This journey from Lucknow to Gurgaon was quite a fun and adventure. I had to bring my car (Maruti 800) from my home in Lucknow to Gurgaon . Initially I thought of hiring a driver to drive from Lucknow to Gurgaon but changed my mind later and decided that I will drive it all the way to Gurgaon. My friend…… was also with me.
I decided to start from Lucknow early morning at 5:00am. I dropped my mother to Charbagh Railway Station as she had to catch a train to Varanasi "my home town". We started from Alambagh at 5:30am and headed towards Kanpur. We got a toll road en-route to Kanpur where we have to pay the toll tax- Rs. 20. They did not give any slip and as you would find it at every Police/toll checkpost the money found its way to their pocket (quite a common thing for in our country). But I didn’t mind that since the road was superb, really awesome (quite an uncommon thing in UP) and I simply loved driving on that road. I touched the speed of 80-85kmph obviously without AC on (taking Maruti 800 on a highway with AC on is like “bacche ki jaan lena”). Now expecting speed of more than that on highways would be just too much to ask from little wonder Maruti 800. We reached Kanpur at around 6:50am.
Then we took NH-2 from Kanpur to New Delhi. Again, unexpectedly even this highway was too good.That was a four lane highway. Another thing which you will never find on Indian Roads is respect for traffic rules but it came as a pleasant surprise to me that people followed their lanes and obeyed traffic rules. In fact, truck drivers were seemed to have got lessons from some high-class driving school and were real good. They followed their lane and were generous enough in giving pass to other vehicles.
Our first hop was Etawa, a small town, at 9:20am. We had driven almost 250kms by then. We stopped at a small restaurant and ordered Paneer and Aaloo Parathas Paneer one was better.
We started from Etawa at 10am and continued on NH-2. The highway was very so good that I rarely had to put my foot on the clutch ( I cant stop praising it as I never expected such good and wide roads in UP).
The sun had started showing its real strength by then and it got humid and hotter. We reached Tundla, another small northwestern town in UP, at 12:00PM and decided to have lunch. We stopped at a “Dhaba”. I liked the “Daal” there. We rested for 10-15 minutes and left that place at 12:25pm and decided not to stop anywhere until we reach Gurgaon.
Another city that we crossed on our way to Gurgaon was Agra, 'the city of Taj Mahal'. We got huge traffic jam there (Now that’s like our real UP). It took us 30-40 minutes to cross that highways stretch that passed through Agra. As soon as we were out of the city NH-2 again was beautiful as earlier with smooth and wide roads, plenty of trees on either side of the highway and colorful flowers on divider.
Road from Agra to Mathura was pretty good for driving. We crossed Mathura at around 3:00pm and stopped for 5mins for refreshments.
After 15 minutes, we again decided to give some rest to our butts, especially mine J (can’t help and had to stop, was completely drained out in the heat). From here, the distance to Delhi was 100 kms. This place was known as Hadol.
We stretched our legs, had cold drinks and lay down under the trees. I asked one of the shopkeepers, route to Gurgaon. They suggested us to take the road to Sohana which was 28kms far from the place we were standing. This road was also known as 17B. I had some idea about this road as I had seen it in Google maps that when I googled the route for Gurgaon.
After driving exactly 28kms, we reached Palwal and found a road to Sohana on the left. We took that road and that was it, end to our happy and smooth driving. This 17B was single lane road with traffic moving both sides on a very narrow stretch full of big humps and several small-big water bodies which will not find in the middle of the road, anywhere else in the world. Big Lorries and trucks were moving at great speed on both sides. It took us one and half hour to cross this 60km stretch.
Finally we reached sector 55 of Gurgaon. I was as excited as I own this cityJ. But the trouble has not ended yet. We had to struggled to reach our house as I did not know the route to my house (can’t expect from a person who has moved in recently and hasn’t been out much except office-home-office ;-)).
At last we reached home at 5:15pm. Thank God, I made it before 12hrs of journey. Not too bad for a first time highway driver in India.
Total toll costed me around Rs 200-250.
