Travel in the time of Covid | 5-State road trip in a Fortuner

 (Title taken from the book by Gabriel García Márquez "Love in the time of Cholera")

Long time voracious consumer of Team BHP reviews/articles on varied topics for little less than a decade. Finally this year decided to become a member and contribute here. My interests have been largely related to road trip travelogues, have leveraged the information extensively to make multiple trips across India with Bangalore as my base. The information shared by the TeamBHP members is exhaustive and unbiased .

Not much of a writer but I still decided to pen this . I have been having a parasitic relationship with TeamBHP and time I give back to this community. With so many travelogues happening in DEC , does it make sense for one more especially of Rajasthan? Frankly yes I have read each and every travelogue to the place once we decide to go there as each experience is different and there is learning from every one of those writeups. So if anyone is hesitating please don’t, do put up your experiences for all of us to learn and plan the next road trip.

Background: With Covid restrictions the last 2 years have been very much limited to trips within India and specifically Karnataka. With the news pouring in about Omricon and newer restrictions in place we did have a second thought but somehow easily convinced ourselves it will be worth it. We also needed a change from the monotony of life during covid times.

People: Me , Wife, Daughters( 10 & 8 years).Our kids have been doing road trip with us since they were 6 months old so they are an expert at this now.

Machine: Fortuner 2X2AT 2021 Model, we had bought this in Sep2021 keeping the long road trips in mind. With no signs of a Covid retreat we knew there would be ample time and many places we could go by road. I have owned and used few Toyota's in the past (Highlander, RAV4,Corolla & Camry), so Toyota was a definitely on the top of the list for us. We always buy black color so that was pre decided. Now all we had to do was fit a model into these criterion. Read the threads on the Initial Reviews and LTO by many folks in the forum here and decided to go with Fortuner. With just 4 people the car provides ample room for baggage so throw in your hiking gears and the many pair of jeans/casual/formal dresses one never knows when and where we will need them.






Destination: Rajasthan has been on the top of our bucket list for a long time my last visit was in mid 90's as a student backpacker on a shoestring budget. Statue of Unity was added as its on our way and didn’t want to miss it the other places Ellora Caves , Gol Gombuz were added as its on our return journey.



The itinerary was as follows, first few days was a workcation as we had some deliverables and kids had online school :



Till Khimsar it was planned but after that we had kept it open as we were debating to make it a longer /shorter trip based on the evolving situation we could either go North upto Punjab but Covid cases went North so we headed South back home.

Fuel:

From all the road trips I did as a student and in youth with friends our rule was the owner of the car comes with a full tank at the beginning of the trip and at the end the group fills it with a full tank so we had an equitable distribution on the fuel expense and car owner was not aggrieved . Even later on with family I continued this practice for easy logging of the fuel usage. It gave 7.2L/100KM 9as per MID) not bad for a vehicle of this size.



Total Fuel cost was ~INR 32k ~360L
Total Distance Done was 4892KM
Aurangabad was the highest and Bengaluru the lowest

All the places don’t need a detailed writeup , I am highlighting those which will help others if they are planning on these places:

Statue of Unity:

1. Be there early pick the 8AM slot if possible at SOU, to give you an idea we were the only ones in the elevator to the viewing gallery with zero wait time and there were about 10 people in all at the top. At the foot of the statue too there was no one ,it was like we had a private viewing gallery to ourselves.
2. You cannot take your car beyond the parking lot, you have to take the Bus/Eauto/Electric Taxi
3. There is an option to hire the eAutos for 4/6/8 hours the rates are fixed ( & very reasonable) so no need for bargains. We opted for that instead of the Bus. With this we had the option to visit all places at our leisure . The eAutos were driven by ladies.
4. Don’t miss the Butterfly/Cactus Parks it's on the opposite bank of the statue
5. The Ekta mall was a good place to do your shopping for artefacts they are all Govt. owned shops.
6. It was hot even in DEC we went there on 24th Dec, would suggest one carries cap/water.
7. There were many Amul outlets, ease of access to food and water.
8. Tip: Try to find a tree there are few of them in the parking lot else the car gets fried or come after the Sound and Light show when it would have cooled down.

SOU Parking

Udaipur:

1. We didn’t want hotels in central Udaipur and the place we stayed was a good 10KM from town and getting Autos/Ola/Uber was a challenge so we decided to risk driving our car into the narrow streets, parking was a challenge until we found the right place about ~1KM from the old town. We walked from there. For those interested I parked here https://g.page/sangria-bar-n-lounge?share . There were lot of out of state cars parked here.
2. The dance show at "Bagore ki Haveli" is a must see , the tickets are given out at 5PM. We went during the peak time so there was a long queue to get the same.
3. The puppet and dance show at "Bhartiya Lok Kala Mandal" is also very good we saw the 12-1PM show (photos attached)
4. Saheliyon ki Bari & Shilpagram have parking lots so you can drive up there directly

Puppet show at Bhartiya Lok Kala Mandal


Dance show at Bhartiya Lok Kala Mandal

Kumbhalgarh & Ranakpur:

1. Both are easily accessible from Udaipur, so you could stay in Udaipur and drive down here. Single lane SH roads one needs to drive carefully
2. Kumbhalgarh we followed the strategy of being early and very much had the place to ourselves , by about 10AM the crowd started coming in. Good place take a guide along.
3. Ranakpur there is a route from Kumbhalgarh which takes you here, not many places to eat on the way so take some food along.
4. At Ranakpur Jain temple the priests will explain the structure in detail. This is completely free. In fact they sent an English speaking priest to do the explanation for us once we told them Hindi is a challenge.

Khimsar:

1. This was a stay in the huts where we did nothing but eat, sleep, see the sunrise and sunset. This is different from Khimsar Fort and google map doesn’t show it on the map , so go to the Fort Hotel reception to get the directions. While you are there you can admire the vintage cars in the garage
2. We did see few Neel Gai and many Deer on the way to the dunes.
3. Check-in and Checkout was by camel carts

Check In


Check Out


Oasis


Neel gai

Notable mention: Khimsar to Ujjain the worst stretch I had to drive, it was stressful 600+KM and roads were also just OK.



RTPCR Check:

Now this has become serious , we have crossed many countries borders by cars/buses in North & South America, Europe where you have to be ready with the Passport and Other documents, we used to search many travel forums, websites (for travels after 2000), Lonely planet books (prior to 2000) for this information. We got the same feeling this time while driving through India across States! We looked up many forums on what's happening , what's needed, what do they ask? Hope better sense (& covid situation) prevails and we lift restrictions on travel soon.

In the order of borders crossed

1. KA-MH : Smooth sailing they just waved us through no paper checked , this was like crossing from San Diego to Tijuana (USA to Mexico) in the early to mid-2000's , no checks at all just drive across.
2. MH-GJ: Nothing but the road blocks exist so the traffic slows down when you cross borders
3. GJ-RJ: Nothing we didn’t even realize we crossed over
4. RJ-MP: Nothing smooth sailing
5. MP-MH: Nothing but the road blocks exist so the traffic slows down when you cross borders
6. MH-KA: Ah the fun starts complete check with Police and Doctors , this was like crossing Tijuana to San Diego (Mexico to USA)

POLICE CHECK:

We were stopped just once in this entire trip across 5 states , this was just before we hit the highway to Pune on Panchagini-Mahabaleshwar road. MH cops stopped the car used his hand held device and put our number and then asked us to leave it took about 2min. We quizzed him - all out of state vehicles were being checked for any pending fines in MH.

Overall a great trip looking forward to Apr/May to hit the roads again!