22-03-2010

The third day of our trip started at 8 in the morning. We started our day with some tea and Newspapers (I don't drink tea, so it was just Newspaper for me). Vishal Bhaiya, my cousin, who stays close to Nidhi Didi's place picked me up for a cup of coffee and some snacks at his place. I was back in 30 mins and took a shower before starting with our breakfast.

And boy what a Breakfast it was. We had like...let me count, 15 dishes to choose from. But we did not make any choices; we had them ALL. This was by far the best meal we've had in this trip and one of our best Breakfast ever. They were all mostly the typical Gujarati dishes, the ones Kareena Kapoor describes in 3 Idiots.....Fafada, Dhokla, etc...

We ate till our stomachs were full, then filled up our liver, then the kidneys, in fact we ready to trade our brains so that we could fill up our heads too, but decided against it. With tears in our eyes we finally had to part with our food. We then packed our stuff, said our goodbyes, had a brief stop at Sanjay Jijaji's office to write yesterday's blog and then were on are way to Jaipur but not before visiting Sabarmati Ashram and the Dada Hari Vav (Stepwell).

Sabarmati Ashram was quite, green and a very peaceful place on the banks of the river Sabarmati. We saw a few historical pictures, Gandhi's house were few of his belongings are still kept and then lazed around a little next to the Sabarmati river.

From there we went to the Dada Hari Vav. A very interesting historical monument but in total ruins. A sad example of what years of neglect can do to a marvelous structure. The fact that it's still standing has a lot do with the engineering that was put behind it when it was constructed. After exploring the well we were invited by Moulvi Mohammed Ibrahim to the tomb and Mosque next to the well. He gave us a historical background of the entire place. He has been looking after this place for the last 40 years.

After this we set towards the next leg of our journey. We started at around 3:00 PM and had to cover close to 650 KM to reach Jaipur. We reached the outskirts of Udaipur by 5:30 PM. We had our worst meal of the trip yet at restaurant in a resort there. By 6:30 we were back on the roads and then the first time during our trip our GPS let us down. Instead of showing us the Golden Quadrilateral it took us to the older highway. We realized the mistake and by the time we could be back on the GQ it was already 7:30. Jaipur was still more than 400 KM away and we had to reach Jaipur on this day cause I had to catch with a friend who was traveling through Jaipur only because I insisted.

I drove like crazy (crazier than even Vinay) and almost non stop to arrive at Jaipur by 12:15 AM in the night. Masi and Masaji were waiting for us there. Also awaiting us was a nice spread of dinner. The day that started with amazing food ended similarly.