Travelling

This is the full merged blog of a 13-day road trip from Pune to Gujarat and back. Day wise separate blogs are available in the hyperlinks as this entire could be too lengthy to read. 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 driv...

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 5 Dwarka - Somnath The day started much earlier at 2am. We got ready and checked out of our accomodation by 3:25am. The first destination was Girnar which was a 4 hours' smooth drive. The mountain is at an altitude of 3672ft comprising of 10k steps from the base. The ropeway covers the initial 5k steps reaching mata Ambaji temple. Further up is the Gorakhnath temple and then the next peak is gurudev Datt mandir. It is all stairs to navigate through. Took us around 2.5 hours to cover the 3 peaks. Neminath temple is 1200 steps below the ropeway point but I chose to skip it. The ropeway charges 700INR both ways for adults and half the price for kids below 110cm. The ropeway is very well managed and even during peak hours, the waiting time wasn't high. The ropeway takes 7-8 mins each side. Darshan at dattatreya temple was just amazin...