"You can pack for every occasion, but a good friend will be the best thing you could bring"
Working with a good team is always the greatest thing while working for an organization, when the team plan gets changed from outing to road tripping that makes the friendship worth even more than just being a colleague. This time it was a team of 7 people(3 females and 4 males) who planned a team outing to Uttarakhand and this was one of the best time with the team.
The journey started early morning at 5 am by hiring a Scorpio from Zoom Car(www.zoomcar.com), one of the best car rental companies. Picking up everyone from different parts in Delhi and Noida, we started our trip to our first stop which was Rishikesh (nearly 245km from Delhi). Being the driver of the trip is good as well as bad, because you don't have to squeeze out with other at the back seat and bad because then you have to trip the car from traffics, highway and all sort of terrains. The highway from Delhi to Rishikesh was under construction at that time and there were patches when the speed used to be slow down to 20-30km and at time you are driving at 120km/hr speed. There are a lot of small towns which comes in the route and makes it time taking to cover those areas. Reaching Rishikesh by afternoon after a journey of 7-8 hours, our stop was at a camp site in shivpuri. The route to the camp site was good till you are on highway and when you had to drive down near the river side, car's like Scorpio requires a great skill of driving. The camp site looked fair in the afternoon. After having lunch from the site, we went straight for our river rafting of 14km. River rafting is the attraction of Rishikesh as you experience one of the best adventure of water sports. Covering that 14km of water stretch with a lot of whirlpools, waves and even doing cliff jumping is the part of rafting depending upon what package you choose. Rafting for 14km is more difficult than driving for 245km at one go. For me the day was hell tiring and by the time it was getting dark we have to get some setting done once again. So we asked the manager and the tour guide to help us for the same and we were lucky enough to get it easily this time. The food, stay and location of camp site was average but the mosquitoes & hot summer were the real trouble over there as on camp site you don't get air conditioners and have to adjust with table fans only. The evening began with born fire, drinks, food and game of cards, oh well I don't play cards but everyone else were enjoying it. I had to take some sleep as I was the driver of the tour and hence tried to sleep but alas the situation didn't let that happen and we could just manage a few hours of sleep.
Next day, waking up for a short walk with sunrise and then getting ready for the trip ahead as we were moving towards Tehri, one of the highest locations of Uttarakhand. After having done with our breakfast, we packed the stuff and moved to continue our journey to Devprayag which was about 75km from the camp site. Reaching on to Devprayag everyone were excited to witness the two rivers (Alaknanda & Bhagirathi) getting mixed and flowing as one. I have been to this place before as well, so others went down to the river side and I was on a search of fuel pump to get the tank full . After a stoppage of 30-40 minutes and gathering something to eat, we moved ahead to Tehri which was another 60km from Devprayag. On reaching there one will always get goosebumps on seeing one of the highest dam build over there. The view is extra ordinary from the top point, they have made a place from where people can stand and have selfies they call it as "The Selfie Point", we got a lot photos clicked over there. In search of a nominal restaurant, we went to tehri market & luckily we found one good family restaurant, 7 people eating like they haven't had anything since ages and made a billing of around 2-2.5k which was a surprise for all of us. Looking at the time and the journey ahead, we started moving down to Haridwar from Tehri which is near about 215Km. In the rush of moving down the forest area and curving roads of hill we were driving above 100km/hr and then suddenly there was a checking by traffic police, in the middle of forest lane. They stopped us for speed, however there was no speed limit so they had a bad luck, but then another officer said I was not wearing the seat belt and I had to accept that and pay 100rs fine for the same. That road was so well maintained that one can drive above 100-120km/hr easily, though I would not recommend to do so. We reached back to Haridwar by 7pm around and started our search to get a good hotel. After bargaining with different hoteliers, we found one who gave us 2 attached rooms at the cheapest price. We went out for dinner and a walk near holy Ganges, after a brilliant travel and enjoyment, having a sound sleep was the best thing one can expect when you haven't slept well at night before.
Third day, we started moving back to Delhi from Haridwar. As we were late in schedule, the zoom car team was behind us. We asked the team to extend the timing by 2-3 hours which they denied and didn't coorporate with us. Every company understand the struggle of the customer and shows a bit of understanding as per the situation, however zoomcar didn't do anything and fined us for a delay of 2 hours as well. So the entire journey from Delhi->Haridwar->Rishikesh->Devprayag->Tehri Dam->Rishikesh->Haridwar->Delhi was around 712km, it went well and amazing as it was under the budget of 7k per person, which was the winning situation for all of us even after getting fined by traffic police and zoomcar.1
