.5 km) walk that we took to reach the museum, which is just below the statue. The museum had the scale model of the statue and all the stories related to Dr. Sardar Vallabhai Patel and his contribution to the country.

We then used the high-speed lifts to go to the 47th floor of the statue, and to the viewing gallery. We spent some good time enjoying and capturing the views of the Sardar Sarovar Dam and the neighbouring spaces. We spent about 3 hours in total near the statue, and once we were done, we started our journey to Saputara Hill Station. We took the route that went via NH56 and Gujarat SH173, and I have to say that these roads are the worst I encountered in the whole 3800 km I drove. All bumpy and pothole-ridden roads all throughout till we reached the starting of the ghat section. Only after the ghats had started were we relieved to find good roads, albeit narrow. We reached Saputara pretty late, around 1am, and checked into our resort and dozed off.

Some photos near the Statue of Unity:

Both cars ready to roll after getting a wash

DAY-11:

We woke up early, packed our bags, and checked out. Just as we planned to start, we had a minor issue. For some reason, the car was showing a warning to fill up oil. It was not a big concern, as I had carried a small amount of oil on the trip. The oil level showed as full, but to be on the safer side, we filled around 1 litre of oil in the car. I think this issue popped up due to driving uphill for a long duration the previous day. Everything looked alright, and we continued with our journey. We quickly had a look around the hill station and clicked a few pictures of the lake and other serene places and began the return leg to Hyderabad.

We took the same route we came in, and again, after crossing the Gujarat border, we were greeted by the great Maharashtra cops. This time instead of debating, we simply gave some cash to him, and he let us go. We again went through the same route and reached Nanded by 11pm. As we travelled a long distance, we were really tired and needed some rest.

DAY-12:

There was nothing much we did other than being on the road. We started from Nanded around 10 a.m. and reached Hyderabad around 6 p.m., going through the ever-wonderful Indore corridor. I would highly suggest people who are planning to go to Mumbai or Gujarat like me take this route from Hyderabad instead of the old Bombay highway going through Solapur. This route may be long, but there are fewer hiccups to handle, and you will reach your intended destination at the same time as the other routes.

About the cars:

This is the fun stuff, isn't it? Both the cars were loaded to the brim with passengers and luggage. We could easily travel around 700 to 800 comfortably without any issues.

The Innova Crysta, as everybody knows, is a no-nonsense car designed especially for the highways, thus being a preferred choice for everyone who plans to travel along roads. It also provides plenty of space to carry people or loads, whichever you want. The car did a wonderful job covering the distance without any issues. My cousin is from a bunch of Toyota owners who are very happy with their purchase.

Coming to the XC60. It has covered around 1.5L km and has served us very well in the city as well as highways. Due to its age, it may throw some tantrums here and there like all old Euro boys, but nonetheless, it has been very reliable, providing effortless and comfortable rides all the life it has been with us. I hope I can enjoy more rides to come in this beast before upgrading to something new.

Thank you to everyone who has read my thread. I also thank my family, who have given me this wonderful opportunity to explore the country with such amazing machinery. I hope everyone who reads this post had a good time going through it, and everyone who reads this post gets motivated to go on more road trips and keep on munching miles. Happy driving!