Tag Archives: road trip

Riding from Udaipur to Ahmedabad: a road trip

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TODAY WE TRAVELLED by road from Udaipur in Rajasthan to Ahmedabad in the neighbouring state, Gujarat. The 158 mile journey took us about 4.5 hours with a brief stop for tea.

South of Udaipur in Rajasthan

The hilly scenery between Udaipur and the frontier between Rajasthan and Gujarat was pleasant. It was mostly rural with few industrial buildings.

On entering Gujarat, everything changed. The terrain became flat and the countryside was liberally dotted with industrial structures, both small and large. In addition, there were plenty of fields for growing crops. Many of these fields were equipped with elaborate irrigation systems. Compared with the delightful, almost ar arcadian landscape in south5 Rajasthan, the landscape in the part of Gujarat north of Ahmedabad is far from attractive.

Until we reached the outskirts of Ahmedabad, the traffic on the dual-carriageway highway was light. Most of the vehicles we met were trucks. We saw only a few private cars.

After passing Ahmedabad airport, we entered the old city via the recently constructed Sabarmati Riverside road. This passes beneath a bridge being constructed for the new Ahmedabad to Bombay superfast railway, which should e running in about 2 years time.

Although the journey was not the most fascinating we have made on Indian roads,we were driven enough superbly by Rajesh, a driver engaged for us my the helpful Mr Yashwant of PP Tour and Travels in central Udaipur.

By car from Kuwait to London

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ON THE FIRST OF August (2023), we went to one of our favourite kebab shops – Raavi in London’s short Drummond Street (near Euston station). There was a large Datsun saloon car parked outside Raavi, and another across the road. Neither of them was in pristine condition.  Both were covered with stickers, and each had Kuwaiti registration plates. On the front bonnet of each of them were the words:

“Kuwait to Paris to London 2023”

Beneath these were words in Arabic. Above the word ‘Kuwait’, there was an image of London’s Big Ben. Above ‘Paris’, there was an image of the Eiffel Tower, and above ‘London’, there was a picture depicting some Kuwaiti landmarks. In Arabic, one reads from right to left. Therefore, reading the Arabic way, the images depict: Kuwait to Paris to London’.

On each of the car’s bonnets, there were flags of different countries and either a boat or an arrow between neighbouring flags. Reading the bonnets from right to left, the route taken by the intrepid drivers of these cars was as follows:

By sea from Kuwait to Turkey; by road from Turkey to Bulgaria to Romania to Hungary to Slovakia to Poland to Holland to Czech Republic to Austria to Belgium to Germany to Italy to France to England to Spain. Then, by ship to Morocco.

The order of the countries seems a little odd. Maybe, a few have been omitted. Because there is an arrow rather than a ship between France and England, and between England and Spain, I guess that the cars travelled through the Channel Tunnel.

I do not know why these cars were parked in Drummond Street, but whoever drove them had made a journey that I am sure I would have enjoyed.

Route 66

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MY MOTHER’S ANCESTORS included a Seligmann family, which can be traced back to the area around Ichenhausen Bavaria in Germany.

In January 1995, we visited Arizona in the USA and drove along a stretch of Route 66 on our way from Lake Havasu City and the Grand Canyon. On the way, we spotted a tiny settlement called Seligman . Even though its name differed to my ancestor’s family name by having only one ‘n’, we felt that we should make a small break there.

Seligman on the Santa Fe Railway is named after Jesse Seligman of JW Seligman & Co, who helped finance the railway and others in the area. The founder of the company was Jewish from Germany. Many German Jews who migrated to the USA with surnames ending with a pair of consonants, such as Seligmann and Wolff, dropped the final consonant on arrival in the States.

Seligman looked like a typical ‘boondocks’ place. It was just what I expected to find in the Wild West despite the dismal weather and the snow on the ground.

We came across a pen in the centre of the town. A weathered notice next to it said that the enclosure contained an ageing buffalo that was once displayed at Buffalo Bills Wildwest Show. My wife suggested, frivilously, that she should should into the pen to pose for a photograph next to the sign.

Despite being 7 months into pregnancy, she began climbing the fence around the pen, and stopped suddenly. What we thought was empty, was not. The pen housed an enormous, sleepy, aged buffalo. She had a lucky escape!

Later, we arrived at the Grand Canyon where the snow fall had been heavy. We were fortunate to see this spectacular geological area decorated with snow.