The Ladakh 2014 Diaries: The beginning

In Dec 2013, I had been to Himachal with my family and that is when we had decided to do a road trip to Ladakh - me and my brother. And we decided to make it a guys only trip. We all are married and have kids - Imagine!!

Ashok - our friend was also looped in for the trip. And Ashok's bro-in-law also joined. We started with doing our homework for the trip. We read a lot of blogs, spoke to a lot of people. Earlier we had decided we will take a local driver with us from Delhi or Manali. Getting permissions from home took a lot of effort. This was our maiden road trip and our parents and wives thought that it was quite ambitious and unsafe to do the difficult mountain terrain.

There were a lot of hiccups on the way. My brother, Nadim was to come back from his job in the first week of August and hence we had planned to undertake the journey from 14th August. Yet he was not able to come even on 14th. We started on 15th to give him some time to join us. He would fly to Srinagar or Leh as and when he comes. Ultimately he joined us at Srinagar.

The best thing that happened while doing the homework was that we met this amazing person HV Kumar. HVK and his group made our trip stress free and enjoyable. They guided us with routes, updates and even got us cheap hotels.

Day - 1.

Date: 15th August 2014

Route : Mumbai to Chittorgarh

Distance covered: 898 kms.

It was time afterall to realise our dream, the planning of which was going on for quite sometime now, almost 6 months.

So it began, and we left at 5.00 am on 15th August 2014. Ashok, Tushar and myself in Ashok's Innova. It was a lovely morning with a slight drizzle. We had the wonderful view of the sunrise throughout the clouds.

The Machine!!

First stop at Vadodara, where we dropped my wife and my daughter at my in- laws place and had our lunch.

We then proceeded further. Halol - Sevalia - Vejalpur - Godhra - Lunawada - Malpur - Modasa - Khairwara - Rishabhdev - Udaipur - Chittorgarh.

Ashok Bhai posing for the camera.

Awesome roads in Gujarat. This is where we landed on the wrong turn.

What an amazing drive. I did not know that the roads in interior Gujarat and Rajasthan were of such amazing quality and were so scenic. We even took a wrong turn at one place and landed up doing 14 km on the wrong road, but the road was such and the place so beautiful, we did not mind. We even stopped at several places to click some snaps.

Initially we had planned to take the NH8 upto Udaipur. Thanks to HVK, we avoided the NH8 and took State highways instead and it was worth it. It is an enjoyable drive. At the end of the day, we were not tired, rather we were looking forward to some more driving the next day!