ITINERARY
Left Mumbai at 10 p.m. for Vijayawada on the eastern coastboard in Andhra Pradesh, passing through Pune, Solapur and Hyderabad. This journey was over 1,000 kms long and lasted 17 hours, with a break in Hyderabad for breakfast.
The next day, we drove along the East Coast from the south to north. The Beach Road in Vishakapatanam, written about as one of the most beautiful coastal roads in India. After staying overnight at Bhubaneswar (841 kms), the next day we prayed at Puri and visited the Sun temple at Konarak. After crossing the River Mahanadi at Cuttack, we retired to bed late at night at Krishnanagar, north of Kolkata (736 kms).
Fourth day out of Mumbai, we traveled the length of Bengal and reached Siliguri and were compelled to halt at the Bengal border town of Barobisha (704 kms). The next day was spent driving on the north bank of the River Brahmaputra via Bongaigaon and Nalbari to Guwahati and finally to Tezpur for the night retreat (495 kms).
The next 2 days were to Tawang and back via Bomdila and the Se La Pass (529 kms). Return from Bomdila was through Tezpur to visit Kaziranga National Park and then onwards to Jorhat (347 kms). The next dawn saw us at Nimati Ghat, and then we took the road to Numaligarh, Dimapur and Kohima (294 kms). Kohima to Imphal (153 kms). Moirang in Manipur and Silchar in Assam through Jiribam (277 kms).
Day 12 was spent travelling to Aizwal (200 kms). From Aizwal, we returned to Silchar and reached Shillong (473 kms). After visiting Cherapunjee near Shillong the next day, we drove the night through Guwahati, Dhubri, Tufanganj and Siliguri to Darjeeling where we spent a whole day (950 kms).
The return to Mumbai started with non-stop daylong runs at Darjeeling. The first day saw us end the day at Kharagpur after crossing Kolkata (818 kms). The next day was to Raipur via Keonjar and Sambalpur (733 kms). The final day (Day 18) was the longest (1,204 kms) from Raipur to Mumbai through the Maharastrian towns of Nagpur, Akola, Jalgaon, Dhulia and Nashik in about 18 hours.
In short, the beginning of the trip was long – almost 4,000 kms in the first 5 days – and so were the last 4 days – 3,700 kms.