There really is something special about going on a road trip. Peace on the highway ?? Unbelievable but true. This time it was a flying road trip ( ahem) to Dehra Doon and back. The journey till Khatauli has been transformed by the new highway with various bypasses, the first one from Rajnagar Extension, which bypasses Ghaziabad and then a bypass for Meerut. Stopping at Cheetal is a ritual when travelling this route, but this requires a detour from the new highway – not that it deterred our group. The service at Cheetal was just as efficient, though business did seem slack.
If you’ve wondered about the slender tall trees with large leaves that line fields all over Western UP – these are poplar trees, I discovered during this trip. The same poplars that Claude Monet painted in various seasons. The car driver informed me that the tree is grown primarily for match sticks. There seemed to be too far many trees for matches alone, and on looking up poplar on google, I found that it is grown for plywood and paper too. While it is popular with farmers because it gives returns within a few years, while acting as a windbreaker, it has the collateral benefit adding to the beauty of the vista.
On the way back, we drove along the Ganga Canal from Roorkee to Khatauli and what a marvellous road journey that is. The canal is a marvel in itself, made one hundred and sixty years ago, i.e. in the 1840s, the bridges across the canal just as old. Soothing water to the right, all kinds of plants, mango orchards, bamboo clumps, blazing orange gulmohar, with almost no green in the trees, and very little traffic - one could drive along roads like that for days and not tire of them.
