The road tripping saga
So I came across a contest regarding one's "dream" road trip a few days back. Being an adventure junkie and a part-time rover, all of sudden it struck me that I haven't been on a road trip in my life yet. And with it I started wondering how cruel has this life been to me (Ha, I have just exaggerated this line). But it turns out I have road-tripped once, a proper road trip! I suddenly got reminded of it while taking in the scenery of the stretch between Goregaon and Jogeshwari, while travelling to college this morning.
The tales goes back to a few years (four years, to be exact), to the summer before I started my ninth grade; plans were made on an impulse to visit my native place for a family function. Everything was done on the last moment, from booking train tickets to packing for the trip. On the day we were supposed to board the train that would ferry us from Mumbai to Patna, after reaching the station, it turned out that the train was running late by 5 hours! And hence, the long wait of 6 hours began. It was at that instance that I figured out that the trip won't be a plain-jane one. And viola, what I speculated magically happened to us: it rained heavily the morning we reached Patna junction, it RAINED HEAVILY in mid-SUMMER! It was the second time I was on a visit to my native place after a long gap of 6 or 7 years, even my parents weren't sure about the buses and other modes of transport that operate in my native state, plus it was raining. So we decided to rent a car and hire a driver also (because, like I said before, we were clueless). The car we hired happened to be a lovely vintage white ambassador car, who endured all the grime and mud on that rainy day for a road-trip from Patna to my native place spanning a total of 147 kms. Essentially, a 4-5 hours drive, it ended up taking around 12 hours, all thanks to the traffic jams due to water-logging. Inspite of all these hurdles, the journey turned out to be a lot more than we were thought: the car drove all the way along the shores of the sacred river Ganges, it zipped across the longest single river bridge in Asia, we ate fresh litchis (they grow only in Bihar) and also stale chips (ughh), got lost, saw breathtaking sceneries, amazing orchards of mangoes, etc.
This trip has been one of the most memorable trips of my life. Recalling all this today I understood why the saying goes "It is the journey that matters, not the destination".
P.S. This post along with being a memoir is an entry for a competition (A chance to win a trip to Michelin Pilot Experience at BlogAdda.com).
The tales goes back to a few years (four years, to be exact), to the summer before I started my ninth grade; plans were made on an impulse to visit my native place for a family function. Everything was done on the last moment, from booking train tickets to packing for the trip. On the day we were supposed to board the train that would ferry us from Mumbai to Patna, after reaching the station, it turned out that the train was running late by 5 hours! And hence, the long wait of 6 hours began. It was at that instance that I figured out that the trip won't be a plain-jane one. And viola, what I speculated magically happened to us: it rained heavily the morning we reached Patna junction, it RAINED HEAVILY in mid-SUMMER! It was the second time I was on a visit to my native place after a long gap of 6 or 7 years, even my parents weren't sure about the buses and other modes of transport that operate in my native state, plus it was raining. So we decided to rent a car and hire a driver also (because, like I said before, we were clueless). The car we hired happened to be a lovely vintage white ambassador car, who endured all the grime and mud on that rainy day for a road-trip from Patna to my native place spanning a total of 147 kms. Essentially, a 4-5 hours drive, it ended up taking around 12 hours, all thanks to the traffic jams due to water-logging. Inspite of all these hurdles, the journey turned out to be a lot more than we were thought: the car drove all the way along the shores of the sacred river Ganges, it zipped across the longest single river bridge in Asia, we ate fresh litchis (they grow only in Bihar) and also stale chips (ughh), got lost, saw breathtaking sceneries, amazing orchards of mangoes, etc.
This trip has been one of the most memorable trips of my life. Recalling all this today I understood why the saying goes "It is the journey that matters, not the destination".
P.S. This post along with being a memoir is an entry for a competition (A chance to win a trip to Michelin Pilot Experience at BlogAdda.com).
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