Wow!! That's what I have to say for the road trip which I and Karthik took from Hyderabad to Chennai few days back. Karthik got shifted to Chennai office with a very plum opportunity in his hand to develop a new business entirely from scratch for his company. And, perhaps, he deserves every bit of it; so all the good wishes for him. But thats his story :) My days and nights were passing in the office and lab running helter skelter with the equipments and heavy ransacks on a couple of two wheelers among three of us in the team. A month of inhuman schedule left me longing for some respite and a 750 km drive was more than a welcome break for me. A slogging benchmark and a cheesy mail ensured that I get my weekend off from the bosses. And we started on Apr 10th, a Friday, for the fun.
Customarily, breaking all pledges to start early in the morning, both of us were very generous to be able to leave home by 9:30 in the morning. I stuffed my tummy outside while K got the air pressure done in the tyres. As melodramatic it can get, K was sentimental enough putting the condition to drive out of the city as he was leaving and drive into Chennai as a "welcome home" gesture. So our man started and zoomed through the light morning traffic on a Good Friday. Starting east, we passed through Uppal to finally catch NH9 towards Vijaywada. K's drive was bound till Suryapet which was around 140 km from Hyderabad, and sure did he comply to it at 130 km itself which gave us our first water break (well ... both inlet and outlet of course). Now I was waiting for this to happen and very happily put the Xing in action. This track was not quite like an NH, rather a better developed state highway with very heavy traffic. That was quite the reason we could not better expected 5hrs time to cover a 280km stretch irrespective of touching top speed quite often.
A dried Krishna river and the beautifully surrounded dam with mountains on the outskirts of the Vijaywada city was a good spectacle. The topology of the eastern ghats was quite evident and the city sits on the eastern side of it. While by-passing the city, we stopped at the bus station and ate at Hanuman Dhaba, which was just outside the bus stand. The food was nothing such to be talked about and little shopping of cookies at the terminus and relaxation took lot of our time to start again southwards on NH5 at 3:30pm. We were now to cover 450km on this to reach Chennai. So all throttles on, we just sped! This track was a relief with a divider in between and a better road. Our next stop was going to be Ongole with a tank refill near Guntur. This was the best stretch to get an average speed of 100kmph and extended the top speed to 150kmph. At 5pm we were sipping coffee by highway side at Ongole and hearing the blaring election campaign trail of PRP. K was asleep all this while with his mouth open and literally snoring. That was a funny sight indeed, its just that I couldn't take any pic of his then! We continued again and rushed as quick as possible. It was dark then and we stopped at a Punjabi Dhaba for tea and there were lots of trucks parked there. Truck drivers are good indication of food and rates for a dhaba. The tea eventually became few amazing rotis and fantastic dal-makhani. One of the best foods I had on road.
Started and stopped again, and this time it was for fuel. The tank was full and the card wouldn't work; we shelled out all our cash and were worried about the coming toll gates to pass with just 85/- bucks in hand. That was some AXN moment. Instead of wasting our time to get money from an ATM within some off-highway town, we just kept to the track wishing this much should be enough. Met a very helpful guy at the next toll who assured us that we will reach Chennai with that much of amount. And so at 9pm we entered Chennai clocking an average speed of over 90kmph (which is pretty good) when K took over again. Amusing part was when K was struggling to find way back to his home in his own city. A reasonable thing that he never drove by himself in the city but still it was comical and the man was enjoying it in full glory. Finally he figured it out and we reached to his place in Triplicane.
The next two days were all fun with a very warm hospitality, great south Indian "ghar ka khana" and lots of roaming around in Chennai's tough heat. We went to various temples, eateries like Saravana Bhavan, Residency midnight buffet and amazing Anna Lakshmi for lunch. Some movie shopping at Burma Bazar and a quick T-Nagar trip. Met his best friends Awwal and Nural, it was warm but language was a big barrier. And yes, a couple of movies there ... we infact walked out for good from OngBak2. Finally it was back to Egmore station and a super silent journey back to my now empty room. It was jam-packed but by all means it was a very nice and memorable trip.
And what do I say to conclude ... Adios Karthik !!
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