The drive from Bhinmal to Ahmedabad
The drive from Marwar Bhinmal to Ahmedabad took longer than expected. The Rajasthani leg of this journey was bumpy and kept the driver on his toes. We were greeted by the lovely Gujarat state highway 41 (GJ SH41) at Palanpur in North Gujarat.
The SH41 is flanked by commercial establishments on both sides all along its 125km stretch upto Ahmedabad. There are blocks full of oil refineries in some places, blocks of dairies as well as those of pharmaceutical factories. All this bustle that reinforces Gujarat's economic story is easy to miss when one is in a vehicle that is monotonously racing away on the spotless highway. We also came a cross the sign that read 'The tropic of cancer is passing through this place'.
The monotony proved dangerous as our sleep-deprived driver started to snooze while at the wheels. I glanced to my right and saw the driver's eyes closed while the car moved along at a pretty good clip. Fearing for the lives of all in the car excluding myself, I tapped the then snoring sir on his shoulder. The tap ended up being a bit more forceful than I had intended it to be and this stirred him into action (which was verbal and indirect thankfully).
He started complaining about his lack of sleep over the week and how he had almost refused to drive us to Ahmedabad that night but only agreed because we had a 4 AM flight to catch (of course money was no motivation for him!). Then his eyes twinkled as if he had discovered or spotted a magic potion over my shoulders. I turned around and saw a roadside eating joint and realised that the bloke needed some tea. He excused himself while I stood by the car speaking to my uncle. We discussed the perils of driving and recounted the accidents we had met with on the same stretch of the road near Mahesana and we ultimately concluded that the driver was sleepy because of the heavy dinner at Palanpur for which we had paid. "These blokes don't ever let freebies go by. The guy had eaten more than us two combined at the dhaba" remarked my uncle.
The driver came back smiling and announced to all of us, raising an arm holding a bottle up for us to see, that he had found the cure for his sleep. Uncle and I looked at each other wondering what the bottle could contain as visibility on the highway past midnight was not great.
"I have found the cure for sleep"
"Yes, I will wash my face with soda and that will keep me awake"
"Yes, there was a time when I used to drive 24 hours a day for the whole fortnight and I used to carry you know how many .. (stumbling to conjure up a number to support what I perceived as an exaggeration that in turn was needed to support his anecdote which seemed to have been conjured on fly) err 5.. 5 bottles of soda with me"
"OK, go ahead and wash your face. Hopefully it wont blind you"
"I am not going to keep my eyes open"
"While washing my face with soda!"
"You weren't keeping them open while driving either"
After this episode that consumed our precious 20 minutes, we resumed the journey. The driver kept awake for a while and we got within 50 kms of Ahmedabad. The next 50 kms saw us stop another 4 times (would have been more had the soda not been exhausted) before we alighted at the huge airport complex in Ahmedabad.
