End of Leg 1

The first day began almost 18 hours later than the earlier decided time. Like any god fearing religious person, the journey began with a visit to the local deity to help me restraint myself from crushing the morons i would be meeting in my trip.
The route, finally, was agreed to be - Chennai, Vijayawada, Hyderbad, Nagpur. From there depending on the timelines adherence we would decide on the route.
Balu & I took a short nap in the evening after the last scrumptious chennai meal that we had at a local restaurant. As expected we woke up wondering if its too early or too late to start. Reluctantly we packed the stuff and shoved it into our car. Not realizing our blunder we had a string of visitors "wishing" us luck, of course at the same time shamelessly demanding some "kaas" for their problems.
The dhobi, the driver, the car cleaner, the maid, the gardner, the auto guy and finally the landlord's help.
We quickly gave them 'red each and decided to leave before we get showered more blessings.
The first half of the journey was nothing short of awesome. My one finger royal salute to all those who suggested not to travel at night. The road was perfectly lit, least traffic and the weather was just awesome. The coast line and railway line to your right, gave you the perfect view that you wanted at the start of your journey.
3 tea breaks for the 480 km trip to vijayawada and we touched river krishna bank with less than 5 hours of driving. A short one hour nap and then began what could be described aptly as the mother of all crappy roads. Vijayawada to Hyd is a one lane each side road without any divider and the roads have deep pits on each side. This 240 kms trip took us more than 8 hours to complete. To give you a probability math, we encountered 7 major accidents in this stretch. I will upload the pics of all of these accidents when i am back home.
Nearing Hyd we stopped at the famous Punjabi dhaba to taste the authentic andhra punjabi cusine. To be polite, I would just say that it killed the appetite for the day.
I called up Kaps in Hyd to let him know I was in the outskirts and would soon be there. I enquired for the skoda service center address to check my car. Little did I know that this short trip to the service center will make hyderbad earn the tag of most rude city in India. 63 auto drivers had to be asked till one finally agreed to show us the way to Sanath Nagar where the skoda service center was located. Hari, the manager was kind enough to get my car serviced on urgent basis and hand it over before 6:00 PM (I gave it at 2:00 PM). I however think that Kaps might have used some of his muscle/brain/contacts/strings to get my car preferrential treatment.

As I type, I am at the internet cafe below my motel trying to kill time until 6. I will probably meet up with Kaps if he gets free by evening.
A more detailed description of my first leg of journey would be posted as soon as I find time.

Before I sign off. Thank you guys for all the wishes that poured into my mail box. In return, I will let you all savor the awesome pics that I clicked on the way. :D

Ciao !
Satix