Road Trip 1 : Villages Around National Highway 8

The least exciting Road trip we ever had but probably the most important as its after this we decided to keep our dreams of world tours aside(for the moment) and explore everything around Ahmedabad

Date : 4th Jan 2006
Expense : 100Rs on Petrol + 20Rs. on Cigarettes + 38Rs. (two coke bottles) = 158 Rs.

Yesterday, I was a bit free and thought it will be a good idea to go on a long drive as the weather was excellent (a bit cold but perfect for a Road Trip)!!

A friend of mine decided to join me in the trip! We decided that instead of going to one of the usual popular places on the National Highway 8, we should go and have a look at some of the villages across the highway.

It was just 15 minutes since we crossed the highway but we were already able to see the difference. There was that 'village' atmosphere : clean air, narrow empty roads, lots of greenary and yeah - Lots and lots of camel carts!! Camels arent that uncommon in this part of the country!

The roads were surprisingly very very good - even better than our Ahmedabad ones - which the AMC (Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation) keeps digging every three months!!

for the next 45 minutes we didnt see a single shop!! and no vehicles either other than the camel carts!! And it was the first time I drove my bike faster than 80!

The roads and the scenaries were so fantastic that we didnt feel like returning! but I had my office and so we decided to take the other way towards home (through Gandhinagar).

On the way back we saw this giant.

On an average, an Indian elephant weighs four tons. The height of a male at shoulder is nine feet and that of female, about eight feet. The males have tusks measuring about six feet. The females have shorter version, called "tushe," which measures less than a feet. Though an elephant's body weight is sixty times that of man, its brain is only five times that of man. Its power of scent is among sharpest in the animal kingdom. Its hearing is not so sharp as the size of its ears might indicate, and its range of vision is limited.

The elephant can neither gallop, nor canter, not trot, it can only walk with a speed of about ten kilometer per hour. It can charge at twice this speed, but only for up to fifty meters. Due to its enormous size, the elephant sways in all directions at once. It feels out soft ground with the trunk and does not forward for fear of getting bogged. Except for a short siesta at noon and a brief spell of sleep around midnight, the wild elephants feed almost constantly. They make great fuss over their eating, cracking tree branches and trumpeting. They have a great fondness for bamboo scrubs and for grassy plains dotted with ficus trees. They have immense liking for sugarcane and hence enter cultivated sugarcane farms. They destroy more than what they feed on. An elephant in the wild eats about 200 to 300 kilograms of food everyday! In the process, it is said that it would destroy vegetation weighing about 1000 kilograms.