A Road trip to get nostalgic …

A few years ago I went on a road trip to Alibaug with 3 of my friends from MBA days. It was 2 days of fulltoo fun and masti. I had blogged about this trip with some pictures (You can check that out here). It would be fun to do it again … some change of scenery would be a nice break.

The pertinent question now is: do we do it alone or do it with our better halves. All 4 of us (Arijit, Hemant, Nikhil & Shubham) are now married and the 'better half' will surely be pissed off if we planned it all by ourselves.

So the first thing to think about it is a comfortable car / vehicle which will seat all 8 of us. Any suggestions? An Innova / Xylo would not be comfortable for 8 of us … we will need a bigger one. A comfortable 8-10 seater with good air-conditioning (not that we would need much of it looking at the weather – but then when it rains heavily, u got to roll-up the windows and switch on the AC). I will leave it to the car rental agency to suggest a suitable vehicle.

Now comes the location part – 2 locations that I have often heard about but never got a chance to visit – Harihareshwar and Ganpatiphule – both are famous for their Temple and their beach. Here is a google maps snapshot of the route we will be taking. Surprisingly, we will be travelling Mumbai-Harihareshwar-Ganpatiphule – Mumbai … all three are located bang on the sea BUT the road between them is far away from the coast.

It would have been splendid if the road between these locations would have been close to the sea – almost like a road going parallel to the sea. Wouldn't it make it a far more scenic ride and wouldn't that create several more picnic and stop-over hotspots for tourists or weekend-picnickers – boosting the local economy. I wish our Tourism Ministry would look at such easily do-able things that would boost local/domestic tourism as well as lead to greater economical development of these places.

For this trip … I have in mind a couple of experiments that I would like to do:

We hail from different parts of the country with different family influences (and hence Food influences). Would like to trouble the ladies a bit and have some sampling of authentic Bengali, Marwadi, Maharashtrian snacks and food items.

Antakshari during the trip could also be allowed to go 'regional' with songs from different languages and if we cannot do it ourselves, get some CDs or MP3s to play. Variety of food and music !!

Also, plan to group a good collection of Bollywood songs based on the moods and maybe by composer or singer too. Different moods for different times of the day and part of the journey (even some devotional stuff for times when we are around the temples).

Talking of moods, I would also carry different fragrances of the Ambi Pure AC vent clip-on variety model. They have about 4-5 fragrances and would love to use them alternatively – in conjunction with the moods of the songs and music. (More about the new product and its fragrances at AmbiPur FB page)

It would be fun. We did our MBA in 2003-2005 and then, in the past 10 year, being in one place at same time is a rare. After our MBA, 4 of us got together for the Alibaug trip and then again for Arijit's Marriage. Very recently Me, Nikhil and Arijit met at NITIE (our alma mater) to address the new batch to share some gyaan with them J Our wives would practically come together for the first time (can't count the marriage bcos Arijit's wife was just introduced and could hardly spend time with us).

So … the plan is in place (almost). Now, we just have to wait for an opportunity where all 4 of us are in Mumbai with our wives and we have the weekend to spare for a coastal road trip. Who knows? If we had an extra day, we might even go further to GOA !!! Of course, neither Mumbai nor the above locations are important – it's the group that is – so we could as well gather in any part of the country and plan a road trip to the nearest scenic tourist spot