Road Trip - Mumbai - Delhi - Mumbai

Road Trip Mumbai – Delhi – Mumbai (2850 Kms)

We were travelling to Delhi to attend marriage ceremony in our family and decided to add some adventure by doing a road trip. We have already done Mumbai – Delhi road trip once before but the desire for a long road trip crept up again and decided to cash on the opportunity. All necessary car checks were completed and fuel tank filled on the eve of penultimate day. We finalized the below route for our travel:

Navi Mumbai – Surat – Vadodara – Ahmedamad – Himmatnagar – Udaipur – Ajmer – Jaipur – New Delhi

The plan for next day was to leave early at 5 a.m. in the morning and cover the distance till Udaipur.

Day 1

We left early in the morning at 5:55 a.m. from Panvel and crossed city comfortably without getting stuck in city’s mad traffic thereby covering a distance of 100 KM. 

We took half an hour halt for breakfast at 8 a.m. After breakfast we straight away hit the highway and started cruising at a comfortable speed. We were running as per our schedule so were not in a hurry to cross the speed limits that we had set for ourselves. 

We crossed Vapi @ 9:50 a.m. thereby covering 180 Kms. Until Vapi it seemed like we were playing the Need for Speed game because of improper lane driving by truck drivers. 

They were all over the lanes and it was making our cruise very difficult and slow. Once we crossed Vapi everything had fallen in place and we were enjoying our cruise on a clear sunny day with good visibility. 

We reached Surat @ 11:20 a.m. thereby covering 295 Kms. The best part of the highway was that there were no intervention of city in between and major city were being crossed through bypass.

You may also like to read: Delhi famous market, Bowling in Delhi

We cruised nicely till Ankleshwar on awesome roads and here came the blemish on highway due to construction of bridge over Narmada River just before Bharuch. There was a traffic jam of around 6 Kms due to only one lane being operational. We did some offroading to rid of this jam and suddenly our cruise became adventurous. This also reminded us of changing time in our lives. Even after doing offroading it took us around 45 minutes to cover the distance of 10 Kms. Had we not done it than it would have taken much more time. We reached Bharuch and took a break for lunch. We took the wheels after lunch and were happy to nice roads again. We reached Vadodara @ 2:30 p.m. thereby covering 415 Kms and once again crossed the city through bypass. We reached the Vadodara – Ahmedabad expressway (NE-1) @ 2:50 p.m. and continued our onward journey. The expressway was very nice but only shortcoming of this expressway was that it was just of 2.5 lanes to be precise. Even than we were able to cover the distance till Ahmedabad in no time and reached there @ 3:50 p.m. thereby covering 525 Kms.

We continued our onward journey without any halt and cruised past Himmatnagar (in between 15 Kms of single lane highway) and entered Rajasthan @ 6:00 p.m. thereby covering 665 Kms. After a small tea break we continued on NH8 and reached Udaipur @ 8:00 p.m. with total distance of 780 Kms covered. While drive on a transition from sunlight to darkness one need to be careful as it takes time to adjust. The road conditions till Udaipur was okay. The Udaipur bypass is another poor road that we encountered which was jam packed and took some time to cover. After crossing Udaipur city limits we took an overnight halt in a hotel.

On day 1 we travelled 780 Kms with a running time of 13 hours thereby clocking an average speed of 65 Km/hr inclusive of 1 hour long traffic jam. There were lot of fee collection booth on the highway which take away some time as well. Anyways we were very satisfied with the road conditions in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Also, we reached our target set for the day.

Day 2

We were not in a hurry to leave early so took our time and had our breakfast in the hotel. We left from Udaipur at 9:15 a.m. and re-fuelled the tank for onward journey. While crossing through Rajsthan we could see colourful city passing bye. Trucks laden with various types of stones were also in abundance thereby showcasing the richness of this region in natural stones. We reached Ajmer @ 12:45 p.m. without taking any halt thereby covering a distance of 1045 Kms. In between Udaipur and Ajmer there was a stretch of 100 Kms of single lane highway but did not hamper cruising speed as most of it was empty and without any hindrance. The highway from Ajmer onwards was amazing and we were enjoying the cruise so much that we did not intend to stop. We took a small halt just before Jaipur to freshen up and continued our sojourn. We reached Jaipur @ 2:30 p.m. thereby covering 1173 Kms.

The road after Jaipur was not smooth enough for cruise due to under construction roads thereby reducing our travelling speed as well. The thought of reaching Delhi before dusk kept us motivated and we continued our journey without taking any other halt. One must always take care of the left most lanes as have seen people driving through wrong side on almost most of the stretches in Rajasthan. We entered Haryana @ 4:55 p.m. and after half an hour entered the city limits. Once again we are in the hustling-bustling traffic of a city but still managed to pass through it smoothly and reached our home @ 6:30 p.m. thereby covering 1430 Kms. On day 2 we travelled 650 Kms with a running time of 9 hours thereby clocking an average speed of 72 Km/hr. In our two days of road trip we covered 1430 Kms and travelled through 5 states (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, & Delhi). There were 21 fee collection booths on this route and we paid total toll fee of around INR 1,630.00. Overall, we enjoyed our road trip.

Return Journey

After enjoying the wedding ceremony now it’s time to pack our bag and start return journey towards Mumbai. We decided to follow the same route for return journey:

New Delhi – Jaipur – Ajmer – Udaipur – Himmatnagar – Ahmedabad – Vadodara – Surat – Navi Mumbai

We travelled on the same route earlier and were well aware of the road conditions. We covered the distance as per the below schedule:

Departure from Delhi @ 6:45 a.m.

Jaipur @ 10:30 a.m. Distance – 205 Kms

Ajmer @ 12:30 p.m. Distance – 367 Kms

Nathdwara @ 4:00 p.m. Distance – 595 Kms

Udaipur @ 4:30 p.m. Distance – 630 Kms

Entered Gujarat @ 7:15 p.m. Distance – 760 Kms

Himmatnagar @ 8:15 p.m. Distance – 817 Kms

Gandhinagar @ 9:10 p.m. Distance – 880 Kms

Ahmedabad @ 9:30 p.m. Distance – 900 Kms

Vadodara @ 10:45 p.m. Distance – 1010 Kms

After covering 1010 Kms smoothly a dramatic turn came to our journey when we found that no rooms were available in nearby hotels for overnight halt. After dinner we took a small nap in our car itself and thereafter continued our journey. This time we took the diversion from Bharuch to avoid traffic jam and reached Ankleshwar without any issue through state highway. The odd time of 4 a.m. also helped us to cross this stretch without any hiccups. We took few more halts for rest as well as small naps and continued our journey. Once the sun rose than our journey continued till we entered Mumbai city limit at 9:30 a.m. We were caught up in traffic jam and the distance of 60 – 70 odd Kms look more difficult than 1350 Kms that we had already covered and to add to it during that phase we encountered a flat tyre as well. Finally we reached our home at 12:00 p.m. thereby covering 1420 Kms and overall return journey of 2850 Kms. It was an amazing experience and so far the second longest road trip that we have covered. We completed this road trip with a thought of exploring further road expeditions in future.

Basic Necessity check before going for long road trip

We did the basic necessity checks and arrangements before starting our road trip and would suggest all to be very careful about the same.

• Did the mandatory checking of our car like when was the last servicing done, air pressure including the spare tyre, fuel, engine oil, coolants, etc.
• Carried all the valid documents like vehicle registration number, insurance, PUC, and driving license
• Searched the route map and finalized the trip schedule
• Have kept additional comfort for the back seat
• All necessary medicines were in place
• Since we were travelling with a kid we kept additional food stuffs, water, clothes, and medicine for child

For further details on necessary travel tips click here.

This travelogue was first published on cloud9miles.

Frequent searches leading to this page:-

spas in Mumbai, mumbai to delhi road trip, mumbai to delhi road trip itinerary, mumbai to delhi route, mumbai to delhi distance