When we chalked out the route, the proposed route was going to take us close to ten hours to go through Dehradun and then on to Noida. However, the day was longer and more tiresome than we expected.
Crawling our way through the outskirts of Chandigarh, getting to the capital city of Uttarakhand was our main objective. It wasn’t until an hour’s drive into the journey that the single lane, virtually-straight highway turned into a spectacular section of twisties; such is the beauty of Himachal Pradesh. As we darted from corner to corner, we had half a mind to go back and do the section again. I would highly suggest that one should try this section at least once in their lifetime.
Dehradun is a small bustling town that is too big for its shoes, like many other hill stations. Tired of Punjabi food, we were desperate to try out something else. We were lucky to have stumble upon this heavenly joint at the very edge of the city called The Orchard. They specialised in pan-Asian cuisine and we literally hogged like pigs at this place like pigs. The restaurant also offers spectacular views of the Doon valley with the Shivalik ranges in accompaniment.
The sad state of Uttar Pradesh’s state highways curtailed our momentum to a great extent. We had crossed over into our sixth state but there was little enthusiasm from the team as we had to change the final stopping destination from Noida to Muradabad. The sun was setting soon after we crossed the state border forcing us to drive close to 150km in pitch darkness. The Renault Kwids stood firm to the daunting task and never seemed to fade from the challenge.
The day also saw us achieve our first milestone of 1000km on the journey. Both the cars are running rattle free and solid. The CEAT Milaze tyres in particular have been a big boon in the endeavour, being ever so pliant when the times got tough. Our steamrolling of states will come to a halt on the tomorrow as it is going to take us a whole day to get to the other end of the vast state of Uttar Pradesh. Thankfully, the road situation would improve as we will be hitting major cities of UP along the way.