Another late night. Another late morning. And we were not even meeting girls. And we were not complaining. Since the Great Indian Roadtrip turned enough heads on the roads and elsewhere to make it worth its while.
As everybody slowly crawled their way out of bed, something happened that soured the morning a bit. Another sad thing that happened was the people going away. Some people, young members had accompanied us from Delhi till Chandigarh helping us in loading, unloading, a lot of dirty work, a lot of good work, taking pictures sharing our food and our experiences. But now it was time for them to leave. I hurt quite a lot when I saw them go. And life must go on.
Some people leaving, some excess baggage offloaded, some worries dissipated with a spanking working vehicle with minor glitches, we set off for Amritsar at a pretty late hour at 1500 hours, but on a beautiful single lane through picturesque greenery, typifying Punjab with lush maize and paddy fields, the national highway was a pleasure to drive on which was much different from the monotonous ruler-like straight line of the Karnal-Ambala highway.
On this day we also encountered our first level crossing which got stuck after the train had left. So the three musketeers did some off-roading to avoid the kilometers long traffic waiting and Sunny waited too in the backup vehicle. Finally things started moving again and we were cruising once more.
The backup vehicle looked good and moved fast. The driver looked more competent too. But then everything has its flip side. This driver had a driver’s license. But he was totally oblivious of other vehicles on the other road. He would overtake a vehicle doing three digit plus speeds with a speeding truck hurtling down in its path towards him. But our driver drove as if this truck was non-existent. Sunny was sitting in the back up vehicle next to the driver. When he had no more nails left to bite upon, he resigned himself to being a fatalist and opened his laptop and started contemplating writing his own obituary.
With the older vehicle, we the riders were bringing up the rear as we were scared that the backup vehicle might breakdown. With the newer backup vehicle we were still bringing up the rear since we riders could not keep up with the driver’s antics!
We stopped at a Dhaba called the Preet Deluxe Dhaba to have lunch at 1700 hours. It said air-conditioned. The four riders walked in. There was one window AC unit in a place meant to seat forty people. And that AC unit was spewing out some fog. We sat in front of that fog maker and had a lunch which was again pretty decent, the usual North Indian stuff, Dal Makhani, Shahi Paneer, Chana Masala which was dry and bad as usual. Gasoline does not like the Makhan in Dal Makhani. Sunny loves the Chana Masala. And Skyscraper says he can have anything but ends up having Dal Makhani.
We did not do too much of night riding on this day. About an hour or so. But that was enough to make me completely averse to driving or riding in the night in places like Punjab. Drivers on these roads are a long way from getting any kind of driving sense in their damn care attitudes. As far as driving in the night goes, they are a bunch of nincompoops driving with their highbeams blinding us on the way and all of us had close shaves. I am not riding any more in the night. But then I had said that before.
We came in to Amritsar. Saw boards saying Wagah border, Golden Temple. I started feeling an excitement coming on. We found our hotel. It’s called the Royal Castle; Sunny had booked it to keep himself occupied while his driver was doing his mad rush through traffic. The hotel turned out to be pretty decent. Though it was a tad difficult to find parking as the place was teeming with people for a marriage.
We checked in and went out for food. Gasoline, Skyscraper and I had scouted for food on Maqbool Road while looking for the hotel. We went straight back there. But Sunny vetoed the idea. So we went with our dear CEO since we did not want to dump our beloved Sunny. And we went and packed some horrible Chinese fast food which I somehow swallowed. I am going back to Maqbool road tomorrow night. I am going back to those delicious looking brain roast and other kabab looking things on the street-side joints.
Day 5 Account by Sundeep Gajjar ( Sunny )
Day 5 : August 19, 2006 : Chandigarh to Amritsar
The night before we had slept at 3 AM after doing blogging and stuff on the laptops. We woke up around 9.30 AM and instantly everyone had an idea of how many things were pending.
1. Arrange a tool box ( which Autofreak did, cost us 1800/- )
2. Transfer our stuff onto the new 207 backup vehicle.
3. Pack everything at the hotel and load it in
We set off from Chandigarh at 3.30pm after dropping Rahul ( Blue ) at the bus station. Sidrock also left us on his xbhp colored scooty for Sangrur.
Sidrock with his scooty
Along the way we met a xBhp member from Hoshiarpur I Don’t remember his name. He owns a petrol pump in the city and saw our bikes parked at a roadside dhabha and stopped to wish us.
It is 8.30 PM as I write this sitting in the 207 while the other core riders navigate through the dense and erratic traffic on the highway towards Amritsar. Our destination is now 40 kms away. Ken had stopped for water and was all out on asserting that we should not be riding at night, all others unanimously agreed.
I had used the 2006 Hotel and Restaurant Guide India published by FHRAI to look up a decent hotel in Amritsar. I had booked one on phone@1500 per day for 4 people in a room.
I really look forward to see the Golden Temple and the Wagah border tommorow.
Some facts :
Distance covered :230kms
Hotel cost : Hotel Royal Palace, Albert Road, Amritsar, Rs 1500 for a suite for 4 people.