The Road Trip
The Road Trip
Year – 1 at IIM-A
Night out for a case with number and brain crunching, finally get to sleep at 6am. Alarm, snooze and alarm again, someone bangs the door at 8:50 am, in class by 9am. Prof starts off with bang bang bang, suddenly the truth beckons – another night out in vain? 1:30pm, after 20 minute extended class of MANiAC, we find a rectangular piece of paper, pinned to the most hated notice board on campus, with printed letters reading “Short Manac quiz at 2:15pm”. Our batch of 300 is suddenly divided into 3 groups – the stud ones – after all, its just another quiz, have solved such papers a zillion times, including a million and eight times the previous night! The second group, consisting of those who have done nothing as yet for the quiz, but believe that 45 minutes of flipping through at the expense of lunch would get them marginal gains and group three, a quiz of 2% weight is not worth the afternoon fast!. Afternoon nap, followed by some group work – haha, the biggest learning happens here – to develop and hone the art of free-riding!
Year-2 at IIM-A
LAN is too slow; I have been able to download only 5 movies today! Yes, there was that class that we had this morning, but one year into MBA, and our relationship management skills have improved drastically. So have our skills to have headache in stomach and making the insti doc believe every bit of that. Medical certificates the way out of getting to that minimum attendance! Party out at ramp, CCD, GB, Dbab, LKP late night meets, muggo fachhcon muggo and 5% of the batch spent 95% of the time in placecom – this is the new 5-95 rule of management!
Pre-Processes for the Road Trip!
2 years of grilling, insomnia, fun & frolic – however, the life didn’t look complete somehow. This is when 10 great men in GD mode, over a cup of coffee at CT, decided to take the road ahead, however not the one that Bill Gates made!
The discussion sparked off with a trip that would cover the entire golden quadrangle – touching all 4 major metros. Soon, the number work started, the maps flew in, the scale on map was mapped to the distances in the real world, soon with the objective function of maximizing driving, constraints like duration of time when we al would be free, the number of zeros in the fuel bill, etc started to shape up. The solver gave an optimum and feasible solution of cutting down the entire plan to South India road darshan! Chunni, our CEO and CPO – chief planning officer – presented to us the entire plan. The trip board members – essentially all general body members – approved the plan – we didn’t have Ambani brothers to fight over the trip plan!
Convocation followed by our way back to our respective homes, we had one week at home before flagging the trip on. Late night chat conferences to discuss the intricacies of the trip and we then came up with a checklist of items for the trip – just that we forgot to load most of the stuff before leaving.
The men were all set, now it was the turn to get the machines ready for the big game. Versa was less than a year old, as good as ready for the highway. Santro about 5 years since it stepped out of Hyundai factory, needed entire checkup with some minor repairs and wheel balancing. We were all set, the machines ready to fire at all cylinders and drivers to take the challenge on.
Day-0, Road Trip
12th April, 2005
Boopos, Chunni and Surjo landed in Chennai by around 5:00 pm. The two cars were ready to take off, Paro and I received the 3 non-Chennai-ites at the station and Madhu joined us there. Rest of the evening was spent in getting minor things ready for the trip like Maps, Torch, CDs, etc. So, we were all set – the target time for next morning was 6am departure to Bangalore.
Day-1, Road Trip
13th April, 2005
The key to the entire plan was to leave early every morning. This being the first day, 6am departure was a must. Just that as usual, I started packing 10 minutes before we were scheduled to leave, thus slight delay. We (Boopos, Madhu and I) went to Paro’s place. There Versa was loaded and a few senti snaps were shot. The rally was flagged off by 7:10 am, we were off. Navigating through the roads of Chennai, we paved our way out to the Highway. At 8am, we touched NH4 to Bangalore, with fuel tanks full and air pressure checked at bunks where the standard deviation in measurement of air pressure often more than the mean!
As we reached NH-4, the right to freedom promised by the Indian constitution was all ours. The four lane highway (in patches though) made us believe that if ever Deep Purple were to ever record the video of ‘Highway Star’ again, we would be the ones featuring in it. We were off, the initial configuration being Boopos and I in Santro and Chunni, Paro, Madhu and Surjo in Versa DX2 with twin AC. We allocated ourselves between the two cars solely based on the number of ACs!
I was on Santro’s steering, while Chunni was getting this bearings right with Versa. We drove and drove and drove and then had brunch at ab’t 11:30 types. The journey continues, by now, the drivers had changed - Boopos and Surjo behind the wheel now.
The highway was really good, just like a flat pitch for a batsman with even pace and bounce. However, there was a stretch in between, somewhere near the ghats, where the road was just not there. With big 20 tonne trucks taking the same path, the place had similar concentration of dust particles on the ground and in the air. This was something new for the Santro – for a car that was born and brought up in Chennai, fog lights till that day were used once every 10,000 kms – every time it was serviced, Hyundai service station checked if the connections were all fine. So, it was time to put the fog lights on to increase visibility!
At ab’t 3:30 pm, we were closing in to Bangalore. We were to stay at Total’s place – we reached there by 4:15pm. By 5pm, we were off to enjoy Bangalore with Total joining us. The Versa was off to Brigade road – the land of pubs & chicks! Santro needed some minor AC vent cleaning. I got that done and then went to meet my relatives. Met a friend in evening and spent the rest of the time at our relatives place. While action was happening in Brigade road, with junta having a ball of a time, with Boopos the one holding back to drive everyone home at night. However, Bangalore traffic problems seem to have no end, soon the city would reach a stage wherein every morning people would need to buy a new car, drive their way to office and leave the car there as junk! – yes, Bangalore is now a one-way city, pretty much based on the principle that our earth is anyways round, keep traveling and you are bound to reach the place where you intend to, even if you are traveling in the opposite direction!
This was the first day of the trip, eventful, fun filled and just what we had expected of the trip. We covered close to 350 kms plus city drive in Bangalore.
Day-2, Road Trip
14th April, 2005
We all got up at 5 am, I started from my uncle’s place at 5:30am, met my wingies of Bits in the morning – cold call! – Then headed my way to Total’s place. The Versa was getting loaded again, followed by a few senti snaps, this time with Total in the snaps too. After al-vida to Total and his parents, we left for the Highway again. On our way, we visited ISC too – beautiful campus! We then started for Hospet. The drive was cool, as long as we had AC blowing at us. Change of drivers, Santro I started in the morning, then Madhu followed by Boopos. Versa was driven almost entirely by Paro – for someone still in early days of highway driving, it was a test of endurance and he sure did come on top. We reached Hospet by 4pm, Chunni had arranged for Railway rooms at the station – excellent rooms with AC and pretty cost effective. We then went for Lunch, yes, close to 5pm! After that we went to visit this dam that was close by. It was Madhu who navigated us through Karnataka all day with his ‘Hoga Nek Bek’ for any place. The dam was about 13 kms from Hospet, with enough crossings on the way to give all of us to try this new lingo -
Day-3, Road Trip
15th April, 2005
Early morning at Hospet and we had already started visualizing ourselves in Goa! We drove down to this place called Humpi – visited a temple of historical and mythological significance – well that is all that I understood of that place. The rocky terrain that had emerged out of a river bed was the main attraction of this place. The river sans di-hydrogen oxide provided gave a precarious look to the entire place, with rocky stones balanced over each other; did Mr. Newton ever visit this place? There were no traces of gravitation anywhere, at least not directed towards the centre of earth. We followed this up with some rock climbing and a few snaps of stone-age from Mount Everest of Humpi. We then had our brunch – and we used our lonely planet guide to choose between the small restaurants at that place. After waiting for about 45 minutes, we found the food scrumptious enough to be listed in lonely planet!
We were then back to hospet, it was time for the cars to have their share of breakfast – with fuel gauge pointing towards extreme right, we left for Goa at about 10:50am. The drive was cool again – national highway was bumpy, but good enough to maintain a steady 80km per hour, however, the rear passengers did end up with sinusoidal up and down motion, without sufficient damping! We soon reached a better stretch of national highway, just when started to think that its time to eat up kilometers, we faced a road, that was either never laid in the first place, or even if it was, the sole intention was to provide rally drivers some sort of challenge – after brainstorming, we thought that probably vehicle manufacturers had sponsored that stretch to test the suspensions and ground clearance of the vehicles. But, we didn’t belong to any of the above elite groups, thus the car was down to 1st gear, the upper speed limit set to 10 kmph.
We moved further, back to the kind of highways Mr. Vajpayee had promised. Next funny incident was when we entered a city – it was Dharwad I think – Paro on his Versa took a left when the board in bold reflective letters read Goa straight. I was driving Santro, just behind Versa and we saw this happening. We followed Versa – thought of telling them that they had taken a wrong turn, but packed the idea to live upto our commitment to free-riding! We had dumped all navigators and maps in Versa so that we could follow them and free ride! The result, we had to “Hoga Nek Bek” a few more times, ended up taking a full tour of that place, putting us behind schedule by 30 minutes. But, we surely did enjoy it – the spirit of free-riding rocks!
Now we reached a stage of our trip, a decision that was critical to the plan in Goa. We had an option of taking highway down south, enter Goa from the southern side and stay at the beaches in south – supposed to be less family types, we were told! The other option was to take the highway up north, enter Goa from northern end and then drive down south – distance wise, it didn’t make a big difference either way, but, we had known that Boka was to reach Goa by 5:30pm by train, so we thought of giving him a surprise at the station and picking him up. A few more “Hoga Nek Beks” by Madhu and we were told that highway up north was not exactly meant for the vehicles we were in – a Sports Utility Vehicle with Diesel turbocharger and we could have taken the challenge up. With due telepathic apologies to Boka, we took the highway down south. Now the Santro was taking the lead, with me on the steering wheel. My navigator Boopos had been sleeping as if he was just out of an attack of insomnia. As we reached the junction that read (apparently) Goa right, Mangalore left, I read it and look left, thinking that it read the other way. Fortunately, versa was blessed with more open pair of eyes and brains to comprehend the visual directions. Honking with dipper lights in the rear view mirror made me pull the Santro to the left. I turned to my right and saw four naughty nuts laughing their heart out! A u-turn, and we were in vector terms, heading towards Goa. Boopos after a long nap took the steering in his hands. I was more than delighted to give the steering control this time – took out my Digicam to take a few pics of the scenery around from the highway.
We got to this beach in South Goa. We were as hungry as we have ever been. Goa is the place to have grub – amazing dinner and we were now in the ‘beach mode’. We checked into these elevated wooden beach huts, an experience in itself. A late night stroll at the beach along the shore. The beach was not too populated – given that this was summer vacation time, we were more than satisfied with the beach area per person that was available that night. Having been on road since morning 6:30am, we were slightly tired and so we chose to crash early. Still no phone from Boka – is his train running that late? Or is it the standard version of Boka – one without any of our cell numbers, hoping that India would advance overnight to have a GPS with remote sensing satellites sensing him somehow! Anyways, we were tired and out and sleep is all that we could think of. To hell with Boka was the verdict! We drove close to 400 kms this day.
Day-4, Road Trip
16th April, 2005
Strange time to start the day! It was close to 2am; I woke up, heard some very strange sound – something similar to what we see in a typical Hollywood special on jungle life, with the hero marching his may through, and with every step on a thick layer of dead leaves. By the time I got my senses going, the reality dawned in – it was raining cats and dogs, with thunderstorm and lightening rocking against the tilted pyramidal roof of our hut. The strong wing, made our elevated hut sway – a bit of weightlessness is what we could feel, not vertical, but horizontal weightlessness! Ooops – r u we gonna fly with this wind? I woke up Boopos, we packed our bags, waiting for the hut to fall. We called up Chunni on his cell Mr. diplomatic woke up in his hut, and slept again. In the mean time, wind speed picked up and it seemed like a bit of atmospheric Tsunami!
‘This must be happening here every-night’ – our strong logic to what we first thought was a natural disaster. We were back to our bed! I almost slept the very next instant.
Early morning, 8:30am types, and what a way to start – Boka is here! Apparently his train reached Margoa at 6:30 am; my initial reaction was a bit of ‘sorry types – must have been tough when the train was running 12 hours late’. Soon, Boka explained what till date I have not been able to figure out. Boka got an agent to book his ticket. Train timetable is not taught at schools in Calcutta, so our dude never saw that. The agent told him that it was a journey of 27 hours, as good as he has been with numbers, and he added the departure time to this figure and found out that the train should be in Goa by 5:30 pm – the time officially known to us as well. On reaching the Delhi station, he asked someone again and the reply he got was ‘6:30 tak pahunch Jayegi’. Having got his date-time-number crunching right, Boka boarded the train. Just that it was supposed to reach Goa at 6:30 am, the following day of what he had thought! Anyways, this is just a preview of the capabilities and skill-set that Boka has put on his CV, for life!
Mail checking at a local rustic centre at the beach and we were off to explore the other parts of Goa post breakfast, by around noon types. We tried searching for a beach that we could see on the map, but there were no boards on the road to confirm that. We took some random turns, eventually found ourselves driving uphill for some distance. This sparked off the next level of thinking, the conclusion of our research being that Goa as such is below sea level, a potential place for petroleum companies to hunt for crude oil!
We did reach the beach that we were looking for after navigating our way through roads meant for vehicles in one direction only. Any on coming traffic, including a cycle was a driving challenge! We found that it was a private beach owned by some resort. ‘U-turn, March out’ famous words of every PT teacher at school were put to use and we drove back. After crossing entire Goa, we found a beach at the northern tip of the state. We reached there just in time for sunset, got the football out of the car. A similar accommodation on the beach, but this time with solid concrete walls and roof to negate the effect of thunderstorms!
Over the dinner, we started discussing the plan for rest of the trip. We had consumed more time than we had initially thought. There were diverging opinions – some of us wanted to be in Goa for ever, some of us were driving focused and wanted to complete the entire trip instead of cutting it short. Now to the decision making process – Pre-MBA, life was so simple. A decision always was a yes or a no, there was no need to list out the options, define criteria beforehand and never did we care to go deep into the objective! Now, with 7 idle brains, the discussion shifted to the purpose of the trip – are we having a road trip or a vacation? Some of us had strong opinions, rest of had opinions, but tried acting diplomatic. Anyways, it was a good rally – the flow of discussion made many of look like spectators seeing a Tennis grand slam final!
Finally, we decided, one more day in Goa, we gave up the breaks we had planned in Mumbai and Hyderabad. 3 long hours to decide this! – Snapshots from hell?
Day-5, Road Trip
17th April, 2005
Chunni was not keeping well since the very start of the trip. Fever was still there, so he decided to fly out to Mumbai and take necessary medication. After a heavy brunch, with Boka showing his true colors, shocking the waiter with the pure volume of his orders! Post brunch, we dropped Chunni at the airport, a drive of 30 kms from the beach we were in. Versa was in the mean time given for some minor repair of the front left brake caliper, plus wheel alignment and a wash. We were then reminded by messages from our respective homes – ‘Petrol bunks on strike tomorrow, all over the country’. Oops, we planned to travel 550 odd kilometers the following day, with full tanks, the cars could do a maximum of 450 kms. We thought of leaving Goa the same evening – drive down 100 kms, fill in fuel before 12 midnight and then stay at some place. However, we packed that idea and chose to enjoy the beach for another night. Football at the beach, we hogged again – Goa food was something we would remember for rest of our lives. Then we headed back to this town where we could fill in fuel as there was a petrol strike the following day. While returning back, we started searching for keys – we didn’t have keys to 2 out of the 3 rooms that we had taken. Thought the owner would stamp a huge monetary dent plus senti! But the guy was as soon as cucumber! He opened the lock with the duplicate, without charging us anything extra. Tired as we were, we crashed off immediately.
Day-6, Road Trip
18th April, 2005
Early morning, alarm on cell phones, staggered by a minute each to give snooze effect, we had no option, but to get up. As we walked out of our beach accommodation at 6am, there were a few Kodak moments (given the digital age, the latest nomenclature is ‘Panasonic 128MB memory chip moment’). The early morning scene was one we would remember for rest of our lives – white beach with blue water, silhouetted with black rocks along one side of the sea shore, with salty white waves darting against the rocks adding to the contrast of the picture perfect!
Cars packed with luggage, we were off to where we belong – National Highways! As we entered the highway, we could see a few petrol bunks open. Upon further ‘Hoga Nek Bek’ in corresponding format and lingo, apparently, petrol bunks were open in Goa, but Maharashtra was likely to be a dry state for the cars! Early in the morning, we ransacked a Kabadi. We got 2 old cans of 10 litres each to fill petrol. Back to the bunk and we found that one of the cans had a broken cap. So, we gave the good can to Versa guys and I and Boopos took care of the other can with a bit of leakage. Boopos applied all he knew about fluid dynamics to minimize the outflow of fuel from the can cap. I tried minimized the third differential (Jerks!) of the equation that governed the motion of Santro. We traveled for about 30 kms in that strange configuration with Boopos not letting even day light pass between his bat and pad, oops, this ain’t cricket!
Now we stopped and tried emptying around 2 litres of fuel into the car tank. Initial experiment with a plastic cup was a complete disaster – before the fuel would be put into the tank, the glass melted in our hands! Next we tried with 5 plastic cups one stacked over the other and the experiment was effective, though not efficient as we were still loosing precious fuel while filling into the tank. Somehow after repeated goof-ups, we did pour in some fuel into the tank – more importantly, got rid of 2 litres of fuel from the leaking can. Now Boopos was in the drivers’ seat, I was the navigator cum petrol can holder!
We drove down another 100kms. Now, we knew that the tank would have just enough space to empty the fuel in can. We got to this town where we could find a few auto-rickshaws. Got a funnel from one of the auto rickshaws parked and we tried filling in fuel into the car. This was efficient, no fuel lost in the transfer. But alas, we had only poured in close to 4-5 litres and the tank was full again. Then camera, action – there was a can with fuel, a car with tank full, a funnel and 2 mechanical engineers! Then some brain wave and we put some applied funda. We now parked the car is a way so as to free some space in the tank, using all that we knew of the fuel line. The inlet to the tank in Santro is on the rear left side. So, we now parked the car in a slightly tiled way, parking the front left wheel a few inches below the road level – the side of the road helped us to get this angle – thus the read left side was slightly raised and that was enough to fuel in the remaining 3 litres of fuel in the can! Eureka!!!! We were back on road, driving our way, finally the petrol strike was no more a mental block for the road trip.
I then took the drivers’ seat, Boopos the free-rider, slept for 4 straight hours. Out of 550 kms that we traveled that day, we had 400 kms of ghats drive. With shoulders continuously in use to steer the vehicle, it was a test of endurance! We drove and drove and drove. In between, we did find some Volvo buses running with great ease in Ghats – a sight not associated with any 6-wheeler in Ghat region. Paro was terrific that day – it was his first time with ghats and he was driving well, he had got the funda of keeping the car in proper gear right, giving enough space for oncoming traffic on turns – Paro had developed into a full fledged Highway Star now!
We stopped just after sunset for some refreshments – respite for starving Boka! We were about 100kms away from our destination. This being the first proper night drive of the trip, it was over to using the dipper lingo with the oncoming traffic, with indicators taking a new meaning!
We reached Boopos’ place by 10:30 pm. It had been 16 hours of journey, we would have driven for 14 hours – I had driven for about 12 hours that day. Somehow I managed to stay awake though dinner and was down at 11:30pm. Paro and Boopos worked on their CVs. Boka also slept early, he did make some very funny gestures… hmmm… explanation and logic to any of Boka’s actions and thoughts are well beyond the scope and comprehension of this Road Trip document!
Day-7, Road Trip
19th April, 2005
Early morning (actually 8am), Boopos’ Place.. Have to get Santro checked as .. it was giving some positive third differential of motion, jerks! The service centre mechanic broke the all important wire that supplies energy to the sensors and cylinders. Somehow got it soldered – thanks to a mechanic in Mulund. Back to Boopos’ place, it was breakfast time. It was the first time I was awake at the dining table. The previous night, I am told, I had hogged big time, but was perhaps too sleepy to even realize that! A great breakfast, we hogged and hogged and hogged. After I had declared that I was through with my breaker, I still managed to have a few more sandwiches and parathas!
Hoga and Sidin joined us. Sidin by then had scaled new heights, with crime division inspector Koruvilli from Borivilli calling up Sidin’s uncle in Kerala! All for a lost cell phone that was found not with Bin-Laden’s personal limousine, but from a Mumbai Taxi. Anyways, we heard the sequence of events over and over again!
We started for Pune at ab’t 3:30 pm. After fueling in, we reached the expressway. The cars and the drivers had never seen anything even remotely similar to that. It was as flat as a runway – 6-lanes with truck drivers following the norm of being in the first lane only. Driving on that expressway was fun. I usually keep around 95 kmph on national highways, the speed at which Santro glides with stability. Here, for the same level of control and confort, the speedometer was reading 110 kmph. I did touch 120 kmph – and the vehicle looked as if we were at 80 - amazing road!
With a dent to our ego and a bit of introduction to how truck drivers feel all the time, at 110 kmph, we had to travel in second lane! - As there were more gifted cars on the expressway – the Honda Citys and Accents of the world that could touch 160 on these highways. We stopped at Lonavala for some light meal. It was one over-priced place with service time corresponding to a 0-server model!
Now, desperate Boopos got behind the wheel. I took this opportunity to enjoy the back seat comfort on the expressway. In the next 80 kms that Boopos drove to Pune, there wasn’t a time when the rear suspension compressed! The road was flat, I was looking around for Airbus A380! The pilot of the test flight might find this better than the runways we have in our country!
We reached Hoga’s flat in Pune. We had 3 floors of cricket place for ourselves now. We were carrying our cricket gear with us. We left for dinner at about 7pm. Boopos got down to meet his friends from IITB and other friends. Rest of us went to this place called – ‘The Palace’. The sizzlers there rocked! I helped myself to a full chicken meal – one chicken shaped into kababs, tandoori, and sausages! Excellent grub, just the kind of meal one would want after a drive on that expressway. We then moved to our standard post breakfast, pre-lunch, post lunch, pre-snacks, post snacks, pre-dinner and post dinner place called ‘Barista’. We had our coffee, Boopos joined us back, senti after meeting his friends!
Hoga navigated our way back; its midnight, this day gotta end here!
Day-8, Road Trip
20th April, 2005
We were driving our way back to Hoga’s place, post a coffee at Barista. At a turning, Santro started cribbing. I had to pull it out to a side lane. As connected as we were, we called the other car back. We tried getting to Hyundai helpline numbers, but the Pune number we were carrying with us were old. I got through to Chennai helpline number – the dude there tried his level best to help us out – somehow he couldn’t get it to the Pune Helpline. The wire that was soldered in the morning had come off now. We tried stopping a few Santros to get the number of local dealers, called up just dial to get us numbers of some mechanics, but it was all too late for the mechanical world! Fortunately, at the mechanic’s shop in Mumbai, I had observed the part that was soldered and had taken a thin wire from him as a back up. We needed lights to start our work. Versa was then parked, facing the Santro with head lights of versa focused on the engine of Santro. I took out that part that was soldered, did some electrical hit and miss type work and finally the engine kicked again! The temporary connection was feeble! We drove back, again minimizing engine vibrations (changing gears at optimum speeds) and road bumps, much the same way petrol had to be carried!
We reached Hoga’s place safely and it was shutdown time for us! Next morning, Boopos got the entire info ab’t Hyundai service centre in Pune – supposed to be the best in India. We drove our way to the service centre. At 9am, the car was inspected. The service engineer understood the problem and took the car in. They had some advanced tools fix this problem. In the mean time, Boopos and I walked down to a restaurant and had breakfast. Versa gang had also started by then – the idea was to finish with breakfast and stuff so that we could head for Hyderabad directly.
The car was back with us by about 11:30 am. In the mean time, Boopos explained his project that he did with Fiat after 3rd year of B.Tech. We drove back to Barista again and headed for the highway.
At 12:30, we had reached the highway. Road conditions were good, infact the highway was excellent – just that we had been spoilt by that brilliant expressway, the car suspensions were again put to use, and they couldn’t free-ride anymore!
Day-9, Road Trip
21th April, 2005
A long drive of 12 hours, we reached Hyderabad by 12:30 am. Many of us thought that the best part of the trip was behind us, we had started to equate our trip to Tendulkar’s career. But, just as the little master keeps coming up with huge scores, Hyderabad was out altogether a different experience. Nitesh had booked his personal suite at Taj Bangara for us. We entered the suite at 12:30 am. For the next half hour, we were all screaming – ossum ossum awesome, Ooooosum, osummmaaaa! As we entered, there was a high profile living room, a bedroom that had A 380 interiors and a master bedroom that I don’t have words to explain; it was the master of the previous bedroom! We all slipped into the cozy bed, slept like we had never slept before.
Late morning, no one had the enthu for going all the way to Nagarjasuna Dam. We wanted to stay at Taj Banjara for rest of our lives!
I then went with my Bitsian wingie to meet another close friend at Microsoft. After lunch there at Bill Gate’s mess, (mess here is purely used in connotation with the food and has no reference, direct or indirect to Windows!). We joined the main group back at the Museum. In the mean time others had seen Char Minar. Challa and Skirty joined us at the museum. We saw the lifestyle that the rich and famous kings of yesteryears had; saw some amazing sculpture and paintings and then we got bored of it. So, we decided to follow the crowd there – it was worth it!
We then visited Golconda fort – saw a show that helped us brush our history a bit, with sound and light effects helping us understand what textbooks couldn’t! On our way back, we had dinner and it we were back to Taj Banjara.
Day-10, Road Trip
22nd April, 2005
10th morning of the trip, Taj Banjara luxury, marginal utility of driving decreasing, Goa now a history – these were reasons enough for us to delay our departure. We preferred a slightly laid back start, yet again enjoying the luxury of Taj Banjara, for those precious extra minutes. As we moved out, we enquired the tariffs at Taj. Multiply that by two for our two night stay, and the figure was well beyond the projected expenses for the entire trip! As we drove out of Hyderabad, we found that the city was pretty well planned, with wide roads with capacity to chew in traffic for another decade – may be our sample was not sufficient, but from what we had seen, Hyderabad did look a better place than Bangalore.
On the highway again, the engines roaring against the heat of South India, the cooling system of the car working hard to coolant temperature at 95 degrees and the drivers now feeling a bit of the heat as well. Fortunately, we had the best of roads. From Hyderabad to Vijaywada,, with distance close to 250 kms, the road was good – though the toll at certain stretches was far more than the road deserved. There were tolls for micro-bridges as well. We analyzed the average traffic on the highway and found that it made lot of business sense to collect money under ‘Build Operate and Transfer’ scheme. However, our free-riding brain then took over to decide that the best solution was to get an old STD/ISD booth, place it right at the centre of road and collect toll. In a few hours, we could have got our entire trip sponsored!
Vijaywada, we took the bypass as certain pricey friends refused to meet us! Then came Ongole, Chennai was now within striking distance. However, we realized that we would reach late at night only. We continued to drive, the highway was entirely four-lane, with the plants in the central divider negating the effect of hull dip head lights of on coming traffic. We could drive infinitely on these roads. So, we decided to drive down to Chennai, at drive being enjoyable. We reached Chennai by 2am, and then took a few wrong turns to drive through the centre of the old city. We reached at 2:30 am, tired and out. It had been 3,630 kms of driving. That’s the only statistic that we got hold of that day. We had driven for 720 kms that day.
Some statistics
In all, the entire trip was for 3,630 kms. The Santro swallowed in 252 litres of petrol, giving a mileage of 14.65 Kms per litre. This was achieved with A/C on most of it, city drive in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune, Ghats of about 500 kms. On an average, we drove for 360 kms a day, however excluding the 2 days of break in Goa and 1 day in Hyderabad, our average drive was 518 kms per day.
The trip pronounced into 78 hours of highway drive, giving us an average speed of 46 km per hour, excluding breaks for refreshments, the average speed clocked 56.3 kmph. Santro clocked 120 as its maximum speed on Mumbai-Pune expressway, though it could have gone a bit more with full throttle. In addition to 78 hours of Highway drive, we drove for 19 hours in Bangalore, Goa, Hyderabad and Pune. Thus the total time in the car was a whooping 96 hours, with 83 hours of driving.
The above statistics could mean a lot to me personally. My drive to drive has not diminished a micro-bit! Infact, the very next day after this trip, I went with my parents to Pondycherry, a drive of 300 kms.
At some stage of my life, and hopefully sometime in the next 10 years, I dream of driving round the world, a tour by road. That tour would be 10 times as long as this one probably. And then there is a world record that as of now stands at about 40 days for the entire trip. This trip has been a huge learning experience in terms of understanding the dynamics of driving for long hours, how important the car and the engine is for such long drives, endurance at two stages – one is driving for long hours on any given day and two enthusiasm to carry it on for days together, to get anywhere close to that record and most importantly a driving partner capable of driving just as long.
The Road Trip Ends
Our road trip finally ended in Chennai on 23rd of April, 2005, with lunch at Madhu;s place and dinner at Paro’s place. As we look back, it was a great experience for all of us. The ‘official Bakra’ of the trip status exchanged many hands – to start with it was Madhu for his age and the yesteryears when he used to play with dinosaur’s eggs! Then it was me for cracking the most pathetic jokes. Soon I positioned myself as the ‘Ramu’ of the trip – cleaner of cars – a stop in between and I was on to the windshield, clearing it off any specs of dust! The ‘Bakra title’ was then handed over to Chunni, for his ‘It Depends’ reply to any question, so was his navigation – ‘Chunni, do we take a left or a right here?’. Pears of wisdom flow out then – ‘It Depends’! The title was then given to Boopos. Given that his highest hair has a ground clearance of only 4 foot; it was quite funny to see him drive! He could either be down there pressing the accelerator, brake and clutch combination or he could be standing on the front seat, to get a view of the road ahead! It was funny to see the reaction of the drivers of the oncoming traffic – they could see a Santro moving towards them with no driver! – Santro with auto pilot? Bakra title then was held by Paro – this self-proclaimed genius when it comes to ‘Aagey Dekh’ syndrome, got a taste of his own medicine. He was made to follow Santro when he was driving his Versa and we could keep the ‘Aagey Dekh’ thingie on him for eternity! The title keeps shifting, it was Surjo the ‘Bakra’ next – the ‘Hoga Nek Bek’ version of Bakra, surjo just couldn’t get it right. When he tried his hands on Kannada, chemical plants all over the world released Nitrous oxide – laughing gas. What a man! In billion years of human civilization, there hasn’t been an event that has made everyone happy. Surjo could!
Once we reached Goa, Boka was in – the permanent holder of ‘Bakra title’! With his fundaes ranging from AM/PM difference with train timings, to his appetite for ‘share of throat’ – here the share of throat is the share he gets of the world consumption of edible items, knees that tickle from a safe distance of 6 meters!
Though Boka remained the ‘Bakra’ – crowned forever – there were traces of brilliance flowing out from Sidin and Hoga to make them the holders of ‘Bakra’ crown for a small time interval dt. Hello sidin, inspector Koruvilli from Boruvilli had forced his uncle to make a Bakra out of him! Hoga’s claim to fame was that no specific instance that could make him takeover the coveted position of ‘Trip Bakra’. However, with his penchant for computer related fundaes, he went on to explain the functioning of different versions of BIOS – something that he understood, some of us heard and rest of us thought to be a part of Baba Seghal’s number that was on in the car!
With the Bakra series, we get to the end of ‘The Road Trip’. Our sincere thanks to Hyundai and Maruti for manufacturing two wonderful machines, National Highways Authority of India for transforming the nation so soon with roads that match international standards, Indian petroleum companies for investing and maintaining world class petrol bunks making India the leader in number of petrol pumps (25,000 petrol pumps), parents of all the participants for giving us permission to be a part of this adventure and for their financial support, people all over to help us with directions, TTK for maps that are dot right, the music industry for keeping up our drive to drive, IBM for making laptops that helped us with accounting for the trip and a big thanks to Nikesh for Taj Banjara.
posted by PaintItRed at 1:46 PM
3 comments
