05: An early start

Start early and begin raising the bar throughout the day.
- Bruce Jenner

A few weeks prior to the Rajasthan road trip, I had been on a road trip to Dandeli and Karwar in Karnataka along with my school friends. One of my school friends is a native of Karwar and travels there pretty often. He is used to driving at night, and had suggested that we leave Pune at night. Karwar is around 500 kms from Pune, and takes around 9 hours to reach during the day. My friend covers the same distance in 6 - 7 hours by travelling at night. While night driving can be risky if one is not used to, it does help in cutting down on the travel time. We experienced the same when we drove to Karwar at night in November 2016.

For the Rajasthan road trip, we had decided to start from Pune (towards Ahmedabad) at 4:00 am sharp on Saturday, 24 December 2016. The luggage consisted of 7 bags in all - 6 same sized duffle bags and 1 duffle bag that was a little lesser in size. During the luggage tying trial, we had taken about 45 minutes to secure the luggage and we were hoping to better that time. Anant, Mukul and I had decided to meet at 3:30 am on Saturday the 24th to give ourselves half an hour this time around. On the group chat, we bid good night at 9:30 pm on Friday the 23rd and planned on getting some rest. There was a twist in the tale however..

Despite bidding good night, we continued chatting for few more minutes. Seeing that no one was asleep, I proposed that we tie bags at night itself. Mukul raised the bar by proposing that we leave at night instead of in the morning. I remember saying that I was in love with night driving ever since I had driven at night to Karwar. Anant checked with Rama, Mukul checked with Gauri and I checked with Pallavi. All showed readiness, and all of a sudden we decided to prepone our departure by 4 hours by leaving at midnight.

Luggage secured to the roof carrier with ropes and cargo net

By 10:50 pm, we were downstairs to tie the luggage to the roof carrier. I secured one end of the rope by tying a figure-of-eight knot at one of the base brackets of the roof carrier. This knot would not be removed till the end of the trip. The rest of the process was already tried and tested. We bettered ourselves and finished securing the luggage in 30 minutes.

Anant, Mukul and I decided to take baths so that we would be fresh during the night drive. Trisha hadn't slept and she was with us while we were securing the luggage. Ruhi had slept already so we had to wake her up. In a short while everyone was ready, and by 12:30 am on Saturday, 24 December 2016, we were on the road, 3.5 hours before the planned departure time of 4:00 am.

The much awaited road trip had finally begun in the most unexpected of ways. The group had shown indications of being travellers and not tourists! We hoped to make the most of the early departure, and it all depended on the traffic conditions now. The target was to reach Ahmedabad by lunch time and take enough rest before the second day's drive.