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Taking the high road upcountry

Testing out the Golden Quadrangle route between the north and the south. Or how to do India in a fortnight

THE WONDER THAT IS INDIA The road goes past scenic delights like these small waterfalls near Saputara in Gujarat

Driving in Delhi is some people's idea of a nightmare. Kerala's monsoon turns its roads into a rut zone. How bad could it be to drive from one to the other? We decided to give it a shot.

You might call driving on the Golden Quadrangle the road less taken, but actually it is the road much taken, full of traffic night and day. Much of it is truck traffic, though. As we headed past Rajasthan, the familiar Delhi number plates gradually disappeared. We took a detour to Jaipur, since the highway allows you to bypass both Jaipur and Ajmer, straight to Udaipur. Since we had diverted from the Quadrangle, smaller roads led us to Udaipur. The drive became a winding, verdant climb. Some time after passing Udaipur, we were back on the highway.

On the second day, we crossed unobtrusively into Gujarat. Unobtrusively because, unlike Rajasthan, which proclaims its heritage with aesthetic stone gates, Gujarat welcomes the road traveller with a plain signboard painted in red.

Great expressway

Fast driving was possible here. National Expressway 1 between Ahmedabad and Vadodara is a dream track. It was dark and drizzling by the time we passed Bharuch and neared the exit for Surat, which is just off National Highway 8. It had relapsed into a highway more in name, and on its sides, the babool trees and overgrown creepers took on weird shapes. Though there were several hotels on the highway, none of them had the inviting air of the places one finds in Rajasthan and Haryana.

Taking a 15-km detour into Surat, we found the town uncomfortably cramped after the green open vistas we had become used to. If this was Surat after the clean-up, how would it have been before, we wondered, not knowing that within 10 days it would be under water 10 storeys high. Anyway, the hotels in the centre of Surat had room rates starting at Rs. 3,000 a night, not a price to attract budget travellers.

Back on the highway, we contented ourselves with a joint that had cheap rooms, broken bathrooms and a crying need to be scrubbed, but the saving grace was the scalding hot water in the taps. Just the thing to wash off the tiredness of 14 hours on the road.

The lack of luxury ensured we were out of the hotel early on day three. The aim was Aurangabad. This was another detour from the Quadrangle, since, if you travel by road, it is important to see at least a bit of the wonders that lie around.

We moved on to National Highway 6 to Dhule. No autobahn this. More like a highway to heaven, flanked by dense trees, paddy and sugarcane fields, constantly crossing swirling rivers, passing by hamlets with sloping-roofed houses, watered by rain that washed everything clean to a shine. Soon we were driving past Vansda National Park. Following the course of a river, we reached Saputara, on the edge of Gujarat. The misty cold of the hill station was almost too good to believe. Walking into a deserted Hotel Toran, we pounced on a brunch of surprise — idlis and sambar.

Just after noon, we crossed into Maharashtra and by 6 p.m. were in Aurangabad. Two days of seeing the caves; then the journey resumed at 7 a.m. Banyan trees lined the roads with their roots creating incredible sculptures.

Though the highway at places offers scanty facilities for travellers, we did find, just outside Ahmednagar on the way to Pune, The Smile Stone, whose fast service and clean environment were a blessing. After Pune, the highway route was blocked due to the rains. Diversion became the buzzword. The rains had rendered even the diversion signs nearly illegible. Driving through the heaviest rain yet, we entered Karnataka by 8 p.m.

Camping at Belgaum, we set out the next morning at 6.30. The sights were awe-inspiring, the roads flooded. Naturally, we were soon lost and inexplicably back in Maharashtra.

Into Goa

Wending our way through forested areas, when we caught sight of the first green highway board to Panaji at 9.50 a.m., we cheered. By noon, we were in Goa. A day's break to do all the `Goa things', and we were back on the road: the last lap to Kerala.

Past the coastal city of Karwar, immortalised by Tagore's admiring lines. Past the Mangalore bypass to Kasargod. And into Kerala by 9.40 p.m. The road is nothing to write home about. But in Kerala, you can enjoy monsoon tourism.

Sitting in small restaurants enjoying steaming puttu kadala, or visiting the Guruvayoor temple elephants as they receive lush baths in their `hostel' are just two suggestions.

The way back was no less adventurous, but we had already been there, done that.

There is not much signage at the best of times, even on how to link up between the highways, and you can easily get lost in cities like Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai without intending to enter them, but there is no lack of people to offer advice. Otherwise we might not have trundled back into the Capital on day 13.

Jai Hind!

ANJANA RAJAN

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