We left from Hyatt Regency Lucknow on the morning of Sept 8, after having a great breakfast. There was a COCO (Company Owned Company Operated) Fuel Station very near Hyatt Regency Lucknow and we went there to fill up for the trip to Jaipur. Since the car’s windshield had not been cleaned for a couple of days, and the fuel station offered it as a free service, I asked for it. The person who cleaned the windshield called another colleague of his and pointed at the wipers.
Windshield Wipers Gone !!!
Krishnan was paying for the petrol and when he came near the car, both the attendants told him that our car’s wipers were missing !!! To say we were shocked is an understatement. Someone had stolen both the wipers when the car was parked at the basement of Hyatt Regency. We hadn’t taken the car out in Lucknow at all so the hotel was the only place it could have happened.
The windshield wipers are not expensive and nor are they difficult to procure but we had a long road trip ahead of us and this set us back by a couple of hours at least.
Gomti Nagar, is a fantastic location in Lucknow. There are several automobile dealers and they have their service centres nearby. We drove back towards Hyatt and first enquired at the Maruti Suzuki showroom. They asked us to go to their service centre that was a couple of kilometres away. As we were driving towards the Maruti Suzuki service centre, I noticed another car service centre and stopped.
Krishnan was a little sceptical when he saw just one person standing outside at the service centre which was yet to open. But that one person, Rama Shankar, was our saviour !! He asked us to wait for ten more minutes for the showroom (a few metres away) to open so that he could fix new wipers.
As you can see in the pic above, it’s easy to remove the wipers of an Innova Cyrsta. If the petrol station attendant had not noticed the missing wipers and we had just gone on with our road trip, we would have had to return to Lucknow or just stop on the expressway as it started to rain heavily as soon as we got onto the Agra Lucknow expressway. Not just that, when we would have used the wipers to drive in the rain, the windshield would have been totally scratched :(.
Well, I had written a blogpost in 2021 – Inconvenienced, When Convenient ! and it was once again proven right. We found the right place to get new wipers and the only thing we lost was time !
Torrential Rains
We got to use the new wipers within an hour of getting them fitted. Rains started within a few kilometers of our getting onto the Agra Lucknow expressway. There were a few patches where we faced some rains, but not torrential rains – that came later.
We took a pit stop at Etawah, at the Food King Plaza. We made some tea and walked around a bit. Amma noticed the corn seller and we immediately bought a couple of steamed corn on cob. They were delicious.
From our pit stop we reached Agra and had to go across the city to connect with the Agra Jaipur highway. That connection through Agra is quite a nightmare as the city of the Taj Mahal, has unruly traffic. The one thing that surprised us though was the level of cleanliness ! Agra is “swachh” and this is one city that we have visited several times and every time it has managed to disappoint us. Yogi Ji’s magic seems to be working.
On the Agra Jaipur expressway, we experienced torrential rains … visibility was poor and we had to drive very slowly. We stopped near the Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur to have our delicious lunch (packed by Hyatt Regency Lucknow). Coincidentally we had visited this very national park last year for our anniversary – Anniversary Amongst Birds.
The video below captures the rains near Dausa. The sound of the downpour makes it difficult to hear my voice 🙂 and I do have a loud voice.
A few minutes before the downpour, we got a little respite from the rains –
As we got closer to Jaipur we were rewarded with a stunning Sunset and no rains. It was just a little overcast.
Also, we enjoyed driving through the Ghat Ki Guni tunnel at the entrance to the pink city. We have never used this tunnel before as we haven’t entered Jaipur from Agra. For us Gurgaon to Jaipur is an easy drive.
Before we reached Om Niwas, we refuelled. Jaipur is like a second home for us and we love all the hotels in the Arya Niwas chain. Getting into the room at Om Niwas was like coming home to a friend’s place.
Trip Stats –
Distance from Hyatt Regency Lucknow to Om Niwas, Jaipur – 585 Kms. This is after adjusting for the extra distance we covered in Lucknow to get the wiper blades fixed ~ 10 kms.
Total Toll Paid – Rs. 960/-
Total Time taken – 10 hours 20 minutes. Getting wipers fixed – 45 minutes; Pit Stops and refuelling stops – 1 hour.
A well earned sleep after an exciting drive… The next day we drove from Jaipur to Udaipur.
#BharatBhraman