A road trip to Kumbhmela 2025 Part 1

Day 1:Mumbai to Seoni

Our first destination in the trip to Mahakumbh is seoni or shivni. Rudyard Kipling used the forests in the vicinity of Seoni as the setting for the Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894–1895). Seoni is a city where a tributary of the river Godavari, Wainganga originates. There is a statue of Mowgli in Seoni at the site of origin of Wainganga. We have planned to visit this place on our return trip to Mumbai if time permits.

Our trip started at 4 am from Anushakti nagar, Mumbai. A stretch of 5 km was really bad on Mumbai Agra Highway. Road and flyover construction is still on in this stretch. We entered Mumbai nashik express way at 4.50 am. Again the patch was bad to few metres. There are lots of diversion and one must be careful if you are leaving in the early morning. After we crossed shiv Sagar restaurant the road seemed fine but be again one must be careful with diversions . We reached igatpuri at 6.30 am and entered Samridhi Mahamarg at 6.35 am.

We found our first rest spot at around 7.20am. It had a petrol bunk, clean washrooms , a small snack shop and a canteen type cafe. The cafe served poha, vada pav etc. we had our packed homemade methi parathas and tea from the cafe. Tea was too costly. Rs.30 for a small cup of not even 80 ml probably. We took a rest for 20-25 min and continued our journey at 7.45 am. Plan the petrol pumps visits while driving via Samridhi Mahamarg. When driving from Mumbai to Nagpur, make the tank full at Igatpur, another tank full at around Jalna and then another one around Buti Bori. Also please carry food as no good food mall options still in samridhi mahamarg . Some small shanties are in petrol pumps serving some food. But they didn't look appealing or hygienic.

We reached the samruddhi mahamarg circle at 1.40 pm and started travelling via outer ring road on NH353I. We were famished and we were in search of good restaurants as we don't prefer eating in small dhabhas. Some people may find this crazy. But we are worried about upset stomach as during road trip it can bring in chaos. We finally found a restaurant named cave a dine in, a unit of Delhi durbar restaurant at 1.50 pm. They had only option of chappathi . No other Indian bread were available. The ambience was good. May be at night it may be much better in ambience. But they took almost 45 min just to serve chappathi and a paneer peas curry . Service was really slow probably as they are under staffed and also newly opened. But there was swelling crowd of travellers as it's the first decent restaurant one finds after exiting samridhi Mahamarg. Food was fine.

We continued our journey , Crossed pench national park and reached seoni at 5.15 pm and checked in hotel annadam. The hotel is in a gully in the market area. But the hotel room is decent and staff were also decent. Dinner was good and tasty. Some power points were not working. Otherwise stay was ok for a one night stay. Now the day came to an end with excitement of journey awaiting us on day 2 Seoni to Varanasi.