Steering wheel in the hand for two days…. and now the keyboard of this laptop… trust me it reeeeealy does not feel good… I am already missing that cool air… something that could make you shiver in the hottest of sun as well… something that tells you what being pure is really about… umhum….. what awesome two days these were….

16-April; NOIDA; 0545 hrs….
8818 kms on the dash !!! Me, Aro and Martina leave NOIDA… we had not planned anything for the next two days..and were in a mood to take it the way it was coming…. though we were a good 2 hours late then the planned time to leave.. the early morning sun was still not there to greet us…. moving from noida towards haridwar at an easy 80 kmph i was realy enjoying the morning breeze… while listening to the Mahamrityunjaya Matra…Drove for about three and half hours before all three of us decided to stop and have tea… so there we were 8978 kms on my dash, 0930 hrs in my watch.. and about 60 kms before Haridwar we took a break….. Sat on the “charpais” in the Mansarovar Restaurant , surrounded by thick trees and a sweet smell of wet soil (the owner had just sprayed the entire area with water)… it was good feel… this is when i am usually in the office.. working on something or other.. and today i was walking around with a Nikon n65 thinking where should i take a few pictures from… what a striking difference between friday and saturday :)I think we were there for about 45 minutes… and then moved to Haridwar… instead of going to Har Ki Pauri, we decided to take a different road and try reach the banks of the actual river in the car itself.. and managed to do that too 🙂 the flow of the river is actually diverted towards the bathing ghats and that is why the river itself did not have a lot of water flowing.. which made it really easy for us to just pull up our pants and walk inside the water for sometime 🙂 :)…. and then take a bath as well… ummm… the water was reeeeealy cold and once out of the ganges.. i was as fresh as ever.. not at all tired… ready to drive !!! took some fotos around the place.. and finally moved out of haridwar around 1130 hrs…

Driving from Haridwar to Rishikesh is a good exp. The road is good.. and is between the rajaji national park.. so you can ( if you are lucky) can see some deers at times…. monkeys lotsa them :)… sometimes inside the cars.. and sometimes outside …. reached rishikesh in about 45 min… the plan was to stay in rishikesh overnight.. and do some rafting in the morning on sunday !!! Aro checked out a couple of hotels.. but i decided to move ahead.. and see if can get some better options… and this is where things changed.. I saw this booking office for rafting and all and decided to check out if we could go for rafting righaway… and the good news was that we could… from Shivpuri to Rishikesh… checked two places.. one wanted us to pay 450 bucks per head.. and we would be picked up from that office around 1500 hrs and start rafting by 1600 hrs… we were fine with this arrangement.. when I decided to walk into one more office and see what he had to offer… and here was the offer : 400 bucks per head..Shiv Puri to Rishikesh… and we had to move rightaway 🙂 Aro reeeally was not keen on this.. but me and Martina forced him to go.. and we paid the guy 1200 bucks and sat in the Amby which was to take us to Shivpuri… Martina was kinda suprised when we told her that for about 20 odd years Amby was the car which was driven on Indian roads…

anyway… we had to take a sumo from some distance ahead.. and then reached shivpuri… Aro was shit scared and me and martina were enjoying the looks on his face while was busy looking at the Ganga and the rapids that he would actually get in… hehehehehee.. it was a good drive….
finally we were at the banks of Ganga in Shivpuri… Three rafts… 24 ppl… 4 different groups… i was kinda uncomfortable with this.. coz on a raft its always good to have ppl who you know a li’il or more…. coz rafting is one “team” exercise that I have seen…. however the raft we took was a good heterogeneous mix of ppl… Me, Aro and Martina… Two more german girls… two guys from somewhere in India…makes it a total of 7 ppl and our instructor…. I took that front left space… martina behind me on the left.. and because Aro was really scared… he took the last place on the left just next to the instructor !!!! Aaaaaaand there we go… finally in the river.. did some small warmup exercises… Front Paddle.. back paddle…left front right back… left back right front… and STOP !!!!

Went through rapids like Return to Centre, Roller Coster, Club House, and finally “No more Rapids”… back in rishikesh at 1745 hrs… wat a water trip this was… awesome… changed our clothes and had food in Madhusudan Restaurant.. this was something on the lines of ISKON… they had a temple and a small restaurant and a guest house as well… good food.. and very very cheap… 219 was the bill for the three of us… and me and aro as usual were really hungry and ate as if this was the last time we were getting food 🙂
Time to decide what we want to do next… we asked a couple of ppl as to where could we go from there.. and out of the many options that we got we chose “Chamba” as our next spot… 60 kms and about 2.5 hours away.. considering that I had never driven on the hills, we decided to move to Chamba… started at 1915 hrs… distance on the dash at this hour was 1915 kms… It was dark, it was hilly and it was my first drive on the hills… so a lot of excitement… and exactly 2 hours and 60 kms later we were in Chamba.. the small hilly town was already asleep and we had to find the Garhwal Nigam Bunglow to sleep… on our way to that place.. we saw this small but ok sorts of a hotel.. and decided to stop there… we were not hungry… coz we had great food back in rishikesh about 2 hours back… so we decided to call it a day !!! Aro as soon as got inside the bed got up again… saying that he was feeling as if he was still in the raft 🙂 and was moving like that.. hehehehehe… but we convinced him that he was very much on a bed which was on firm ground and could sleep as well.. so he went off to sleep, snoring away to glory while Me and Martina decided to take a walk around the place for a while before we get into our beds….had tea at 2230 hours.. and then finally got inside the rooms and slept.. We took a single room and got an extra bed for her inside that room.. and her bed was right next to the window from where could see the valley, and the small lights here and there !!! good view..

17 April:
Some disturbance in the room wakes me up at 0600 hrs.. and look out of the window to see the sun just about to come up from the hill in the east.. so even though i wanted to sleep more.. i got out of the bed so that I do not miss this view !!!It was chilly outside… there was no sun so far at the point where I was standing… and the air was very cold.. and i did not have any jacket or anything… enjoyed that feeling for about 15 minutes before the sun was there in front of us… we decided to have a quick breakfast and move from Chamba.. the route that we had to take was go to Dhanaulti and then to Massourie on our way to Dehradoon… We had to decide that we want to go back to Haridwar from D’doon or straight to Delhi once we reach there… so we moved outta Chamba at 0830 hrs ( 9118 kms)…. Only a part of the road between Chamba and Dhanaulti is good, most of it actually is in a bad shape… we stopped at quite a few places to enjoy the surroundings…there were no sounds except the air… cannot decribe that feeling in words… no way possible…the hills were full of Buransh… a deep red flower, the juice of which is supposed to have a high medicinal value… at a lot of places on our way… the red petals of the flower were there.. which had fallen off the trees at higher mountains…. Drove past Dhanaulti, as we did not feel that it was any more beautiful then wat we had seen in the past few kilometres…. though i was driving very slow enjoying the cool breeze and the scenic looks of the place…..

Reached Massourie at 1200 hrs ( 9176 kms) and I did not like that place.. too crowded… not the kinda hill station i would like to be in… reminded me of Nainital which I really hated when I saw it for the first time…. we thought we would go to Kemty falls but it was a good 15 kms away.. and we would have to be back on the same road… I was in no mood to drive to that place after having a look at this town…. it for sure would be full of tourists and families… who would never take a chance and go to a town which most do not frequent !!! anyway… we parked the car there only.. and walked to the market… had some food there… and some mango shake… on our way back.. bought some grapes and bananas.. so that we could eat them on our way back !!! and finally managed to leave Massourie at 1325 hrs…

The road to D’doon is very well laid…. and it was real fun driving on this road !!! though I was careful about not picking up speed which I cannot control… though it was the first exp of hill driving.. i was enjoying it like anything… tooooooooo GOOOD !!!

Once we reached D’doon, we were not in a mood to go to Haridwar again.. so we took the way to Roorkee from there which goes through the Rajaji National Park and managed to get on that highway at 1430 hrs ( 9210 kms)… As soon the hills end there is a road for about 50 odd kms which is a straiiiiiiiiiight road… managed to touch 120 kmph on this road without any problems and was driving b/w 100-120 for about 15-20 minutes… too bad the traffic started building up soon.. and had to get back to a comfortable 80-90 zone !!! Reached Roorkee.. took a turn towards Meerut, stopped at Khatauli for a quick bite and was in Delhi by 2115 hrs (9475kms)… Thinking about another day in office.. and how bad i wanted to be back in Chamba 🙁
Anyway….here i am today…. writing about whatever happened in the last two days…rafting from Shivpuri to Rishikesha total of 40 litres of Petrol used and 650 kms covered. No refuel needed on the entire trip thanks to the huge 48 litre petrol tank of the car.about 120 kms of driving in the hills which was fhinomenol !!!the way my car worked on this trip is something that strengthens my trust in Fiat… it was absolutely effortless.. and I was not at all tired when I reached home in the night !!!

Here is something that I thought of right now:
40 litres of Petrol : 1500 rupees
17 kms of Rafting : 400 rupees
Food for three in Rishikesh : 219 rupees
The feeling of not being tired at all at the end of a two day 650 km drive : Priceless 🙂

Oh yes.. did i forget writing that we managed to take over 70 fotos in these two days? Thanks to my dear friend Rupak who was kind enough to give me his NIKON N65 🙂