A Rock & Rolling Dream Road Trip To The Magical Heaven: Ladakh !!

pahujaamit · Sep 22, 2013

Entering Rajashthan

Multi-purpose vehicle carrying people + Milk cans

Jaipur 356kms away.. was a distant dream to reach now as I was feeling tired and sleepy..

Chittorgarh Toll Plaza

Scorpio taking rest as we re-fuel ourselves

My cashier and accountant at work recording expenses for the trip

Panner Butter Masala..

Tandoori roti's and Parontha's

and Dal Tadka... Yumm..

After a great lunch, we started again for a long drive till Jaipur. As I was feeling much better now, I started thinking of reaching Jaipur today.

Jaipur 240.. maybe 4hrs should be good enough was the calculation and it was around 3pm already

Just before reaching Jaipur we got on to the expressway to Jaipur and that was a blessing. This helped us save some time and drive at 90~110kms/h on an average in-spite of being heavy traffic on the expressway.

Expressway had some restroom facilities and unlike the usual public toilets in India, they were clean and not smelling too bad. Way to go India !!

Some accident on the way to Jaipur

We reached Jaipur bypass around 6:30 in the evening and to our bad luck we took the wrong turn towards Delhi on the Jaipur bypass. The Jaipur bypass road was jammed and it was a bad jam that took almost 2 hours to clear. Now that we were stuck in the traffic and we could not take a U turn or take any diversion towards Agra, we decided to continue on the Jaipur Delhi expressway until we find a good hotel/motel for a night stay.

En-route we could not find a good hotel so we decided to continue until Delhi as our night halt. After a torturous drive for nearly 8hrs under heavy traffic and pouring rains, at around 3AM we reached our home in Delhi and crashed into the heavenly beds for a good night's sleep. Next day was a free and rest day for us in Delhi.

Stay tuned for more coverage from Delhi - Amritsar - Patnitop - Srinagar - Kargil - Leh - Bangalore

Still to come

The great visit to Golden Temple, Amritsar
A sumptuous dinner at one of the best dhabas of Amritsar
Gorgeous lakes and valleys of Srinagar
Mesmerizing mountains and landscapes of Ladakh
Zip, Zap, Zippy roads of Zanskar valley
and more...

AR Ram · Sep 22, 2013

@pahujaamit

Great narration, Great coverage and Great pictures too. [clap]

Rated a well deserved 5 star *****

Curious to know the onward story and mesmerizing photographs

smooth rider · Sep 22, 2013

pahujamit congrats for having completed the mother of all drives in india. superb photos.seems you carried a studio with you to ladakh.

appus · Sep 23, 2013

Congratulations for doing the Ultimate trip of a lifetime. Read all posts at a stretch.

You got lots of cameras & gears. Waiting for some great landscapes with 11-16 lens :)

One suggestion if you can implement. one website /copyright is good enough in every pic? 4 lines eats lot of space in a photo. (just a suggestion)

GM88 · Sep 23, 2013

Great travelogue Pahujaamit with equally stunning pictures. Those are some really nice snaps you've clicked of various National Highways as well as other roads of our country. Judging from the pics, with monsoon in full flow, it would have been an absolute delight to see the greenery all around during your drive. Plus, driving 19 hours in a day. Kudos. [cheers]

Completely hooked to your travelogue. Eager to see a few pics of your Scorpio with the heavenly mountains in the background. Keep them coming.

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

appus said:

Thanks AppU for the suggestion and really I don't want to put all of them there. The only reason for 2 of the site addresses is as I'm transitioning form blogspot to my own custom hosted site and don't want people to get confused who follow my blogspot post.. hence you will see the redirection on my domain as of now :) but thanks and my apologies if it distracts...

rakeshkn · Sep 23, 2013

Wonderful thread with lots of great images. I am glued and read entire posts in mobile :). congrats to completing the trip. I need a break up of the cost of this entire trip. Can you please send me a PM?

vijay · Sep 23, 2013

pahujaaamit, fantastic log with superb narration with equally good pictures.
Loved the detailing you have given in every possible images.
What amazing set of gears you have carried along which we all are going to see the images you have captured through them.
Congratulations on this once of a lifetime dream destination trip.

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

Thanks all for your wonderful comments. Continuing the travelogue further

Day 3 - 19th AUG 2013 - REST Day
19th we reached early morning at Delhi and had some personal stuff to be attended to; we took rest on 19th and 20th in Delhi. This was already as per our plan.

Day 4 - 20th AUG 2013 - REST Day
Stayed at home and relaxed

Day 5 - 21st AUG 2013 - Delhi - Amritsar, appx 500kms - 8HRS

So we started our journey to Srinagar via Amritsar from Delhi. We left Delhi early morning around 7AM I guess and zoomed out to the Karnal road. Getting out of Delhi in early morning was not too bad and it took us around 1 Hr I think to be on the Chandigarh/Karnal highway via the new bypass. Once we reached the highway we got into the highway driving mode...

My beast ready for rock and roll

Jai Sai Ram ! Ganpati Bappa Moriya !!

Karnal Road

This was a great spotting.

Packing tape was used to secure the body and boot door in place :) Didn't knew this is how we can repair our vehicles ... Indian Jugaad :))

We wanted to stop over at Sukhdev Dhaba for its famous paronthas and so we were eagerly awaiting for it. We reached Sukhdev dhaba around 8am or so and had a good stuffing of various paronthas and garam garam chai. After a great Breakfast we were back on the highway towards Amritsar.

The famous Sukhdev Paronthas

The famous Sukhdev Paronthas with Curd

On way we clicked some interesting pictures. Enjoy !!

Couldn't figure out which car is this?? any clues?

and the Army vehicles .. Guess this is some special purpose vehicle..

Any guesses??

Few stretches on this road were under construction thereby causing jams and a lots of dust

All sleeping in the car and far behind is the luggage for next 22 days :) We folded third row of Scorpio to keep all our luggage there. 2 Bags were also kept on the top luggage roof carrier along with 60litres of water bottles.

My cousin driving at his own pace

Street side temples along the way

and long jams en-route

Impressive Mustaches

And the aerobics in the truck. This guy was performing aerobic stunts at the back of his truck and when he saw us clicking pictures got aggressive and started jumping like a monkey.. was good entertainment for few kilometers

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

Amritsar on the right ...

Some of the Gurudwaras enroute

Alright, guess how many on that bike?

Green surroundings on the Punjab stretch..

Kids made me STOP the moment they saw a McD and I had to oblige :)

Rest time for the beast..

A lot of traffic en-route to Amritsar

Don't know what this was but was a called for a photo opportunity :)

Indian Walmart, BestPrice that is a wholesale format of the Walmart. Its Punjab and AP that have these as of now I guess... seen one in Hyderabad as well

Till Amritsar the traffic was a little heavy as compared to our journey till Delhi. But we had no choice and continued at whatever speed we could.

Our target was to reach Amritsar before 5pm so we can spend some time at Jalianwala bagh and the holy Golden temple. At around 4:30 pm we reached Amritsar, checked into a pre-booked hotel by the HVK team. The hotel was located in a narrow lane and was difficult to find as GPS did not show the exact location. We had to call the hotel guy fro directions few times and in 3rd attempt we made it to the hotel. Hotel had a basement parking which was tough to get into as the street was narrow. In few attempts made it inside the basement, parked the vehicle, took the required luggage to the room and what a relief....

After about 30mins of rest we took a auto rickshaw to Jalianwala Bagh as advised by the hotel staff 'coz of the streets and galis of Amritsar being very narrow for Scorpio to drive and it was a good decision. The auto guy started selling us a package to visit some places in Amritsar which were least interested and we did not buy into his propositions. Anyway so we went to Jalianwala bagh first, spent some time over there, showed it to the kids, took some photos and went to our main stop "The great Holy Golden Temple".

One of the Tabla/Dholak vendors on the streets of amritsar near Golden Temple

Local market near the temple

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

I must say that both Jalianwala Bagh and Golden Temple are situated in a very old area and sorry to say but the surroundings are not clean at all. The neighborhood places around Jalianwala bagh specially are very much dirty and filthy which I felt is really not a great sight to see. The authorities there should do something to maintain the area and keep the area clean and tidy not only for tourists but for residents and local business folks out there.

Jalianwala Bagh Entrance

Just outside Jalianwala Bagh Entrance

Jalianwala Bagh Entrance

Narrow entrance at the Jalianwala Bagh

Shot taken at Jaliawala Bagh gardens

Good lawns makes sure that people can relax and have a good time ..

Bullet marks. The white squares what you see on the wall are the marks where the gun shots were fired by Britishers at that time.

People watching Sound and Light telling the story of Jalianwala Bagh

Martyrs Well

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

Local temple

Local sweets shop near Jalianwala Bagh

Next we went to Golden Temple which was a blessing for us. We wanted to go there from past few years and could not make it. We always dreamt of being there en-route to Ladakh and voila we were finally there. Satnam Sri Waheguru !

Golden Temple Entrance

Isles of Golden Temple

Golden Temple Entrance

Inside Golden Temple

This is the place where you need to give your offerings in form of the Halwa (Sweet shown in picture below) and then some of it is returned back to you to take home...

Halwa (Prasad) .. and believe me its Yummmmm...

Inside Golden Temple

Devotees at Golden Temple

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

Devotees @ Golden Temple

Holy Shrine of Golden Temple

The queues move pretty fast out here at the shrine. It took us not more than 20mins for the entire darshan and having our dream come true. It was a heavenly feeling inside the shrine.

One of the devotees meditating @ the Holy Shrine of Golden Temple

Devotee @ Golden Temple

Golden Temple trust provides free prasad/food to all the devotees I guess 24/7 with full dedication, respect and enthusiasm. You can see devotees having free food here. I guess the capacity of the main hall can seat around more than 1000 people at a time or even more.

As you walk-in to the dinner hall, you are required to take your plate, bowl, spoons etc and go inside the main hall for food.

Once you're seated inside volunteers serve food to you. The food is really good and served fresh out of the kitchen.

One of the system I really liked here is to serve any liquid item. You see the trolley like system in the picture below which has a cycle brake liver fitted on the handle that when depressed releases the dal, water or any other item served that day.

Water being served to a devotee

Utensil cleaning area @ the Golden Temple kitchen cleaned by volunteers

Utensil cleaning area @ the Golden Temple kitchen cleaned by volunteers

We spent around an hour or so in and around the temple and then moved our to catch up on some great authentic Amritsari food.

pahujaamit · Sep 23, 2013

One of the recommended places to eat at Amritsar was "Bharawan Da Dhaba" and we straight away took a cycle rickshaw to that place. After about 10mins waiting we got the table for 5 of us and ordered the great stuff.

The food at this place was average I would say as per our expectations of the highly recommended and famous restaurant. Don't get me wrong here and I'm not saying that the food was bad, it was just that we were expecting it to be extraordinary and something different what you would get in Delhi or Karnal highway. Nevertheless we enjoyed what we ordered and went back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.

Bharwan Da Dhaba where we ate and below is the picture of another Dhaba owned by another Brother. We heard that both were One few years back and because of the breakup between brothers this was split into two.

Amritsari Delux Paneer thali.

Amritsari Parontha Thali.

Before I went to bed, I transferred all the photos from my cameras to my HDD so they are safe and I have a backup of the files. This is the routine I normally follow in all of my vacations or photography expeditions.

to be continued..

mukeshus · Sep 23, 2013

Hi Amit your Quote" We reached Jaipur bypass around 6:30 in the evening and to our bad luck we took the wrong turn towards Delhi on the Jaipur bypass. The Jaipur bypass road was jammed and it was a bad jam that took almost 2 hours to clear. Now that we were stuck in the traffic and we could not take a U turn or take any diversion towards Agra, we decided to continue on the Jaipur Delhi expressway until we find a good hotel/motel for a night stay. "

Amit where were you heading to if not the above mentioned Bypass.

I couldn't understand that.

So far the pics, places, and food seems to be fantastic.

The way you have narrated makes it easy for the readers.

A Rock & Rolling Dream Road Trip To The Magical Heaven: Ladakh !!

pahujaamit

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appus

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