We started early at 6 am and picked up the pace. We did cover much more km once we were on the highway towards Gujarat. We stopped over at another dhaba for breakfast at 10am. Castrol rules are every 4 hours we need to rest for 1 hour and I understand why this has helped in our safety journey towards 0 incidents. I rested for a while and took a shower (under a tap), which was better than my last trip (that’s where the pool was used as buffalo drinking water and driver bathing alike). This was again in the open but it atleast had running water provided by the same dhaba chain. Apart from the awkward looks from other drivers nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
The dhaba chains were atleast clean food which is what I asked Sabit to be particular about. The road and dhabas seemed far better as we hit Gujarat.
The impact of GST is what I also wanted to understand when the sales tax people used to trouble the drivers they used to pay 400-500 Rs per border to pass through. This is common knowledge and it is calculated in the costing. Now that it is gone should this cost be also removed? No Sir, now they have been replaced by RTO border tax my driver tells me which is again illegal upto the same amount. Nothing has changed. Yes they let you pass though faster so you can clock about 30-40 km more but the money is still gone. I felt the guilt as we kept feeding our way through it was either that or be stopped for the hundreds of useless reasons like owners mobile no is not written on the truck (which will come up later).
Same pattern of 4 hours 1 hour rest and we clocked about 420 km until 11pm. The sleep became more comfortable as the journey moved on. I guess when you are tired it doesn’t really matter what you are sleeping on.