Day 16 : Agra to Narsimhapur – 575 kms
9th February 2013, we got up at 4.30 am and were ready by 5.30 am, packed our baggage and kept. At 5.50 am we came out of the hotel and the rickshaw fellow was waiting. Within 10 minutes we reached the Taj ticket counter, though there was a big queue, it was a separate one for foreigners, and for Indians not much crowd. After collecting the ticket we stood again in the queue at the fort entrance, which they told will be opened at 7 am. There was a separate queue for ladies and gents as well.
Exactly at 7 am, the door was opened and immediately the hand bags were scanned apart from the personal security check, then we proceeded further.
Woh!!!!! The first sight of Taj Mahal !!! "LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT". No wonder it is one of the seven wonders of the world. The country’s pride. Amazing sight in the sun rise. Any Indian will be proud of. Shooting any number of pictures, you still feel to shoot more. We spent an hour there came back to the gate and the rickshaw was waiting. Came back to the hotel.
9 am we checked out and started our journey. The plan was to drive till Adilabad and take a break at a hotel and stay for the night and continue next morning. The route is Gwalior – Jhansi – Lalithpur – Sagar -Narsimhapur– Nagpur – Adilabad – Hyderabad – Bangalore.
Had the breakfast at a restaurant at Morena. We crossed Gwalior and were proceeding to Jhansi. After a couple of kms from Gwalior bye-pass we found absolutely no road at all. Since the road widening work was going on we thought the diversion would be there for a short distance. Oh hell!! More than 100 kms it was totally off road. Couldn’t exceed the speed more than 20 or 30 kms/h. We reached Jhansi around 2 pm, thought, further road would be good. After a few kms we entered a 4 lane road but again a diversion at every few kms which was really taking away all the driving time.
By 9pm we reached Narsimhapur covering only 575 kms and stopped for dinner at a restaurant. During the conversation with the restaurant owner he said the road is bad in several stretches, and advisable to take room at a hotel there and continue in the morning. And he had given us the directions to some hotels. We went there and stayed back for the night.
Day 17 : Narsimhapur to Bangalore – 1330 kms
10th February 2013 we checked out at 7 am and started the longest drive. We thought we will have breakfast on the way, but for hundreds of kms we didn’t find any dabha or restaurant. And the road till Nagpur has lot of ghat sections and diversions and bad stretches too. Before Nagpur, at a ghat section there was traffic jam for almost an hour. We crossed Nagpur at 2 pm, and due to road expansion work, the further road was also too bad till we reached a few kms away from Hyderabad. On the outskirts of Hyderabad we stopped at a restaurant and had lunch cum dinner.
At 7.15 pm we entered Hyd city, again MMI took us through the city. After refueling, we crossed Bangalore road flyover at 8.30 pm. Then continued the drive and the road was packed with heavy traffic. In between we stopped the car and had a short nap for an hour. Further we continued and reached Bangalore out skirts at 5 am and home at 6 am.
After two days I continued the journey to Kerala.
We thank GOD for giving us a memorable journey without any problem other than the incident near Jaipur. Still we consider it as part of the adventure and an experience as well. The main credit goes to my wife who was inspiring me through out the journey and but for her I would not have made it.
Whoever had read this TL, I really thank every one of you for sparing your valuable time.
![[:)]](https://www.theautomotiveindia.com/forums/images/smilies/Smile.gif "Smile [:)]")
![[clap]](https://www.theautomotiveindia.com/forums/images/smilies/Clap.gif "Clap [clap]")