The $80 Taxi Ride

The $80 Taxi Ride

An apt name for a taxi ride between the financial capital and the capital of India, aka Bombay – Delhi, more than 1400kms apart. The seeds of the trip were laid 3 weeks in advance when I booked train tickets for myself and Aru on the Rajdhani Express waitlisted at 350, awesome it seems entire Mumbai is headed to Delhi for festivities.

Anyways we were positive that we would get confirmation as the final chart was still to be prepared, we go off to the railway station, three burgers and one coke down, man that was heavy.

Status: Confirmation milega, dekhtey hain kaisey naheen milega.

We had taken heart from the fact that the waitlist was reducing by 10 everyday but that, as maths would tell you was not fast enough, we were left stranded on the railway station with 110 waiting, someone give us space in the pantry car only, someone, ANYONE!!

Status: bye bye train.

Next logical step was to find another medium out of this city, airport calling. We caught a taxi to the airport next, it takes two freaking hours to travel 20kms in Mumbai during rush hour, we left at 1800hrs and arrived at the airport at 2000hrs approx, and their were trucks and mini trucks all along the route which said ‘Mera Bharat Mahaan’, now how can one take that positively when one cannot board a train, cannot move on the roads and the airlines charge Rs. 23000 for a ticket that normally costs Rs.4500.

Status: What the f!@#?

By this time we had gone crazy laughing, standing outside the ticket counter, here we encountered a couple who had also had the same fate as ours with the only difference being that they refused an offer to go in the pantry car, man, how is that I never got that offer. The point is how do we get out of Bombay now, the rails are full, the planes are for millionaires only and the roads well with 1400kms between the two cities that will be tough.

Status: Eureka!

Lets go by taxi, call up people find out the rates, we need five people to keep our pockets from getting too light and a taxiwala crazy enough to even consider our offer. Well well, in this world there all kinds of travelling people

1. Our type – Who get a little late in booking tickets
2. Couple type – Who are a little late in booking too but did not want to ride in a pantry car
3. Batchmate type – Very late in booking tickets
4. Senior type – Who did not book tickets at all

Now putting all of them together makes it 7 people plus one taxi driver, all in all eight people. We have found a crazy taxiwala thanks to Mr. Rai and Rentimental.com. Here we go, the couple in tow and our friends too add. We were to start for Delhi from the Andheri East residence of Mr. Korpal at 0400hrs of the following day. We first went to Andheri station to cancel the train tickets which I managed just 10 mins before the closing of the counter. I headed back to where I had left Aru and the couple on finding them I came to know that the couple were flying and not coming with us, their maternal uncle had objected to the idea of them travelling by taxi to Delhi since they were about to get married.

Status: Bye bye couple, nice knowing you, keep in touch

From here it was to Mr. Korpal’s place for dinner and overnight halt for the taxi. Here after calculations we realized that we were paying a little on the higher side with the couple gone from the list of adventurers. Here we thought about it all and by all I REALLY MEAN ALL. Mr. Korpal tried all Bombay contacts who were going to Delhi and were stranded planting the taxi idea in their heads, I thought of selling the idea to my friend whose end destination was Ranchi, where all can people be driven to preserve their pockets, Sigh!

Status: The five TAXITEERS
Kartik (Batchmate Type) – Destination Delhi
Nishant (Senior Type) – Destination Gwalior
Sandeep (Senior Type) – Destination Gwalior
Aru (Our type) – Destination Delhi
Hanumant (Our Type) – Destination Delhi

Ok, we have passengers, we have a taxiwalla and we have two routes to choose from, superb. All set to roll, lets choose the route. Here are the characteristics of the two routes:

Mumbai-Ahmedabad-Jaipur Delhi

• Longer route
• Superb road, part of Golden Quadrilateral
• Goon free roads, can ply at night too
• Fastest known road to Delhi

Mumbai-Indore-Gwalior-Agra-Delhi

• Shorter route
• Bad roads
• The famous Indian Bad lands of Chambal are enroute and we will have to pass those at night as per the current plan
• Goons all the way, cannot ply at night
• Less frequently used route

Status: Senior type wants to go via Gwalior, our and batchmate type wants to go via Ahemedabad

We are a democracy, majority always wins and three is way more than two, we decided to go by the Ahmedabad route we love our lives and we want to REACH home. Here we go, we pick up our seniors and are out of B’bay by 0530hrs, with beer in our hands, plenty of hope and grumbling senior type. We get right down to the task of getting home; we are all asleep within 30mins of the trip starting and are sleeping for the next two hours, before we know it we are about to cross Surat. This is where we realize that we have to have some fun too and people are woken up one by one, perfect timing by our batchmate type Aru to drop the nuclear bomb, LETS PLAY ANTAKSHARI. Bass yahee baakee thaa, roko gaadee mujhey utarna hai. Hell man, this game sucks.

After an unsuccessful car roko aandolan, I was forced to play Antakshari, it is a different matter all together that I took a good part of 2 hrs to say yes for it. There on I was scratching my head all the way till Ahmedabad where we finally called it a day and stopped playing the goddamn game. New source of entertainment watch the scenery in the fading light. This part of any trip is the best, beautiful colours and the aravalis to help with the beauty. The sad part, we were just about entering Rajasthan and it was night.

We halted at Udaipur, desperately short of cash. First, stop ‘theka’, I mean seriously we went to a ‘theka’ exhausted our last reserves of cash on bottles of beer and went on to the ATMs. We found HDFC and ICICI, the ICICI ATM was out of cash and the HDFC bank did not like our faces and said with contempt, transaction failed. Third ATM, Bank of Baroda, I think this and HDFC bank ATMs have the same surveillance module as even this one did not like our faces much and said pretty much the same thing, transaction failed.

Superb situation, plenty of beer and no cash, we explain the situation to our cabbie who to our surprise happily said, I have enough on me, I love him, not only are we using his services but now we are officially his debtors, wow! We started from there onto Haldighati, although we missed taking the Chittorgarh route which would have saved us atleast 3 hrs but we did not seek guidance and moved on at night. We stopped at a road side dhaba along the way bang in the middle of the hills with nothing else in sight. He had nice warm cooked dal, mixed veg and Nan which made our first proper north Indian meal since morning sitting on Charpoys, truckwala style.

Our cabbie who had been driving almost nonstop apart from the short breakfast near Bharuch and the halt at Udaipur took an hours nap after which he had his fill in Nans and dal. In the meanwhile we were adding minerals to the forest soil and chatting away to heavens. This was also our first experience with the coming winters and there was definite bite in the cold air. I got myself onto the car backseat for a nap. Point to be made here, our senior type, Mr. Sandeep had answered our cabbies request for a stupid-o- hour front seat partner to help him keep awake. While I was taking a nap he joined me in doing so which I took as a preparatory one for the stupid-o-hour watch. Nice one sir, here comes the cabbie ready to roll and this is when Mr. Sandeep crossed the threshold from an unknown person into folklore, he did not wake up and I had to do the duty, what the !@#$.

Here we go, me and cabbie (Chuddi Pals) and the dead weight at the back of the car passing Haldighati, Maharana Pratap territory, and I could not see anything flat for miles and miles, beautiful curving four lane roads, forested hills, sprinkling of trucks here and there and SPEEDBREAKERS. They built speed breakers in multiples of hundred here, and I will bet a hundred rs. to prove that there are more breakers on the road passing through each village then there are people inside. We cut left, we cut right, we jumped up and came back down but still to no avail the breakers were smarter than us, we lost a parking light also in our fight against breakers.

After 6 hours of strict vigil me and my chaddi pal decided to call it a day and took our two hour naps somewhere between Jaipur and Kishangarh. When I woke up next we were reaching Jaipur and staring at a ‘Sulabh Shochalaya’, man sometimes it can be such a relief to read that name. phewwwww!!

After having reduced our weights by approximately 2kgs each we aimed for Mathura. Passing Pink City took its time and we passed through Sisodia Gardens on our way to Mathura via Bharatpur, this journey was not very eventful apart from the fact that the buses here could have put trains to shame with the no. of people that were inside and on top of the bus, I swear to god each bus carried an equivalent of 2 train bogies of passengers and I am equally sure that most of those sitting on top must have been filtered by the overhead electricity wires, nothing for the bus driver to worry about his bus is automatically reducing its weight. Onto Bharatpur, whose arrival is announced by the road, we had to get of the golden quadrilateral and to old roads for which they also had a toll tax, damn these fools, whats the toll tax for if you cant spell road. Mathura here we come, jump, fall…… BOING!

At Mathura we bid adieu to our senior types, thank you for your patience, Bon Voyage! We were on the outskirts of Delhi in barely two hours thanks to the superb Delhi-Agra Highway, it’s a dream road till the time you enter Faridabad and reach Badarpur, one look out of your window and it is easy to understand why we are going to take a longer time in getting home in Delhi than we did to get to Delhi from Mathura. After entering Delhi at 4 we reached home around 6. Damn these metro people for putting a ribbon tied ‘The END’ to our memorable trip.

We will hopefully do this more often!

Thank you all types, it was a wonderful experience and a memorable one.