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Road or a runway?
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Post-Golden Quadrilateral, our traveller finds the drive from Kolkata to Bhubaneswar therapeutic
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Orissa goes back to the time of Ashoka the Great. It was here that he fought the battle of Kalinga and did some serious thinking after seeing the massacre he had engineered. The state’s greatest claim to fame is the Temple of the Sun standing p
roud at Konark, 800 years after it was built. Truly if there is one temple that you have to see in India it is this one. But Orissa also has jungles, lakes and beaches.
The good news is that the Golden Quadrilateral project has greatly reduced the driving time from Kolkata to Bhubaneshwar. In 2001 it took me 11 hours to drive this road, this time I could do the 450 km in just under five hours, which is an average short of a 100kph.
Starting off from Kolkata, I crossed the magnificent second Howrah Bridge, which is a feat of eye-pleasing architecture, with its flamboyant buttresses and huge width, the Hoogly flows beneath it. At Karagpur, the road bifurcates, with one road going off towards Mumbai and the other towards Bhubaneshwar. Before the GQ project, the Mumbai road was preferred because the latter one had numerous railway crossings and speed breakers. One had to go on the Mumbai road till Jharpokacharia and then turn left towards Baleshwar. The road to Bhubaneshwar ran straight to Baleshwar but because of its miserable condition the road via Jhapokacharia was preferred even though it was about 40km longer.
Today the tables have turned. The old and longer road goes through Jharkhand for 24km and it is an absolutely miserable stretch with huge craters capable of doing serious damage to your car, should you be careless.
On the other hand, the road from Kharagpur to Baleshwar via the GQ is paradise. The Toyota Corolla I was driving was sitting at 170kph for most of the way, the road is wide, traffic sparse and smooth surface. Flat lands bordering the road ensure that there aren’t any surprises waiting to jump out at you.
It is one of the most therapeutic drives I have done in the recent past. Hopefully the entire Golden Quadrilateral will be like this. Then Mumbai to Delhi would be 15 hours and Mumbai to Bangalore 9 hours. Soon inter-metro driving in India could become insanely pleasurable and convenient.
RISHAD SAAM MEHTA
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