| I discovered the pleasure and freedom of long-distance driving in 2002, starting with my frequent Bangalore > Davanagere > Bangalore round trips… that would be around 530 kms on the odometer.
I would hit the NH4 on a Friday evening, spend the weekend with my family in Davanagere and drive back to Bangalore, starting early on Monday morning… to reach Bangalore, driving directly to office.
And then there were drives to Chennai, drives to Tirupati… drives with friends to Coorg or to Goa. |
3 Cars, 2 lakh+ Kms +
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When my parents relocated, trips to Hyderabad became more frequent… around 580kms – door to door, done in around 9 hours.
Be it either on a sight-seeing trip, or a family function to attend; the freedom and convenience of driving around in our own car was quite addictive! and unless there is a very strong reason to take to any other mode of travel, we prefer to just pack up and drive!
On the other hand, when I and Sangeetha were seeing each other, we discovered that since we both share a fascination for old temples, forts, palaces… the best way to spend some quality time together was to just pick a destination and go for a long drive!
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I guess we are lucky since Bangalore is an ideal base for ‘drivoholics’ and there is a huge list of places which are within driving distance from here…
Over the past several years, we have covered over 2 lakh kilometers in three cars, driving around and trekking in the southern states of India.Tank up, pack our essentials, load up on some good audio CDs and we are all set for the road. |
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While traveling around our country we realized how much we depend on our fellow countrymen. Only when we traveled into the hinterland did we see how India actually welcomes its visitors! When we drive around, get lost and ask around for directions, we have always encountered folks eager to nudge us towards the right direction, to ensure our safety and sometimes even going out of their way to offer us food and shelter for the night. This makes us comfortable enough to just pick up the keys and drive, sometimes without having a clear idea of the route – because we are confident that we will reach our destination with some help.
Travel also teaches us some great lessons; one must always be prepared for any eventuality – preferably with a Plan-B in place. Also, that sometimes the journey may turn out to be more exciting than the destination. Always travel with an open mind, and don’t forget a spare battery for your camera! |
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We have always been taking a lot of pix on all our trips, but never actually bothered to write a travelogue. We would dump all our photos onto a laptop with a promise to ourselves that we’ll review and sort them out someday. But that ‘someday’ was not anywhere to be seen on the calendar… and then another trip would happen… and another set of photos…
One day the inevitable happened, the laptop hardisk got corrupted by a virus… and most of the data, including our pics, was lost. We did have some partial back-ups on CDs / DVDs, but a good chunk of pics was lost for ever. When we did go through the recovered photos, we found that the memories & stories behind the photos also were fading out quite fast… "Oh ! We visited this place too?" , "Where did we take this photo?", "What is this?" |
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This time we made a promise that we have kept till date, starting with our year-end trip in Dec 08, we have been ensuring that our trips are captured via our blogs and photos within a week or two of our return. As extensively as we can remember the experiences… Some day, when we retire from driving around, we can relive our memories through our travelogues… hopefully preserved online forever.
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