2023: Deccan darshan drive

It did not work out as planned.

This would have been the third consecutive year of well-planned, long, winter vacation drives within India. The reader may recollect the write-ups from the Madhya Pradesh trip in 2021 and the north Karnataka trip in 2022. The more astute ones might remember the reference to the Rs 200 note (Sanchi) and the Rs 50 note (Hampi) and a plan to go visit Rani-ki-vav in Patan (the Rs 100 note). It seemed that new Indian currency notes had offered a blueprint for my travels.

As is my wont, by early September, the trip plan was fully ready. One of the reasons why I was keen on Rann in 2023 was that the full moon was scheduled for Christmas – right in the middle of the holiday travel plans. The white sands of Rann appear magical in the bright, full moon.

The best laid plans were disposed by the powers-that-be on three counts:

• Planned holidays have limited elements of surprise or excitement.
• Driving holidays can get exhausting with many days of travel.
• The driving trip, if it must happen, should only be a family trip, and not a troop of cars.

A period of cajoling and convincing started.

The last point was an easy give. Yes, I did worry about being the only car in the caravan but then we only drive a few hours (on the days we do) and do so before sunset – so it was unlikely to cause much concern.

Solving for the second point is more challenging than it appears at first sight: the initial simple fix is to increase the length of the stays in the cities one is going to. However, if the constraint is to pick large cities (to get good, starred hotels) and where one can drop anchor for a few days to rest and explore, such cities can be spread out far away. This hits up against my rule that one should drive not more than 250-300 kms in a day (4-7 hours depending on the roads, etc.).

The first ask was the most difficult for me emotionally as I like my days and trips planned. The sense of staring at a vacuum and not knowing where we can end up and when is alien to my nature. However, I think this is a good exercise – one must let go. With mid-life questions generally swirling around, it is useful to be able to live unanchored and experience the unexpected. The “give” on this point was that the direction and locations that we will go to will be decided a day before travel!

And so, on Dec 20, we decided to head for a coast-to-coast journey: from Mumbai to Visakhapatnam (Vizag). We decided to stop at Pune, Hyderabad, and Vizag. The idea was to make a pitstop at Pune, four nights at Hyderabad, and four nights at Vizag. You can already see how this “unplanned” itinerary is beginning to hit against the second constraint: both Pune-Hyderabad and Hyderabad-Vizag are around 600 km long journeys each.

In any case, we started on our Deccan Darshan drive, with a plan to return to Mumbai by Dec 31. Given that this was to be a shorter 10-day trip, we needed to figure out how to return to Mumbai with the car, if we also wanted to spend many nights in the larger cities. We eventually settled on figuring out a way to send the car back someway: either find a driver who will drive it back or put it away with a packer and mover. Eventually, we decided on the latter – now hopefully the car makes it safely home! We flew back to the west coast of India from its eastern one.

To the drive, finally!

Since the drive was not decided till the last day, I was, as you can imagine, worried about availability and costing of stay, experiences, and expeditions along the way. I need not have worried much. Things have a way of shaping up and I was quite surprised on how available things were, even on peak days (a ceremonial tea at the Taj Falaknuma on Christmas Day – you just have to ask!).

Now, as we decided to set out on Dec 21, we received a last-minute invite to a special late evening screening of Dunki at the new Inox at Jio World Plaza.  The joy of car vacations anyways is to be able to incorporate local flavours – we just did not realize this will start from Mumbai itself! With a late-night viewing at the new, plush, soft reclining sofa Maison Inox, we headed to Pune for an overnight stop on Dec 22.

At Pune we learnt of the happy coincidence of a cousin planning a road trip to Hyderabad starting Dec 23! As Majrooh Sultanpuri would say:

मैं अकेला ही चला था जानिब-ए-मंज़िल मगर, लोग साथ आते गए और कारवाँ बनता गया

One word of caution is in order here: if you have set up rules for yourself over the years of driving, follow them! Even if you are rested well, pulling a 600-km drive is not a good idea for a vacation. And if one throws in a stop to make the drive interesting, it adds to timelines and weariness.

We decided to stop by at Pandharpur for darshan and lunch which I assumed will be a breeze. It turned out that we had reached the town on Baikunth Ekadashi which is one of the busiest days at Pandharpur. I could barely drive the car in the sea of humanity. We must have had divine blessings to get parking near a fantastic restaurant, Brahman, where they fed us sumptuous, delicious, spicy local food. (To imagine that I had also expected to stop by at the Tulja Bhawani temple nearby – we realized we were thoroughly underprepared for the mandir visits!).

The drive to Hyderabad was difficult in part because of the distance but also due to large stretches of four-lane highways. One is now so used to the six-lane highways and expressways that being unable to get ahead of slow-moving parallel trucks on a four-lane highway can be frustrating. In any case, by the time we reached Hyderabad by 10pm, I re-learnt my lesson: don’t drive long and late.

Hyderabad

Once we had decided that one of our destinations will be Hyderabad, we had received a lot of inputs on what to do. There is just so much to explore in the city which now has a 10 million plus population and a 100-kilometre-plus outer ring road!

We checked all the touristy boxes: Salar Jung museum (the veiled Rebecca is indeed a masterpiece), Charminar (with the sun setting in the background), Paradise biryani while overlooking the Charminar, the Mahalaxmi temple nearby (again big celebrations close to the Baikunth Ekadashi), light-and-sound show at Golconda fort, pearl purchases, and Osmania biscuits at Niloufer Café. And this was just day 1 there!

We took it light on day 2 with only the Falaknuma tea (a 3pm to 7pm experience of the palace hotel). The trip to the top of Birla Mandir and a drive by around the necklace around the Hussain Sagar Lake closed out a more mellow day.

The third day was in Ramoji Film City. The learning here is that we should have booked our stay at Ramoji – that would have made our exit out to the eastern shores of India quicker the next day. The film city deserves its full day: whether it is for the green screen film experience (yes, some of us starred in that!) or the stupendously large Bahubali and other sets. The carnival and the parades were magnificent – well worth the late exit. The parking is far away – so plan your timings accordingly and get the star pass to skip the queues.

Telangana had recently had its state elections which led to a change in the government. The new CM’s photos were everywhere. It was interesting to see that both in Telangana (and later in Andhra Pradesh), we found very few photos of the PM, quite a big difference from Mumbai or Delhi. The recent decision to make public transport free for women came up in a few local discussions (yes, the thematic analyst in me still talks to a lot of autowallahs when going from point A to B).

The internal city roads, in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, teach you some interesting lessons: the fastest lane in the multi-lane arterial roads suddenly give way to U-turns. It takes time getting used to the fact that the fastest way to drive is to go in the second lane! Given the sheer number of flyovers, follow Google maps closely to get to the right lanes and exits – or budget time for U-turns!

The Hi-Tech city is a sight to behold. I had come to Hyderabad after a decade (the last time was to cover one of the companies for a thematic report on “The Next Big Things”.) Much earlier in life, I frequented Hyderabad a few times when we had sold our start-up to a company based here. So much has changed from the times when the flyover from the then new airport were being built and the city was dug up! One of the captains serving us at the breakfast table told us how, within a decade, with the city growing so rapidly, the prices of land had skyrocketed working out very well for the family.

On that note, the Andhra thali we had outside Annavaram and at ITC Guntur were a study in extremes – try both!

Listening to learnings: stop at Guntur

Having learnt from the tiring drive to Hyderabad, we decided to not do a direct drive from there to Vizag.

We had a choice between staying at Vijayawada or Guntur (both of these are part of the tri-city area with the third leg being the once-planned new capital of Andhra Pradesh, Amravathi). We chose Guntur because I remembered its chilli market (the largest in Asia) from my chartered accountancy articleship days at the turn of the century. It was good to see the market in action but also somewhat disappointing. I have, on-and-off, been engaged with agriculture supply chain firms for a decade and a half: so much manual labour for loading/unloading, visual quality inspection for pricing, open stocks lying around, “cash” transactions, etc. continue to reflect the still unorganized state of the agricultural economy. 

We were surprised to find a very reasonably priced ITC Welcomgroup Hotel on MakeMyTrip available for literally last-day booking. We should not have been.  ITC had moved, over the last few years, a large part of its undivided Andhra Pradesh’s operations to Guntur. It is a large procurement centre for them and the city also happens to be the headquarters of the Indian Tobacco Board. The fantastic hotel property came up a couple of years ago, no doubt also propelled by the expectation that the state capital might come up nearby. The ITC office and the housing complex is a sight to behold – something that I did not expect when we chose Guntur. (Nor did I expect to see Toyota showrooms, D Mart, Dominoes, and chic salons.)

One of the other learnings that we put in place post our inability to do the darshan at Pandharpur temple: for the next three big Andhra temples that we went to, we requested local help in advance. The darshans at Kanakadurga at Vijaywada, Annavaram at Annavaram, and Simhachalam at Vizag were smoother: we proceeded to garbha griha quickly and had close darshans and puja.

Vizag

This city was the biggest surprise – possibly because we went with the lowest expectations. Since we had planned last minute, Vizag was the planned end-point but we had not researched what we could expect here. And boy, were we surprised!

The city and state authorities have created wonderful museums with a submarine (the now decommissioned INS Kurusura), a TU-142 “Albatross” plane, and the Sea Harrier. They are marvellous, well-preserved pieces open to the public with detailed descriptions and clean, cool facilities. These sights are for the citizens, especially the next generation, to get inspired both in sciences and in defence.

Unlike their western counterparts, the Eastern Ghats end very close to the shore (indeed they extend down the continental shelf). This means that one can combine a hill and beach vacation into one here. The lush green hills and the cool climate added to a fine experience.

The city is a hub of activity: it has steel plants, refinery, shipbuilding, naval and commercial dockyards, and many other industries. A birds-eye view of the city is insightful in understanding the complexity of geography, defence, trade, employment, pollution, and social cohesion. If you have access to any of the above large facilities (if someone you know works there and can give you a tour or two), the learning on how complex industries work can be fantastic.

Vizag, too, like many cities these days, had a poor AQI with a dusty haze all around. Unfortunately, the burning of wastes is a common sight that we saw all through the drive.

Coming back

The Indigo flight back to Mumbai was efficient and punctual, as expected.

Living life unplanned – and letting go – can be exhilarating and rewarding!