Haldwani to Lucknow

Haldwani to Lucknow:

Date: 25th June 2011

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Route travelled: Haldwani-Bareilly-Shahjahanpur-Sitapur-Lucknow

Highways: State highway 37, National Highway 24 and small stretch on NH 74

After Rani’s marriage which was fantastically organized by family and supported by rain god me and Sonam were supposed to travel back to Lucknow in our Tiger. So this time there were two significant changes in my journey from the previous one, first this time it was Tiger not jumbo and second this time my companion was Sonam not Shweta.

Although the ’Biidai’ function was in early morning at 6 AM but since we didn’t sleep the whole night watching Rani and Saurabh taking ‘FERAS’ and wedding ‘Vachans’ I was very tired and immediately after Rani’s ‘Bidai’ took a bed and slept. I got up around 1 PM when it was looking that I will not be able to start if delayed further. Got ready very quickly, collected and packed all my stuff and simultaneously Sonam also did the same. By 3 PM we were set to go after having lunch etc. but then another process of Sweets and all started and we could not start before 4 PM.

So at 4 PM we were ready to zoom to Lucknow in our old but strong tiger. The road from Haldwani to Bareilly is not in good shape, in fact it is in very bad shape J lot of potholes and broken road welcomed us in the monsoon. I felt the roads were even worse than the last time 3 months back. May be because of monsoon or because of change in car…. As I said we zoomed towards Lucknow, we crossed Lal Kuan, Pantnagar, Kichcha, Baheri very quickly so when Bareilly was just 20 kms, I decided to take fuel so that we can keeping going without any tension, the fuel indicator was touching the E symbol now. But to my surprise it took lot of time in entering Bareilly and reaching the junction which joins Pilibhit road to the highway coming from Lucknow. It was 5:50 PM then, we spent some time at the bus station as plan was to drop Sonam there and she could take a bus to Kasganj. Since it was getting darker, I decided otherwise and we both started towards Lucknow.

Post Bareilly also roads are pretty bad and I got plenty of potholes and few real deep ones. It surely dented car rim as they would not be as strong as they were 7 years back. But Engine is still awesome and it picks the speed so quickly that it amazed me every time I raced. Now I know why I could beat so many big cars during the heydays of Tiger, because of its maneuverability at high speed and small size which allowed me to squeeze in between two trucks so quickly. I really enjoyed the drive. Only concern was the heavy steering at zero or low speed.

NE ways praised the tiger a lot. We didn’t take any break till now and decided to have a small break at Maigalganj our favorite spot on Bareilly Lucknow route. Had a tea and Samosa and half kg of famous ‘gulab jamuns’ and started from there again. It was 8:20 PM now when we started from Maigalganj.

We reached Sitapur around 9:05 and then the drive was smooth sailing because of the tolled road (toll is not started yet). Reached outer Lucknow around 10 and then the city drive on slower speed delayed us and we could reach home by 10:30 PM only.

We covered the distance of 350 kms in 6:30 hrs.