A Trip to the Desert, Camels, and Monuments with Family on a Beast (CHAPTER-1: The Planning)

As Odias, our Dussehras are celebrated with Durga Puja in our homes in daytime followed by pandal hopping in the evenings. After leaving our homes after graduation, it had become a ritual for both of us to take a week long holiday to go to Bhubaneswar for Dussehra. But in 2015, neither of us had taken or planned a long leave till October. So we decided, way back in August, to go for a vacation outside Bhubaneswar for a change. October is when the tourist season starts all over India, so we thought, how about a road trip? Now, road trips are more fun when you have more people: read friends and/ or family. We did not want to disturb our friends’ plans since it is a time when almost everyone goes home or has pujas. We then decided to ask our parents to join in. Sanket suggested that we first create the plan and then present it to our parents so that they could give a definitive answer.

We first had to sort out the dates: 16^th October 2015 to 25^th October 2015. Then we had to list out the probable destinations. Our India is a very beautiful country, and a hurried packaged holiday trip is no way to enjoy and explore the beauty on offer. Being an IT engineer, I often come across many people who go abroad and say places abroad are more beautiful than India; I think they have never seen India. The list first started off with the state we would have liked to go to: Uttarakhand, Rajasthan or the Himalayan circuit of Assam-Sikkim-Meghalaya.

Rajasthan was zeroed in because a) Ananya's family had never been there and mine too had visited only Jaipur and Mount Abu long back, b) it doesn’t rain in Rajasthan during October and c) Ananya wanted to be able to don the complete Indian Daughter-in-Law attire ;). Our parents would start from Bhubaneswar, me & Ananya would fly down from Bangalore and we all would converge at Delhi airport.

Then we set to finalize the destinations. Jaipur would obviously have been the starting point since we were to converge at Delhi. The “Dark Knight Rises” bug had Ananya in its hold still, which is why I wanted to go to Jodhpur. Ajmer would have been automatically covered since it falls on the way from Jaipur to Jodhpur. After Jodhpur, there are three different tourist circuits each about 400 KMS away and in three different directions from Jodhpur: Jaisalmer, Mount Abu and Udaipur. While we desperately wanted to cover at least 2 out of these 3, our bosses didn’t seem very keen on my extended vacation.

And so, we got only 5 working days off, working around which we planned our trip like this:

Delhi-Jaipur-Ajmer-Jodhpur-Mount Abu-Ajmer-Delhi

Seems a little hectic? Well I mentioned 5 WORKING days off; combining it with 5 holidays, we got a cool 10 day vacation!!! True that 5 more days could have added more places to this list, but we Indians have mastered the art of “mandwani” i.e. compromise that got us this deal.

By the first week of September, we were done with our hotel bookings and flight tickets. We were to finalize our transport. Family road trips in India traditionally employ a chauffeur so as to outsource the strain of driving and also because the roads are unknown. But in our case, I looooooooooooooove driving, and with the advent of a handy app called Google Maps, the roads were no more alien to us. Thus we confidently started looking for a self-driven SUV.

We checked out in various self-drive car rental websites like Mylescars.com and Zoomcar.com. The rates for the Fortuner or Endeavour were quite high and XUV500 would have been a snug fit for our fat family. In the due course I came to know from TEAM-BHP.com that a new operator, Volercars.com, had started its operations from Delhi-NCR. When we checked their website, we came to know that they were providing brand new cars. Looking at the new company profile and with an expectation of high service quality so as to survive in the market we went ahead with the booking of a Toyota Fortuner. Surprisingly they were providing an introductory discount of 30% to the first time users, an offer we could not refuse!!

2015 was a year of long weekends and extended holiday vacations. So some time after Ganesh Chaturthi (September 17 that year), we were chatting, we realized that in Mount Abu there are very limited things to explore and one full day would be sufficient. Suddenly we got a brainwave of visiting Jaisalmer instead of Mount Abu. It was always there at the back of our minds to visit the western frontiers of India, but it had never come into the plan. Then we decided to suggest this change in plan to our families, and they readily agreed for it. Of course it helped that we had not paid upfront for the hotel in Mount Abu which is why cancellation was easy. Hotel prices in Jaisalmer had increased from the last time we had checked in August but we still got a decent hotel at a reasonable price. I so wish the brainwave had hit us the first time itself.

Since we were to stay in Jaisalmer for 3 days, I decided to go to Longewala Border Post by myself. Hope you people have heard this name before, but don’t remember where… You must have watched the J.P. Dutta movie Border which is based on the “Battle of Longewala”. The below videos will serve as a reference:

After listening to this plan of mine, the “Oldies” succumbed to their patriotic fervor and decided to join the trip. So finally, this trip also became a full family affair. And so our final plan stood like this:

16^th October: Bangalore/Bhubaneswar to Delhi Airport. Pick up car from the airport by 11 AM and reach Jaipur by evening.

17^th October: Sightseeing in Jaipur and Shopping (Because we accompany a lady brigade as well)

18^th October: Leave Jaipur by 8 AM and reach Ajmer by noon. Visit Ajmer Sharif and leave for Jodhpur. Reach Jodhpur by evening

19^th October: Sightseeing in Jodhpur and some more shopping (reason well known)

20^th October: Leave Jodhpur by 8 AM and reach Jaisalmer by Evening

21^st October: The western frontier trip (Jaisalmer - Ramgarh – Tanot – Longewala – Ramgarh – Jaisalmer)

22^nd October:Sightseeing in Jaisalmer and some more shopping (reason very well known)

23^rd October: Return trip starts with leg-1: Jaisalmer to Ajmer. Night halt at Ajmer

24^th October: Return trip leg-2: Ajmer to New Delhi. Night halt at New Delhi

25^th October: Holidays over!! :( Back to Bangalore/Bhubaneswar