After many "Yes" and "No" from me and my friends we finally decided to come back to Pune by my friend's car. The funny part was, nobody among us had an experience of driving for 4-5 hours continuously that too in heavy traffic in evening. But the confidence (maybe over confidence) within them made my dear friends to take my friend's brand new car to Pune by driving.
We were supposed to leave from Vasai by 2.00 p.m., which became impossible when one of turned up 1 and 1/2 hrs late. One among us, who, we believed had an experience of driving on the Express highway, took the steering under his control. Just after we left, within 4-5 minutes, we (especially me) started regretting our decision of this whole risky journey. My so called experienced friend had almost collided the car first with a big tempo and a second later with a red SWIFT. He scared the hell out of me, rather all of us. And the reason he told us was, he just overrode the signal given by the truck driver by pressing car's horn and continued driving. God!! After lot of discussion with ifs and buts, we decided we would stay on maximum 30-40 KMPH speed. After watching, the supposed-to-be western expressway, I could say any country side road will be far better than the expressway we were driving on. With cursing the road, as well as my friend, we somehow reached Thane, via Ghodbandar road. The passersby were looking at us in astonishment as well as frustration, as we were driving at such a low speed with such a nice and brand new car. But we couldn't help it. We preferred reaching late, than never :).
We took the Airoli-Vashi-Panvel road from Thane to get connected to Eastern Express Highway. By then, I had got habitual of sudden jerks, wrong gear changes and unnecessary accelerations. But simultaneously I thought, he was driving comparatively better. My cribbing had also reduced as time passed by. After almost 2.5 hrs we reached the Express highway heading straight to Pune. As the name suggests, it’s a 3 wide-lanes highway. So the driving had become a bit easy now. Then the owner of the car came into picture. He decided to try his hands on his own car. He drove it good too. Of course, as he had his driving lessons fresh in his mind and the road was smoother, he easily drove next for 1/2 an hour till we reached the Food Plaza. It was later we came to know he hadn’t got his license yet! The 1st driver of the car had done his job pretty well, so did the second one!
The car as well as we- the passengers wanted to fill up our tanks. We filled up fair quantity of petrol in the car, and had some tea and homemade snacks. There we again started the next and crucial part of the journey – The Khandala Ghats. This time our comparatively-most-Experienced 3rd driver took the charge of the steering. I had never seen him driving, so was astonished to see him driving so confidently on ghats. I was fully relieved by then and was sure about one thing, we would reach home safely whatsoever. To my utter surprise, we almost touched 110 KMPH on the highway. After all the ups and downs in the journey, we finally reached home at 9.30 p.m. I greeted all of them with a smile for showing that much courage to drive for 5 and half hours. It was a journey worth remembering for my lifetime!
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