{"id":1915,"date":"2014-10-30T16:05:57","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T10:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2023-03-28T18:39:44","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T13:09:44","slug":"bombay-to-udaipur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2014\/10\/bombay-to-udaipur\/","title":{"rendered":"Bombay to Udaipur"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In April 2011, we embarked on our first &#8220;long drive&#8221; from <a href=\"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2011\/04\/bombay-to-goa\/\">Bombay to Goa<\/a>.\u00a0In May 2012, we once again attempted the same\u00a0trip, this time <a href=\"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2012\/05\/bombay-to-goa-part-two\/\">older and wiser<\/a>. Then, came some months\u00a0of back trouble, which reached such a low that I did not think I would drive again. However, having made a full recovery this year, high on the agenda was a drive to Udaipur&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I was told by friends who had done it before that the Bombay to Udaipur journey is longer than Goa (approx. 800 kms each way, instead of about 650 kms), but easier to do. In any case, we decided to make the most of the road trip, and not stress about reaching Udaipur before sun down. So we planned a halt at Vadodara, both ways.<\/p>\n<p>That turned out to be\u00a0a good decision since\u00a0Vadodara is a nice, clean city that resides roughly halfway to Udaipur. You also have the option of breaking journey at Ahmedabad, which is roughly an hour&#8217;s drive further north from Vadodara.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the log from our trip&#8230; Bear in mind that, depending on your starting point,\u00a0milestones may vary by 3-4 kms. Also, our goal was to enjoy the journey, not just the destination. Therefore, these logs will\u00a0reflect that attitude in the stops we made.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Departure @ 6.10 am from Powai, Odo set to 0 kms<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at Kamat&#8217;s @ 76kms, 7.45 am for breakfast (30 mins)<\/li>\n<li>Other milestones: McDonald&#8217;s @\u00a0162 kms,\u00a0Hotel Tulsi @ 171 kms<\/li>\n<li>Sugar and Spice food plaza @\u00a0198 kms with clean loos<\/li>\n<li>Other milestones: Sugar and Spice @\u00a0243 kms,\u00a0McDonald&#8217;s @ 262 kms<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at Hotel Swagat for lunch @\u00a0276 kms, 1.30 pm (45 mins)<\/li>\n<li>Arrived at Vadodara around 3.30 pm, 410 kms<\/li>\n<li>Started next morning at 8.15 am, towards Udaipur!<\/li>\n<li>Breakfast stop (30 mins), 10.30 am \u00a0at the start of Ring Road (Many hotels and loos)<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at the Vintage Car Museum (1 hour) @\u00a0519 kms<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at Hotel Landmark for lunch at 2pm (Bad loo) @ 175 km before Udaipur i.e. 587 kms from Mumbai<\/li>\n<li>Multiple petrol pumps seen soon after crossing the Rajasthan border\u00a0@\u00a0648 kms<\/li>\n<li>Reached Udaipur\u00a0at 850 kms, 6 pm<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the whole, the roads were smooth and the drive was pleasurable.\u00a0The journey on the way back was somewhat less eventful&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Departure from Udaipur at 6.20 am, Odo set to 0 kms<\/li>\n<li>Stopped for breakfast at Hotel Aashirvad, 103 kms, 7.45 am<\/li>\n<li>Other milestones: Hotel Ashish @ 122 kms (bigger and better),\u00a0Hotel Asopalav @ 138 kms (biggest!)<\/li>\n<li>At 10 am @ approx. 32 kms before Ahmedabad, we took a detour via\u00a0Gandhinagar, to visit the Sabarmati Ashram<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at the Ashram @ 257 kms<\/li>\n<li>Joined the Ahmedabad expressway again @\u00a0270 kms, at 12 pm<\/li>\n<li>At 349 kms, 12.50 stopped at a sad food court about 15 kms from Vadodara to fill fuel and reached the city soon after<\/li>\n<li>Departed next morning at 7.10 am, 385 kms<\/li>\n<li>Breakfast stop (30 min) at 9.05 am at a big food court with nice loos, CCD, etc. @ 507 kms<\/li>\n<li>Also,\u00a0Sugar and Spice\u00a0@\u00a0560 kms, and a big Kamat&#8217;s @ 637 kms<\/li>\n<li>Stopped at 12.20 pm at Hotel Ahura (45 mins) for awesome Parsi food @\u00a0691\u00a0kms (on opp. side of the road)<\/li>\n<li>Reached home (Powai) at 3.10 pm\u00a0with\u00a0810 kms on the odo<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The stretch from Udaipur to Vadodara was even better, since the detour via Gandhinagar meant that we bypass the only stretch that has two-way traffic. Driving through Gandhinagar was also\u00a0an experience worth doing!<\/p>\n<p>A common lament across all my road journeys remains the woefully inadequate facilities we have across the country, when it comes to washrooms and clean water.<\/p>\n<p>A new phenomenon we encountered during our Ahmedabad to Udaipur to Ahmedabad stretch is spotting a number of vehicles that looked clearly &#8216;lived-in&#8217;, and carrying multiple passengers, but without any license plates! So watch out in case you get into an accident with one such dubious vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In April 2011, we embarked on our first &#8220;long drive&#8221; from Bombay to Goa.\u00a0In May 2012, we once again attempted the same\u00a0trip, this time older<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,20],"tags":[6,13],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-personal","tag-india","tag-travel"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4180,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions\/4180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}