My road journeys…and paneer paratha!

My road journeys…and paneer paratha!

Turn a blind eye to everything if you have to eat here!

We undertook two road journeys in this first month of the year, with both falling in the category of short trips. After all, going from Mumbai to Lonavala and Lucknow to Varanasi do not merit a spot for distance in the Guiness book in any way.

And I am left wondering - am I blind to the beauty that other people can observe and enjoy in nature? Am I merely a nit-picker? Does the moving car put me into a deep slumber without me being aware of it, so I miss what the others see?

Mumbai - Lonavala  

It took nearly two hours to get out of Mumbai in the afternoon traffic, such a vast city it is. The roads with no pavements led to shanties, makeshift small shops punctuated with sad-looking bent trees gone dry and dusty with the fumes of the traffic, or huge swanky buildings around which green trees stood proudly.

Tour operators extoll the scenic beauty on the nearly 83 km Mumbai - Lonavala Road, the waterfalls, the lush greenery, the great road, the beauty of the hill station and the history, romance and adventure there, the food, the places to see. But going in early January made me realise they must have been talking of visiting the hill town after monsoon.

About twenty years ago, when expressways were a new thing, this one must have been an important, notable feature. Now it had enough traffic to slow your speed down at points. Perhaps youngsters, especially those who ride motorbikes, feel the journey is an adventure.

A little more than 600 metres above sea level, Lonavala was many degrees cooler than Mumbai. In fact, I saw people using the wood-heated traditional copper water heater. It has a container of water inside, heated with wood fire from above and below.

The sight of the green hills at a distance, however, convinced us that the film stars living in what seems like abodes which can be measured in footsteps, in the financial capital of India, and are said to own bungalows in Lonavala to escape to peace and greenery from time to time, are wise.

Lonavala is said to have gotten its name from the several caves it has. The two nights we stayed in the town, we focused mainly on the activities during the meeting we had gone to attend, but some more active ones ventured to see the wax museum, and came back, defeated by traffic jam.

Nobody else saw this thin two-feet long snake in the well!

The part of the town we were in, looked like any other in the Indian low hills, with some carefully maintained buildings making their presence felt among small makeshift huts and houses, with kutcha or broken concrete slabs in courtyards/paths with household articles being washed, dried, spread out everywhere, and of course, the ubiquitous boards of Maganlal chikki (peanut brittle) everywhere.

Great sense of timing! As soon as the early morning arti was over and the devotees had taken the prasad, descended these sparrows on the thali at the Narayani Dham temple! Is it their reward for perhaps the good deeds they did in their last birth? 

Lucknow - Varanasi

The annual occurrence of trains running several hours late due to fog this time of the year, and flights too expensive for this distance and time, made us choose road as the medium for reaching Varanasi for a wedding in the family. Fortunately, nowhere have I found any euphoric descriptions about travelling from Lucknow to Varanasi by road.

Getting out of Lucknow on a cold morning when most of the people are still debating in mind whether to get out of the house or not, was easy. The Shaheed Path takes you to the exit to Sultanpur Road which further leads you on to the Poorvanchal Expressway up to outskirts of Sultanpur. Then through a short stretch of a two-lane road, one accesses the four-lane Lucknow-Varanasi highway through Lambhua and Jaunpur, and then into the city of Lord Shiva. The season dictates the density of traffic, I was told.

The yellow of the mustard flowers on the lush green growth in the fields on both sides, was slightly visible through the thin envelope of fog. Once you got off the expressway, there were villages along the road where people had started going about their daily business as usual.

The speed limit on both the expressway and the four-lane highway is 100 kmph. Although it did not have a good surface, that did not hamper our speed. Work is going on and it is hoped that soon Varanasi, a little more than 300 kms away, would be a mere four-hour drive from Lucknow.

So, the next time you are planning to go to Varanasi from Lucknow or nearby cities, road can be a good option.

What did I see along the roads? Scores of small, makeshift tea stalls, or proper buildings with boards offering band-butter (bun-butter), dosa, Manchurian and what nots, were a common sight. Do you have any recommendations? My experience was that the food made and sold there depends purely on your luck. And those of you who are health/hygiene/cleanliness conscious, ignore the colourful pictures on the signboards and carry your own food.

At Rs 70, a rather biggish paneer (cottage cheese) paratha was tempting enough to be tried. But I took one bite and felt it could have been less doughy and have more paneer filling. But I was not standing there when he was making it.Reason?

I dare not guess the last time the cook and the server had washed their hands (especially in this weather), or the aluminium pan they boiled and reboiled the tea in, and if the vegetables were washed the way we proudly claim we do at home.

Compare these to what Mani told on his return from the Pran Pratishtha (consecration) ceremony at Ayodhya this Monday. Not only is the road till Ayodhya wide and smooth, he could not find the gullies (narrow lanes) he had seen decades earlier in the city, any more. They have all been turned into four-lane roads.

Now I wonder what my life would have been like if I was a truck operator!

                                                                                      -Anupama S Mani