Bird’s eye view:
A travel of more than 300 kms after a long time. My car was so keen to overtake everyone that I had to take my foot off the gas from time to time. Google map showed a travel time estimate of 6.5 hrs, which, with stops for meals, would be around 8.00 hrs, and so it was. We left at 7.15 am and clocked in at 3.00 pm.
I was a bit wary of the road conditions because Dehradun to Bareilly was not a single highway, unlike, say, Dehradun to Delhi. You got on to NH34 and that was it. Dehradun to Bareilly was a continuous connection of roads, and we got passed around like a baby with a soiled diaper gets passed around by his sisters. There was a series of roads running north-south, and another series running east-west, and we kept zigzagging between them, overall travelling south-east.
That said, road conditions were superb. I have said it in the hills, and I will say it in the plains, Uttarakhand govt maintains roads well, be it NH or not.
It got hot as soon as we passed 9.00 am, and by the time we reached Bareilly, it was 38 degC! Now you’ll feel it, everyone seems to be saying!
Leaving Dehradun (7.15 am):
A pretty homestay, so there were some pangs of separation. The early morning tea in the garden in particular, was something I could get used to.
We also knew that our departure from Dehradun heralded the first step in our homeward bound journey. All the subsequent stops of Bareilly, Lucknow, Azamgarh, Patna and Asansol were just that - stops. We did not expect much touristy stuff to happen, nor much achievement except to survive the heat till we reached home. So we had decided to travel 5-6 hours only every day, in order to keep the tires cool as well. Only today, I having rested well, the drive to Bareilly was scheduled to be longer.
We zipped through half of Dehradun and crawled through the rest, entangled in the school crowd at some places. Finally, we were on the Haridwar highway, nipping along. In fact, we passed dangerously close to Haridwar, it being on the east side of the Ganges and we crossing on to the west side. There were a beautiful set of empty ghats, called Chandi ghat, around there, easily accessible by foot, but taking a car around would have added too many minutes to our already long journey. So, sadly, we let it flow.
Breakfast at Gaindi Khata (9.00 am):
No, the name has no significance, nor is it a term of abuse. We decided to stop here for breakfast, and this was the term of endearment the locals had assigned to this piece of earth. It was quite a big and clean dhaba, called Saini Vaishno Dhaba, standing alone and aloof on a stretch of highway, with plenty parking, so it suited us to a T. We imbibed our usual go-to breakfast, alu paratha with curd and pickle, though we soon realised that the pH of our tummies were dropping below 3.0. We popped the necessary pills and carried on, determined to drown the acid in lots of water.
As a matter of fact, with AC continuously running in the car, we do not realise how dehydrated we become. One of my signs is that one of my eyes begins to dry up and start watering, which happened around 4 hrs into the journey this time.
The jhumka chauraha (1.30 pm):
Bareilly is actually quite a religious place, with well-known temples and dargahs. But as soon as our friends and relatives heard that we were going to Bareilly, jokes on jhumkas flooded our inboxes, courtesy the old Hindi hit song from the film Mera Saya: “Jhumka gira re, Bareilly ke bazaar mein…”. From requests for clicking pictures wearing jhumkas, to enacting reels dropping that piece of ornament in an appropriate marketplace, peoples’ imagination was running amok. I was a bit out of sync to start with, and like Alia Bhatt in the remake of the song, was tempted to ask: "What jhumka?"
We discovered an interesting factoid, that on the Bareilly bypass road, along our route in fact, there was now a jhumka chauraha or crossing, which sported a biggish jhumka on a pole, quite sturdily fixed, ensuring that this particular one did not drop anywhere, even if current versions of healthy Sadhanas takraoed with her paramour repeatedly. We snapped a pic of the crossing, a testament to how everlasting love can be when sympathetically supported by the municipality.
Lunch at Bhoora (2.00 pm):
We were wondering what to do about lunch, since NH530 was rather devoid of decent tuck shops. We were just 10 mins away from our resort. Should we then have it after we reach? Almost immediately, a sign saying 80% Dugout hove into view, which had some chance of being an eating joint, though, till the time we finished our meal and drove off, we could not make out in what way was the name appropriate. Granted that the interiors had a decor like military camps, in fact, more like POW camps, with small wooden cabins of slatted board and rough hewn furniture, and pewter utensils as decor, the 'dugout' could be connected, but '80%'? Still a mystery.
We had our usual travelling lunch - rice, daal and alu jeera.
Reaching the resort (3.00 pm):
Our place of stay, Green Forest Resort, was almost on the highway, chosen with the idea that we will be able to stop and go on quickly without getting too deep into Bareilly town.
[Pro tip for route planning: If you want to do this, for example for a Bareilly stop, see how Google maps plots the route when you request Dehradun to Lucknow, and look for hotels at the spot where maps indicates the bypassing route for Bareilly. Thing is, this process will throw up more of banquet type of hotels, since they come up farther from the city.]
The resort was pretty nice. Three macho lads were cavorting in the swimming pool out in front, but our rooms at the back were pretty private and pretty big - a total VFM proposition if there was any. We were in good time to relax a bit. But not so for Panna. She had other plans.
Bareilly ke bazaar mein (5.30 pm):
“How can we be so close to Bareilly market and not go and shop for jhumkas there?” was her irrefutable logic. I mumbled something about all jhumkas looking the same, wherever you buy them from, so why don’t we… Nothing doing. She will not compromise on quality. A Six Sigma Black Belt in such matters, she is.
So she tied up with an auto driver to take her into town, wait for her to complete her chakkar, and drop her back. I was very kindly advised to take rest, poor thing. I obtained the auto driver’s name and number (Rajesh), got her to share her live location, and sat on the bed, biting my nails.
But the trip went well, I was told. Here are a few pics from her conquest.
An in-house dinner is obviously called for, given the remoteness of the resort, and the heat outside.
Tomorrow we travel to Lucknow.
Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray
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