Igatpuri, Maharashtra, India during monsoons

The greenery at Igatpuri, Maharashtra during monsoons can soothe many a ruffled nerves.

Driving distance from:
Mumbai to Igatpuri = 120 kms & can be driven in 2 hrs 15 mins.

Photo courtesy: Arindam Chakravarty.

'Indian Roadie Preferred Hotels' in Kolkata during Durga Puja 2016

There are a lot of people (Indian Roadie members & non-members) from across India who have expressed desire to drive/ ride to Kolkata during the Durga Puja days from 7th to 11th October 2016.

I as the founder of #IndianRoadie have tied up with a couple of safe & comfortable hotels & guest houses in great locations of Kolkata.
Safe parking of the ride is assured.

Great discounts are assured.

Please revert if you need any help.

For the uninitiated, Durga Puja in Kolkata is the biggest street art festival on earth.

#IndianRoadiePreferredHotel

First test of driverless minibus EZ-10 in Paris on 2016-09-24

The French capital's transport authority carried out its first test of a driverless minibus on Saturday (2016-09-24), in the hope that regular routes for the hi-tech vehicles will be up and running within two years.

The electric-powered driverless EZ10 minibus, able to carry up to 12 passengers, has already been tested on closed circuits in Japan, Singapore and California and in a road test in Helsinki.

One of the self-driving shuttle buses, made by French hi-tech firm Easymile, will on Saturday run along a special circuit in Paris on a pedestrianised street near the River Seine.

The bus will travel at 25 kilometres (15 miles) an hour and for RATP, the transport authority for the Paris region, it is the start of a series of tests.

The second test, to be held in the French capital before the end of 2016, will see the EZ10 running between two major transport hubs, the Lyon and Austerlitz train stations.

"The autonomous vehicle presents an opportunity for new services notably in less densely populated areas," RATP president Elisabeth Borne said in a statement.

The east-central French town of Lyon carried out its own test on a driverless minibus this month.

Ottappalam, Palakkad district, Kerala road trip during monsoon

Ottappalam famous for its annual festivals is located in Palakkad district, Kerala. Lakkidi, the birth place of Kunchan Nambiar is near Ottappalam.
Ottappalam in Kerala has been a favourite location for numerous Malayalam filmmakers for years, with the serenity and lush beauty of the place a major factor in luring them.



River Nila, which flows through the area, massive hills like Kizhoor and long, narrow bridges straddling meandering canals provide visually magnificent backdrops for film shooting.

Numerous signs of once-vibrant Valluvanadan culture are still visible in and around Ottappalam and the imposing and architecturally elegant tharavadus like Varikkassery Mana and Olappamanna Mana provide ideal settings for films that exploit Malayali nostalgia.
102 Malayalam films have been shot in this scenic place. If other languages like Tamil, Telugu and English are also accounted for, scenes of 225 films have been shot in Ottappalam and nearby areas.
A proposed film city will be catalyst for the development of film tourism in the area.









Anangamala is situated at Kizhur village near Ottappalam in Palakkad district. The hillock has an extent of 2500 acre and is under the Kerala Forest Department. One can trek to the hill.

Ottapalam and route to Kochi (Marine Drive Ground):

Distances:
Ottapalam to Palakkad 

(Ottapalam_Palakkad) = 38 kms,
Ernakulam to Palakkad 

(Ernakulam_Palakkad) = 130 kms, 

Bangalore to Palakkad 

(Bangalore_Palakkad) = 414 kms, 

Ottapalam to Munnar 

(Ottapalam_Munnar) = 194 kms, 

Ottapalam to Thrissur 

(Ottapalam_Thrissur) = 51 kms, 

Ottapalam to Thiruvananthapuram 

(Ottapalam_Thiruvananthapuram) = 322 kms. 

Mumbai to Silvassa road trip on a rainswept September 2016

Mumbai to Silvassa road trip on a rainswept September 2016 for official work by Samrat Roy.





Road distance between Navi Mumbai tand Silvassa is 178 kms.

Now, Indians will drive in peace with digital documents

You can now drive with your driving licence, vehicle registration certificate and insurance papers safely kept at home as the government launched this facility with DigiLocker, which transport minister Nitin Gadkari said would arrest corruption and bring in transparency .
You can access digital copies of the documents on the mobile phone using the DigiLocker app.

Road transport and IT ministries jointly launched on Wednesday integration of DigiLocker with driving licences (DLs) and vehicle registration certificates (RCs), which enables the user to download these digitally verified documents.Under this arrangement, the transport ministry's National Register has been integrated with DigiLocker.

Once the data from the remaining RTOs is updated in the National Register, the digital copies of those driving licences and vehicle registration certificates will also be available via DigiLocker.

This is seen as the largest integration under DigiLocker system so far as the national registry of the transport ministry has 19.6 crore RCs and 9.2 crore DLs.

Since the source of such digitally verified documents is government entities, these will be deemed valid by law enforcement agencies including traffic police. This will effectively free people from the hassle of carrying paper documents everywhere they go.

"All such downloaded documents will have the QR code to authenticate them and as per the IT Act all digitally signed documents will be treated at par with the physical issued documents," said an IT ministry official. He said they will soon start campaigns to make personnel of all enforcement agencies aware of this provision.

Launching the service, Gadkari said,"There will be a few, who will be unhappy as they will no more have `Lakshmi Darshan' (bribe money)." IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said DigiLocker will prove to be a programme for transforming India and achieving the vision of paperless governance.

In order to access the digital RC and DL, one needs to first sign up for a DigiLocker. He then needs to download the DigiLocker app. In the mobile app he will have to select the issued documents section. The enforcement personnel such as traffic police can verify the soft copies offline using the QR code.

(Source: The Times of India, Kolkata dated 2016-09-08)

Nearly 2,000 licences suspended for traffic offences in Mumbai from Jan - Aug 2016



The RTO has suspended 1,974 driving licences of car and two-wheeler owners for offences ranging from speeding to drunken driving and signal-jumping in Mumbai between January and August 2016.
The action, the biggest in recent years, was taken after the Maharashtra government introduced a rule of three-month suspension of licence from January 2016.

This proved to be a major deterrent to car-owners and bikers as suspension figures in most cases dropped subsequently , officials said. Six offences under which you can lose the right to drive for 90 days are speed violations, drunk driving, jumping signals, talking on mobile while driving, private vehicles used for illegal transport and overloading.If caught riding without a helmet, the licence is suspended for a few days till you attend a counselling session on safe driving and road safety tips at the local RTO. The suspension is revoked only after you attend the session and assure officials you will not repeat the offence. Such licences are suspended for two days to two weeks, sources said.

Officials said the statistics showed that signal-jumping cases were the highest, especially in south Mumbai. “A special squad comprising RTO officials along with traffic police nabbed offenders. A significant number of cabbies and two-wheeler riders would often jump signals. We suspended their licences on the spot. This reduced cases of signaljumping in the island city. The police received calls from influential persons but they stood their ground and followed the new rule strictly.

Overloading was another major offence tackled by the RTO team. They suspended 555 licences and most were private tourist buses ferrying passengers from south and central Mumbai to districts in the state and to places like Karnataka and Gujarat.

Though not a single licence was suspended for "speeding" till May 2016, the RTO cracked the whip on 18 offenders in June, 16 in July , and followed by eight in August, bringing the total to 42. In case of private vehicles used for illegal transport, no licence was suspended.

Most licences suspended for drunk driving were in March, which was 35 of the 39 this year. Action was taken against 14 for talking on cellphones while driving. It is dangerous and can lead to driving errors and mishaps.

Driving without a helmet cases dipped from 33 in January to five in March, and four licences were suspended in June; only one was suspended in August.

A transport ministry official said, "We are serious about implementing rules and whatever the offenders' backgrounds, they will not be spared." A third drive is planned by the year-end.

(Source: Times of India, Mumbai dated 2016-09-07)

Road trip to Bhatinda Falls, near Dhanbad, Jharkhand

Bhatinda falls is one of the better known water falls in Jharkhand. Surrounded by lush greenery all around, it lies on the River Katri in Moonidih area. Monsoon is the best time to drive to Bhatinda falls. The location of the falls is not easily accessible and requires a personal vehicle. It is 14 kms from Dhanbad Railway Station.
Roadies are warned not to step into the enticing water. The uneven stones can result in deep cuts. Accidental deaths have been reported. There are no lifeguards, divers in the vicinity.
It's really sad to note visitors throwing trash all around.

Vajrai Waterfall in Kaas Plateau, Maharashtra, India

Indian Roadie, Nagul Ram had to trek for around 30 mins all alone in September 2016 to get this view of the waterfalls. He was the only one in the whole area.
He was there at the vantage point for barely 5 minutes before starting his return trek.
Driving distance from Navi Mumbai to Kaas Plateau of Flowers is 257 kms.
Driving route to Kaas: Mumbai - Lonavla - Pune - Satara - Kaas.
Location: Vajrai Waterfall in Kaas Plateau, Maharashtra, India.

StayUncle and now OYO Rooms to help unmarried couples find privacy in India

While the moral police and the actual police acted as vigilantes over couples who wanted privacy in their bedrooms, StayUncle launched its services exclusively for unmarried couples who wanted a space of their own. Their tagline 'couples need a room, not a judgement' was welcomed and publicized. OYO rooms, a hotel aggregator launched their very own relationship mode hotel finding service in the light of its customers' demand.
OYO rooms featured the 'No Rooms For Unmarried Couples' policy till two months ago and the shift is being hailed as a progressive step. Hotels often turn away couples without definitive proof of marital status which can turn embarrassing and many often resort to rejecting locals so as to not encourage premarital sex. By using the aggregators relationship mode on their website and the mobile app, couples can get rooms with their local identity cards and it promises to be hassle free as they get to book only those hotels that welcome them as they are. No more 24 hours booking. No more running to check out before 12 noon. StayUncle offer customers an opportunity to book one of the 10 hours slots currently available - Morning (from 10am to 7pm) and evening slot (from 9 pm to 8 am). In both cases customers pay for 10 hours tariffs.

According to Huffington Post, 'OYO says that according to a rough estimate, 60% of the 6,000 hotels in 100 cities they have tie-ups with have been found to be couple-friendly. A customer can search for a couple-friendly hotel by logging into their account, clicking on the relationship mode in search preferences and then proceed to searching. They can also search for all the hotels in a city and filter the results by selecting the OYO for Couples option. According to OYO, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Goa and Delhi have the highest number of ‘couple-friendly’ hotels. Tourist destinations such as Manali, Shimla and Mussoorie also rank high in the list. A casual search reveals that there are 146 such hotels in Bengaluru, 113 in Delhi and 217 in Goa. Surprisingly, metropolises such as Chennai (27), Kolkata (54) and Mumbai (12) have lesser couple-friendly hotels than Jaipur (170), Chandigarh (141), and Pune (73).'

Kavikrut, the Chief Growth Officer for OYO rooms said in an interview to Quint that the move was simply a logical one. A lot of their customers reached the hotel and then realised that they could not check in due to the hotel policies. It was embarrassing for them to be denied a room and to have to look for another hotel. All they did was let their customers know which hotels welcome unmarried couples. When they tie up with hotels, they know their policies, but the customers don’t, and that causes problems.

There is currently no Indian law that prohibits hotels from servicing unmarried couples or local couples that belong to the same city or area as the hotel. "We analysed guest-feedback and realized that couple-guests were likely to face last-minute inconvenience on account of hotel-policies that were not communicated to them earlier," Kavikrut said as reported by Times of India.

The rise in the demand for AirBnB, breakfast hotels, serviced apartments, hostels, room aggregators and specific ones catering only to unmarried couples like StayUncle and Bengaluru’s Nestaway are pointing towards a rising trend. People looking for a private and comfortable time sans the moralistic high ground of the self-appointed guardians of traditions have a reason to cheer as they get more options to not get caught in awkward positions.

Road trip to Surathkal Beach, near Mangalore, Karnataka

Surathkal Beach on the shores of Arabian Sea, is a clean beach with wonderful scenic beauty. The view of the sunset is a photographer's delight. This beach boasts a curving shoreline and offers the kind of serenity that people travel across the world for. It is 19 kms from Mengaluru Railway Station and is one of the most popular beaches near Mangalore.

The historical Sadashiva Temple near the beach is an added attraction. According to mythology, when Lord Ganesha kept Ravana's Shivalinga on the ground, Ravana tried to pick it up with force and some pieces got scattered. One such piece from the linga is said to have fallen in Surathkal.

There is a light house near the Sadashiva Temple, located on a small hillock. Surathkal is famous for National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK).

When in Surathkal, drive/ ride to Astha Matha established by Saint Madhwacharya. This Matha has intricate trellis work.

One of the oldest parishes in Surathkal, Sacred Heart Church is worth a visit too.

Sasihitulu village is 5 km from Surathkal. The Pavanje River flows into the Arabian Sea forming an estuary. The view from the cliff is simply spectacular.

Moodbidri, which is about 20 km from Surathkal was the centre of Jainism since the 15th century. The Jain temples in Moodbidri are very well maintained.