Rajasthan RoadTrip - Initial Planning

At long last, initial post on the road trip we just did thru Rajasthan, our first in India! We had 10, at best 15 days in which we wanted to do a road trip and we had decided to travel in Rajasthan. The biggest deterrents were

a. Road Quality
b. Facilities on the road
c. The Unknown, we had never done this before!

Initial research threw up the following links, somewhat useful, the RTDC website I must say is fairly informational as an initial starting point.

• Good Link. Very busy itinerary, with lots of temples thrown in for good measure!


• Somewhat Interesting, a little off topic


• Decent Show by the Rajasthan Tourism People


• Map My India - To my knowledge the first mapquest type website in India - excellent show, helped us to visualize distances / terrain / routes. Printing not upto par, so ultimately not that useful on the road

Our initial pass at an itinerary yielded, this is the order in which we would have driven

1. udaipur
2. bundi
3. ajmer
4. jodhpur
5. jaisalmer
6. bikaner
7. shekhawati
8. jaipur
9. agra

Ofcourse, this proved to be impossible, Jaisalmer is the fly in the pickle, we found out that things are organized in "Triangles" - you could do
1. Udaipur - Jodhpur - Jaisalmer
2. Agra - Jaipur - Bikaner - Ajmer (maybe)

from a distance perspective, Jaisalmer is waaaaay out there and throws off travel planning by road alltogether.

So,we decided finally on the following itinerary, not wanting to overkill and touch/go everywhere -

Oct 26th, Friday (Mumbai) - day 1 (300 km)
- Mum -> Ahmedabad (night halt)

Oct 27th, Sat (Udaipur) - day 2 (300 km)
- Leave early morning ahmedabad, reach Udaipur (afternoon)
- Check into hotel, goto pichola, check out evening entertainment

Oct 28th, Sun - day 3 (300 km)
- Leave Udaipur for Jodhpur via shilpgram
- Stay overnight at Jodhpur, if we get time, we'll sightsee jodhpur as soon as we reach

Oct 29th, Mon - day 4 (278 km)
- Sightsee Jodhpur, scoot early and leave for Jaisalmer
- Jaisalmer Sightseeing, sleep in jaisalmer

Oct 30th, Tue (Deogarh) - day 5
- Jaisalmer to Deogarh, stay in deogarh

Oct 31st, Wed - day 6
- Deogarh, kumbalgarh, stay in deogarh

Nov 1st, Thu - day 7
- Deogarh, rohet

Nov 2nd, Fri - day 8
- early morning leave for bombay
- deogarh to ahmedabad

Nov 3rd, Sat
- ahmedabad to mumbai

Nov 4th, Sunday (Mumbai)
- Relax

Armed with this information, we were ready for our road trip. Next post on how we did it!