Pune - Ahmedabad




This will be a day wise series of the Gujarat Trip planned in the month of December. 
The days will then be merged for the final blog.

Day 1

Pune - Ahmedabad 

We started from our home in Pune at 4:15am for Ahmedabad. The expected drive time was around 13 hours by the map ( excluding breaks). We took the Ravet route to Mumbai which was good. The saying "Mumbai never sleeps" could be sensed when people seemed rushing to their workplaces even before 7am.
The roads between Mumbai and Vapi were terrible and took much longer. The roads were under construction and had heavy vehicles all the way. It needed patience and skills to navigate that route.
After crossing Vapi , we finally stopped for a break and had lunch. After a filling lunch, we resumed our journey. At Bharuch, we got onto NE4 (National Expressway 4) which is one part of the golden quadrilateral project connecting Mumbai to Delhi. Now this was an enjoyable drive. NE4 joins NE1 later ahead. There was a police check post in Ahmedabad. As our car is MH registered, they were checking for documents and alcohol 😊
After a long drive, we reached the Sabarmati Riverfront around 7pm.
We had a short stroll followed by clicking a few pics on the waterfront. We then went on to the atal bridge and the flower park. 
They are open till 9pm, however the flower park was closed for a few days for some renovation.
The car park connects to the ticket counter by an over bridge. We bought tickets for Atal bridge and proceeded for the walk. The bridge is constructed across the river. With the lights in the river and the bridge at night, the view looks very beautiful. We took a stroll on the bridge, clicked pics and then headed back.
In the quest of eating something authentic, we ended up asking local people around as well as known ones from Gujarat. No good options came up. We continued driving towards our hotel. In the meanwhile I continued to look around for a good place to eat something interesting.
A message popped up to try khau galli which fortunately was only a few metres away. We navigated through the directions that took us to a restaurant named as "khau galli". This wasn't the actual expectation from either side , but given the circumstances, this seemed a fair option. We parked the car, took a table and placed an order. Tamatar sev, paneer butter masalla and bread basket. The food was pretty delicious. The staff was very courteous and the ambience was blissful. With our tummies full, we now started and headed back to check in to our accomodation. When we reached the booked accomodation, it was sold out hence we couldn't check in. This was a separate ordeal with MMT guys. Luckily, we got another place nearby. We checked in there, and had a good night!!

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