Tranquility on the Expressway.

Driving back from Bombay on the express way at night is quite a tranquil experience. For night birds like me its easiest to finish dinner in Bombay and then drive all the way back to Pune under 3 hours instead of waking up early in the morning and driving back. Accompanied by music , your own merry thoughts about life and the flashing lights on the expressway make for a mesmerizing drive.Throw into this heady mixture, races between 2 juggernauts in the first gear on the ghats at a top speed of 25 kmph, the weaving indicas and qualises trying to make their way past these juggernauts, the sneering corollas and the sedans trying to push their way past your humble WagonR , the hulks of Volvo's which refuse to let you overtake and threaten to push you out like a fly and you have a delectable drive. As an added bonus you can add Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and a variety of other artists crooning and make you feel at the top of the world. Once in a while you floor the accelerator, watch out for the response and then utterly enjoy in the thrill of what is essentially a union of man's thoughts and the machine's actions.

Thanks to the number of trips I have done to Bombay in the past few months especially to Powai and Mulund I've now been able to mark out the fastest route to the Eastern Expressway from Pune. Also one knows the turns and the curves pretty well that handling the WagonR is quite a pleasure these days. However as they say, all good things must end soon and I should enjoy the last few months of driving on this expressway.

Bombay trips and driving around.

Driving down the expressway between Pune and Bombay is among my favourite pastimes . On yet another trip this time to talk to a few folks about compilers and to meet my sister I decided to try the road via Turbhe to the Airoli bridge. However it looks as though the contagion of digging up tar roads and replacing them with concrete roads before the monsoons seems to have also hit our neighbours in the valley. Pune has a long tradition of doing that . This resulted in a driving time of nearly 2:45 min when I could have completed the drive to Mulund in 2:30 min or even lesser. The expressway from Dehu Road to Kalamboli was done in 50 minutes flat with a top speed of 130ks an hour.( However I have received other threats during my trip which pale in comparison to the actual threat in driving down at such speeds).


Driving in Bombay is a pleasure in comparison to Pune iff you restrict yourself to driving on the express highways and the eastern side, large 8-10 lane highways where you can zip at 80-90 kph, smooth roads, quite a number of flyovers etc etc etc.