Goa Day 1 and before

Before I take you with me on our recent goa trip, let me tell you about the preparations we did for the trip.

As usual there was a document shared among the trip planners. The document was used to maintain the checklist of items to be picked along, checklist of items to be finished before commencing the trip, the route map and directions and above all what to do when we are in goa (thanks to inputs provided by Pooja).

With all these preparation done, we started our trip, as planned, on 7^th October after a ritual “kanjake” on 8^th day of Navratras.

The wheels were set in motion at 11.30 AM after the bags were packed, brought and strapped on to the car carrier. All was as planned.

Although we did meticulous planning for the journey, we still missed out picking some stuff. So, it was already known that we will have to make some stops before we hit the highway.

To reach the highway we had to travel ~30 Kms within the city, which took us around 2 hours (including the stopover we made to fill up gas, buy some medicines etc).

Finally at 1.15pm we were on NH4. Although this might look like "merely" getting on the highway, believe me it is an achievement in Bangalore.

Once we were out of Bangalore there were series of toll-roads which boosted over average speed per hour.......... From 15 to 45 Km/hr.

On the first toll road, we stopped over for lunch. It was a fantastic experience to get genuine dhaba style food in out skirts of Bangalore. Obviously, here I am comparing it with other dhaba’s around Bangalore only. The secret was revealed a little later that the owner and staff are from U.P.  hmmmmm…….. Boost is the secret of Sachin’s energy……..U.P. is the secret of dhaba’s delicacies.

Post lunch it was awesome, not because the road was good, but because we innovated an indigenous way to keep kids busy.

Read this patent to understand the details.

“Playing Cartoons in Car: A method to keep your long trip more enjoyable”, Rajesh and Pankaj Panjwani, Presented At PGTW (Preparation for Goa Trip Workshop) 2008

The lap top was mounted on back seat and car inverter (to supply 220V to laptop) sent by papa was aptly used for the first time in three years. I can bet that our journey would not have been so less straining, if we did not have this arrangement.

The only drawback was that now there were two kinds of music being played in the car. The sound which was dulcet for us was not at all pleasing for kids and vice versa.

The batch of people sitting on the middle row seat had a tough time listening to songs. They had to filter out Perman’s and Ninja Hattori’s title songs once a while..............no one complained as everyone was happy that kids are enjoying (and we were too .......... for a change).

The next three hours went by without our notice and it started turning darker outside. Now we were looking for a place to stopover to get fresh and fill up gas again. Finally, we halted at a petrol bunk at Ranibennur  .We noticed that the carrier needs adjustment and tightening. By the time, most of the people relieved themselves and were cursing us for stopping over at a filthy place.

Once we left Ranibennur  ,we saw a gleaming BP petrol bunk with a very nice eatery attached to it. We all were a little uncertain whether to stop or proceed without dinner as at that point we were off by atleast 2 hours of our target and it was getting darker with every passing minute……so it was a war against time……...cool down...we decided to stop over and have dinner………….as wars cannot be fought with empty stomach.

If I did not tell earlier then let me tell you now. We decided to stop overnight at Sirsi, which is around 400Kms from Bangalore. Our target was to reach Sirsi by 8 PM.

At 8.30pm we’re having dinner and Sirsi was atleast 2 hours away….. and it was off the national highway …………. so we did not have any idea how the road condition would be.

We finally hit the road again at 9 pm and after about 1 hour we were off  National highway to state highway. To our surprise the road condition was much better.

To add to our horror story, the milestones were in kannada……………… you must be thinking that ...….. it would have been really difficult for these poor chaps, already so late, dark night ahead and now no useful guidance  ……….

As usual we’ve prepared for that too. Around 5 yrs back ketaki, popularly known as sona, was asked to learn kannada, so that she could help us in identifying the right routes when on state highways.

Finally finally and finally........ At around 11 pm we reached Sirsi, our destination of the day.

Next day was also going to be a long day, so a good night sleep was necessary.

On day2:

-         we travelled another 250Kms to reach Goa,

-         checked into the hotel

-         enjoyed the sunset at beach

Hold on to read more on my next post.

Enjoy these photos, meanwhile...........