Oh I can't believe I'm finally ready with the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) ride plan! Unless aliens invade our planet I'll flag off my long awaiting motorcycle trip tomorrow morning. Before starting my great Indian road trip (this will be the longest among all I've done so far) I just wanted to share this moment of hyper-excitement with you. Golden Quadrilateral had been occupying an elite slot in my bucket list since 2012, after going through the beautifully scribbled motorcycle diary of a Pulsar rider. I wish I could get a link to thank him back for sowing the seed of GQ fantasy in my early motorcycling life. Those of you who're not acquainted with GQ, have a seat.
Golden Quadrilateral is the largest highway network in India which connects four major metro cities- Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, spanning over an estimated length of 5,846 kilometres. We all travellers are indebted to our ex-PM Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee for laying the foundation stone of this mammoth highway project back in 2001. Interestingly, GQ is the fifth longest highway network in the world, traversing through 13 Indian states, and connecting a whole bunch of large Indian cities besides those four metros- Bhubaneshwar, Vishakhapatnam, Bangalore, Pune, Surat, Vadodara, Jaipur, Ajmer, Gurgaon, Agra, Kanpur, Varanasi, Dhanbad etc. to mention a few. I could squeeze out 14 days and had to plan my itinerary accordingly. There's so much I want to say, but I'm not even done with packing my bags. Have a quick look at my GQ ride map and wrapped up itinerary.