The Peninsula Tour Parts 1 and 2 – Our story

We had been talking about undertaking a road trip across India for a few years now. Finally, after COVID restrictions were removed and a few short trips later, we purchased a map of India that we stuck on the wall of our study. That was the drawing board and the beginning of our ambitious road trip that we christened The Peninsula Tour. It was audacious as it was ambitious. We worked on the principle that we would head down the west coast from Mumbai and climb up the east coast before we turned inland from Orissa into Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh before returning home. We had envisaged that we would need to make short inland trips to visit some ‘must see’ sites.

Once the broad plan was drawn out on the map, we transcribed it into an Excel spreadsheet; where else! The details went in and columns and rows started filling up with information on distances, hours of travel, tentative number of nights we intended to stay, local sights we wanted to visit, potential hotel options etc. It turned out that the trip was going to take us four months on the road; ambitious and audacious as we said earlier!

We shared this itinerary with our friends and family and soon realised everyone considered us to be insane to take this on.

As we prepped for the journey, we went through complete health check ups, got our car serviced and ready, stocked medications for entire duration of the journey and packed for several functions that we would be attending along the way. As one can imagine, our luggage became a potential issue as we had to pack for weddings, temple ceremonies, the cold weather and the warm weather! There were some very interesting lessons that we learnt on this trip that would see us implementing in the near future.

We had a great time and happily drove as per our plan for over a month before a family emergency had us abort the trip to return home. However, the fun of the trip and living out of suitcases and sleeping on a different bed every other night or so had us planning the restart of the trip that we now called the Peninsula Tour Part 2.

Armed with lessons learned from the previous tour, we set about replanning The Peninsula Tour Part 2. We decided to skip Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh for next year. Instead, we decided to head to the south eastern coast via Bijapur and Gandikota to Chennai.

The roads, the traffic and the lay byes..

The roads for most of the trip were in good condition with many routes seeing diversions either for highway expansion or new road surfaces. The toll we paid amounted to close to Rs. 2.30 per kilometre, a bit stiff by any standard. Barring Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, large part of the highways of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh severely lack rest stops for transit breaks. Driving styles varied by state. Maharashtra, especially the outskirts of Pune, Solapur, Kolhapur sees a lot of traffic on the wrong side of the road. To add to that, two wheeler traffic is undisciplined forcing trucks to drive on the extreme right of the road to avoid hitting the two wheelers. Faster vehicles have to find a way between the trucks and bikes. Kerala has good, but narrow roads. The buses in Kerala are most dangerous and will push you off the road if you aren’t cautious. However, surprisingly, vehicles stop to allow people to cross at pedestrian crossings. This is especially so in the Northern parts of Kerala.

The food along the way..

For long trips, the general recommendation is to be conservative when it comes to food, especially for diabetics. We carried a food bag that contained some biscuits, rusk and chocolates. We started each day after a heavy breakfast and ended the day with a very light meal of soup and vegetables at the hotels we stayed in. While we stopped for tea and rest room breaks, our lunches were quite light. We had decided to break this routine at places like Bangalore, Chennai, Trivandrum and Calicut where we stayed or spent time with family and friends. Karaikudi and Calicut were other exceptions given their famous cuisines. The lunches and dinners with family were the breaks we looked forward to eat home cooked food.

The stays..

Going into the trip with a loosely structure plan, we downloaded all the travel apps we could. Barring certain places where we were had to hard be at on specific dates or we knew would be packed due to public holidays, we followed our ‘book a few days in advance’ approach. We had a few misses when it came to hotels we stayed at, but largely our hotels were good experiences. On long trips away from home, especially road trips, it is very important that the hotels are good, rooms clean and beds comfortable. One needs to be able to rest well each night before the long day ahead. The pleasure of sleeping in one’s own bed after a long trip is a pleasure, however.

When friends joined us on the trip..

While we had documented the places we visited in some detail, we had not spent much time talking about  our friends who joined us on different parts of the journey. On Peninsula Tour Part 1, we had friends of ours, all architects, join us at Hampi. Shrinath, Mohan, Bharti and Anupama had been to Hampi in the past, while it was our first time. We were joined by Vijay also an architect based in Hospet. Most of our Hampi tour was like a lesson in History of Architecture! It was a fun 4 days with the gang.

Jayant and Roopal joined us on our journey from Wayanad. It was sad that we had to ditch the duo at Kochi to head back home, but they had their fun continuing as per plan till Trivandrum. Given our inefficient packing, Jayant and Roopal had to carry small bags for the three weeks they were to travel with us!  It  helped that they are both foodies and Kozhikode was where we tried all the local cuisine. Their company, love for nature and love for birds was super.  It was thanks to ‘eagle eye Roopal’ that we were able to spot truly exotic birds.

Ashok and Surendra joined us from Madurai to Trivandrum during Part 2 of the tour. Our friendship is really old(since college) and we spent a lot of time exchanging stories from college with plenty of leg pulling. Surendra’s need for roti, sabji, dal, paneer and jeera rice was hilarious. The stories of disastrous ‘jalfrezi’ and ‘paneer burji?’ must be kept for another day.

This trip has been about travel, exploring new places, off roading, visiting places of historical and geographic interest. It also been about learning, time and money management, making do and spread sheets!

Most importantly, it has been about being with or meeting family and friends, some of them after a long time, spending time with them and getting to know them all over again! We have been overwhelmed by all the love and support we have received. We never knew that we had so many people rooting for us and following our adventure really closely.

We are grateful for this.

We are planning our next trip and we look forward to having all our family and friends be a part of the experience and memories we create.