Road Trip Kumbh 2013

This is a travelogue for a road trip from Delhi to Allahabad 2013. This trip was more of a on-the-fly trip, there was very little preparation in the making of it. Just packed the bags one day before and were off for the weekend, zip zap zoom... just like that.

The same preparation checklist and the same rules were followed that were in-place for the road trip to Jaisalmer [1]. Checklist Doc

Our plan was to go to Maha Kumbh Allahabad, take a holy dip, wash all our sins and come back to start afresh. We were supposed to spend the night of the first day at Kanpur, then go to Allahabad from there on the next day, take a holy dip and reach Agra by night of the second day. Reach the office directly in the morning of the third day. Hotel rooms were booked in advance for Kanpur as well as Agra.

Here is the link to the road-route taken by us during the whole journey. It also contains placemarks for all the places where we took night shelter, meals, places we visited etc. Delhi to Allahabad Road Trip 2013 Route Map

Day 1: 9th February 2013 Saturday

6.10 am (0.0 km), I left my house. We had a delayed start because it was winter time in Delhi, and we didn’t want to run into early morning fog. Picked up Shikhar from his house, Sarojini Nagar, at 6.15 am (2.3 km). Now one more participant was remaining. We could have either left him and compensated for delayed start or picked him up and incurred more time overhead. Picked up Sudeep from Noida Sec-21 at 6.40 am (21.5 km) and again headed towards Delhi. We took NH2 from Maharani Bagh. Our journey started on a good note. We got to learn about “Trance music” from Sudeep. He told us it is best to hear this type of music in the morning.

9:30 am (169.1 km) Shankar Mithaiwala. We took a detour from NH2 to go to this place. We relied on google maps to take us there. We ended up in narrow alleys of Mathura after religiously following google maps. We maneuvered our swift between cows, dogs, sea of people, and school going children. On google maps, it was a 5min distance, but it took us 30mins on the road. But those 30mins were worth it when we had Chole bhature, Dahi bhalla, Khasta kachori and Lassi at Shankar Mithaiwala. The food was awesome, tasty and light. This place is highly recommended by Rocky and Mayur (of NDTV Highway on my Plate) and ranks among top foodie places in their list. If you want to come to this place, it will be better if you come from Mathura Cantonment side, and not from Chatta Bazaar side as there are no roads but only alleys.

4:14 pm (504.6 km) Hotel Mandakini Plaza. After entering Kanpur, we searched the location of our hotel, reached the location only to find that it is reported incorrectly on google maps. But somehow managed to reach our hotel. When we were driving and searching for our hotel, the surrounding area reminded us of South-Delhi, only difference was that roads were not that much good. Ordered Domino’s pizzas (see, within a few hours we started missing Delhi food).

We had time, so we went to Rave 3 mall to explore Kanpur’s social life. I had never seen a mall which has only 1 floor, and not many social animals to see too. The place was so small that Salman's Red tape store was running out of a small make-shift tent. One of the store's employees told us about Ganga Barrage. It’s a beautiful place to see.
Then we went to Z-Square Mall. This mall had some standards. It was big like TGIP mall and had all the big brands. And the headcount was good too. After covering all the floors we had dinner in the food court. South-Indian food was not good. Then we took an auto and came back to our hotel rooms, watched Roadies and retired for the day. It was just like any other day in our lives.

Day 2: 10th February 2013 Sunday

5:27 am (504.6 km), left Hotel Mandakini Plaza for Shahi Snaan at Allahabad. Fuelled up at a IOCL pump. Again we were driving in the dark, because we had to reach on time for that elusive Shahi Snaan. Sorry Kanpur, we did not have time to see Green Park Cricket Stadium and IIT Kanpur.

Although there was no fog on the road, it was looming all over the fields just beside the road. Tried to capture that fog in the pics.

6:19 am (544.0 km) Purwamer Toll.
8:13 am (673.1 km) Sihori Uparhar (Kokhraj) Toll.
We decided to have a practice session at Ganga flowing through the by-pass before we took that final dip. Shikhar and I got the taste of what was in store for us at Triveni Sangam. We went to the river bank, and after practicing came back to head to our final destination.

9:00 am (707.0 km) Allahabad by-pass.
Just after entering the main-city we found a jam. After enquiring from the locals we got to know that this jam extends upto 15kms till Triveni Sangam. Then again we were on google maps to find an alternative route. We went back to Allahabad by-pass and decided to enter Allahabad from Sahson village’s side. There were beautiful mustard fields at the Sahson village. We did a photo-shoot there. As evident from the pictures, after seeing those idyllic mustard fields, SRK in me took charge.

We parked the car at Sudeep's uncle's place and walked to the Sangam ghaats. But did not have any recording device with us. There we (almost) took a holy dip near Triveni sangam.
11:07 am (757.0 km) Allahabad, after washing away all our sins, we started the return-trip.

3:00 pm (968.6 km) Z-Square Mall Kanpur. We were again at this place to have our lunch. And again as we were missing Delhi, we went to Pizza Hut to alleviate those feelings. FYI, Pizza Hut here is as costly as it is in Delhi. Guess, we could just have saved 1000km of fuel if we were to have the same food as we have in Delhi.

4:27 pm (968.6 km) Sadly, when we started for our journey back to Agra, Sudeep sat on Shikhar’s goggles in the car. We came across 1000km to break Shikhar’s prized possession. I could have completed the same task in Delhi itself, and saved us 1000km with fuel.
“Shikhar Shades – Gone !!” : Sudeep wrote in log diary.

9:30 pm (1266.0 km) Laxmi Vilas Restaurant. It was high time we had good Delhi-South-Indian food on the journey. We asked Sudeep to navigate us to Sagar Ratna. And here we were at Ratna Sagar Pvt Ltd. Dude was not able to spot the difference in spellings.

11:10 pm (1270.6 km) Hotel Love Kush. Reached our rooms and went to bed. Next day was Monday, office-day.

Day 3: 11th February 2013 Monday

8:21 am (1270.6 km) just like any other day, we were on our way to the office. This time we took the Yamuna Expressway, it runs from Agra to Greater Noida. Now this should go down in the Limca Book of World records, probably we are the only people who were at Agra on back-to-back days and couldn’t manage to find time to visit The Taj Mahal. We techies are busy people.

8:50 am (1301.7 km) Agra Toll plaza.
9:25 am (1357.6 km) Mathura Toll plaza. We took a pit-stop and had breakfast at a canteen nearby toll plaza. At present there are canteens and rest-rooms at all 3 toll plazas on Yamuna expressway, but there are no petrol pumps.
9:47 am, pit-stop over.

10:19 am (1414.7 km) Jewar Toll Plaza.
10:34 am (1442.2 km) Did not want to go to the office early so we pulled-out at The Buddh International Circuit for a photoshoot. I will remember this place not for any F1 event, but I broke Sudeep’s uncle’s SONY DSC-HX20V camera which is of market price 18k.
"Camera damaged by BHUSHAN!" – Sudeep inked this.
But being from the Imaging side, we quickly ran some stress tests and functional tests on it, and the camera passed the tests with flying colors with some scratches.
Scratches on 18k Camera – Priceless.

10:53 am (1453.6 km) Expressway ends. The car was running in a straight line throughout the whole expressway. I felt no need to use the steering wheel, gear knob, clutch and brake pad. When the expressway ended I could actually see the spider's web on the steering wheel and clutch-brake.
Yamuna Expressway, we were getting bored. Some people have bird-watching as a hobby, what about car-watching for a hobby. We started noting down the number of cars we overtook, their make, their types, their colors. Sudeep was kind enough to note down the registration numbers of cars as well so that we don’t count those cars again who overlapped us when we stopped for breakfast.

So on 165km long expressway we saw:

• 15 Motor bikes
• 8 Hatchbacks
• 11 Sedans
• 8 SUVs
• 8 Buses
• 6 Trucks/Tempos

11:00 am (1460.0 km) STMicroelectronics, Greater Noida.

Journey Statistics

1. Driving Details

• Total distance covered: 1460 km
• Total man-hours of driving: 23 hours 34 mins
• Transporter: Bharat

Show Journey Table

2. Cost Per Head

• Fuel cost: Rs 1703.16
• Contribution to common money A/c: Rs 1465.00
• Total cost per head: Rs 5502.41

3. Toll Tax

Delhi – Noida – Delhi – Allahabad:

• DND Toll: Rs. 22 + Rs. 22 = Rs. 44
• Badarpur – Faridabad Toll: Rs. 22
• Palwal Toll: Rs. 80
• Mahuvan Toll: Rs. 80
• Firozabad Toll: Rs. 60
• Mohari Toll: Rs. 40
• Auraiya Toll: Rs. 40
• Purwamer Toll: Rs. 110 (Round-trip)

Allahabad – Yamuna Expressway – Greater Noida:

• Agra Toll Plaza: Rs 320 (For entire expressway)

Total toll taxes in the journey: Rs. 796

4. Road conditions

NH2: From Delhi to Allahabad, roads are in good condition. We had no problems.
Yamuna Expressway: One word – Excellent.

5. Major Bills

• Food: Rs. 2915
• Toll: Rs. 536
• Accommodation: Rs. 4668
• Diesel + Car service: Rs. 5110

6. References

• Delhi to Jaisalmer 2012 Blog Post
• Kumbh Mela: Wikipedia
• Shankar Mithaiwala: Facebook Page
• NDTV Highway on my Plate: Rocky-Mayur are on their way to Mathura and Vrindavan: NDTV
  (see the video after the 16 mins mark)

7. Credits

• Travel logs maintained by Shikhar Mishra
• Official Imaging partner: SONY DSC-HX20V camera brought to you by Sudeep KS
• Official Travel partner: Maruti Swift
• Special thanks to IB (Govt. of India)