Trip to Kashid

Date: 27th and 28th January. 2007

This trip was different in many ways compared to the ones that I have mentioned in my earlier posts. I went for this trip IN a four wheeler with my friends from Thane. So the cast of this story are moi, Gujju, Sumdi and Nairsaab.

This is not the first time that I went out with these guys but this was the first time we drove ourselves since we were able to get our hands on Gujju’s Toyota Qualis. The ball started rolling when Gujju mailed us one day and mentioned that he could get his car for a couple pf days if we were in the mood for a trip. Obviously, all of us jumped onto the idea.

Let me flash back to how I know these guys. I have known Gujju since we were 2 feet tall and Sumdi and Nairsaab became good friends with me in high school. The other three managed to survive 4 years of engineering before they went on to complete the management degrees and get settled into jobs which they don’t care for (how many of us are really lucky in this matter…)

My house was empty around this time since mum was at Kerala so we decided to meet up at my place and sleep over and start on 27th at 6AM. So we had a take out dinner and got into catch-up mode before we retired for the night at 2AM.

The trip started at 6AM and we took the route to Panvel, which right now is in an absolutely horrible state due to the construction work that is going on there. It took us about an hour to reach Panvel where we had breakfast of ‘poha’. This is where I took over the driving. 7 years since I got my license I was going to drive a car for a long distance.
Yipee!!! I drove for the rest of the trip….

The drive from then on was good. It’s so different in a car, you are cooped up in a box going at 80-90 kmph and not feeling a thing. The A/c is on, the music is blasting in the speakers or ther is just simple chatter going on. It’s not like riding a bike, not even close. There is no comparison between the two at all. Even though I still prefer doing trips on my bike, the one thing I have to accept is that this type of travel is less tiring and involves more people than two which is a good thing when you are on a long trip.

Back to the trip…. The road on this stretch is quite good and we were traveling at a decent speed but like always there are villages that hv to be passed and we were stuck at one place for about 30 mins. But the rest of the drive went smoothly. We reached Kashid around 12:30 and after some searching managed to find a place where we rented a small house for the night. We put all our stuff into the room and ran to the beach. This beach is the best one in all the beaches that I have visited in the Konkan region. The sand is white and the water is green. The waves are just right and u can float on it all day if u felt like it. We spent more than an hour frolicking in the water before hunger started ringing bells in our stomach.

Lunch was simple and tasty, just as we like it. In the evening we decided to make a trip to Janjira fort which was about 20kms from where we were staying. We managed to reached the place at 5:30 PM and got one of the last ferries to the fort but after seeing all the crowd waiting to return we chickened out and took the next boat out without even putting foot into the fort…

History has it that Mr. Shivaji himself never managed to conquer the fort, we are mere mortals. So we decided that he must also have faced some such situation himself, if he couldn’t take over this fort. It helped to make up for some of the disappointment.

We watched the sunset from inside the car; actually we missed the sunset since we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way back. Those 5 mins were tough….small road, big car…recipe for disaster. By the time I got the car out of the fix, I was drenched in sweat but I was glad since I managed to do it without once letting the engine die on me. 5 points to me. 

So we managed to see the post sunset scenery when the sky is cooling down after being burnt all day. The red sky indicating the end of another day of our lives, but one that had been very good. We drove back to the room and then went to the beach for a night time stroll. In between sipping cold ‘drinks’ we stumbled upon something which made me even more glad that we had made the trip. As to what that is, pry it out of any one of us if you can.

We had decided to have dinner outside but when we went searching to find a place there wasn’t any 1km on either side of our room. So it was back to the room and thankfully the person there agreed to cook for us. Before and after dinner we spent the time playing UNO, a game that I have come to love. The more the number of people, the better. Dinner was also a simple affair but equally satisfying.

We went to sleep at about 11, tired and satisfied with the day’s endeavours.

The next morning we left at before 6 AM since Gujju had to leave in the evening. I drove the whole way back and we made the return trip in about 3.5 hours. I hit 100 kmph on the Palm beach road in vashi but when u can’t hear the drone of the wind, feel it trying to stop you from going forward, have the engine buzzing under you or your hands shivering on the accelerator, it’s just not the same. But let me mention it for the record. I was so involved in the driving that I never even asked gujju if he wanted a round at it. In my defence, I was expecting him to ask me and thought that he didn’t want to when he didn’t ask 

Somewhere after Panvel we decided to pay KKKs parents a visit. We called up aunty, told her we were coming for breakfast and landed there 20 mins later. Aunty, the awesome cook that she is, made dosa and chutney, omlette and pav, and coffee, all of which was cleaned up in double quick time. Thanks aunty…

Finally, Gujju got the steering wheel and the three of them dropped me off at home. The previous one had been a long day. We had traveled about 350 kms in 27 hours and enjoyed every kilometer of the way and every minute of the day.

It was a new experience for me; driving such a long distance. The most I had driven before was about 20kms to the Mumbai airport. I enjoyed the drive and understood the contrast between riding a bike and driving a car. To each his own…..

Trip to Chateau Indage

Date: 18th Nov, 2006
Destination: Chateau Indage, Narayangaon
Cast: Marshal*, UV*, Viks* and moi.
Supporting role: Pulsar 180 twins, Pulsar 150 and Hero Honda Unicorn.

Do you know about the existence of a winery just 85 kms from Pune? Do you know that they have tours of the vineyard and the winery and sampling of wines for only Rs 250/-? Do you know that they run a wine bar and restaurant outside the winery?
Some of the questions that we has heard in the past and the reasons for us planning a trip to wine country. To clarify things, there is a winery in existence and they have a wine bar and a restaurant where u can enjoy the wine along with some good food but there is no tour of the winery and neither do you get sampling of wines.

The rain gods have been very generous this year with Pune experiencing showers till October (first time in my seven years here) which resulted in us not being able to plan out another trip till now. We did manage a couple of trips to Lonavla in the past months but they don’t count since we didn’t go “over the ghats”, so I didn’t write about it. Anyways this wasn’t a full fledged trip either but it’s one and so I thought that I should put down some words about it. I really hope that the next long trip will happen very soon.

The winery in question is ‘Chateau Indage’ and is just outside of Narayangaon about 80 kms from Pune on the Pune-Nasik highway. One of the primary reasons for making this trip was the fact that the Pune-Nasik highway is very good for biking. The roads are well laid and there are a lot of straights and high speed curves to enjoy the ride.

This was the first time that all our bikes were a part of the trip.
We started at 12:30 in the afternoon. The plan was to reach there for lunch. The roads are really nice and we easily did 100kmph on the way. It took us about two hours to reach there even though we rode fast and the traffic has to be blamed for that.

The restaurant has a nice rustic feel to it and it was a welcome sight with the vineyard in the background and long lines of grape vines as far as the eyes could see.
We had 3 different wines, one red and two white . They were very good and all of us enjoyed each of them with 'Chantilly chardonnay’ selected as the best among them. The food served was good too and the whole experience left us satisfied. Its very rare that we like the food at any restaurant since our taste buds have had an overdose of restaurant food, so us ’liking’ it means that it’s really good.

The trip back was eventful. I don’t know if it’s the effect of the wine or just a reason for it but just outside the city marshal and I got into a duel. We were doing above 90kmph on average and neither of us was ready to let it be. We were at each others tail pipe the whole time. The bikes are so well matched that it was up to a vehicle in front or the rider’s limit to slow things down. It was like two evenly matched gladiators fighting it out till the end. It went on for nearly 24 kms and we were far far ahead of the other two. Then the ghat started and I left him behind (he still has to get over the fear of leaning into a curve). We waited for nearly ten minutes before the other two caught up with us so you can imagine ;-)

But my RESPECT to marshal for the way he rode, he is normally a sane and safe rider but this time he gave a peek into his other side. He knows the bike well, is brave and has the appetite for speed and one-on-one. We never were rash (going fast isn’t rash driving) and we never forgot the fact that it was a public road so it was even more fun. I have to add here that the bikes were an important part of this and the 180’s were perfect all the time. It was up to us to extract the best out of it.

The whole trip included a lot of high speed blasts interspersed with crawling behind trucks.
The only problem was the traffic and the villages on the way where we’d have to ride slow. Also sometimes the way the trucks and cars tried overtaking others was quite scary. Its something to have a four wheeler coming your way, it’s totally different to see a truck barreling towards you with not a care in the world.

It was a lot of fun. That has to be the general opinion among all of us.
Short and sweet, is how I would like to describe it and after a long drought, it was as welcome as the first rains.

Route:
Pune- nasik phata(old pune Mumbai highway)-Chakan-Narayangaon-Chateau Indage
It’s about 4 kms from Narayangaon bus stand on the right side of the highway.
Distance: 85 kms from Pune

About the bikes:
It was too short a distance to judge the bikes. All of them took the bashing well though. Each of us rode above 100kmph for quite some distance but the bikes just kept on going. No worries, complaints from the bikes after the trip.


*names have been changed to protect privacy.

Trip to Guhaghar

Another One bites the dust

Destination: Guhaghar, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra.

Cast: Marshal*, Shoelace*, Viks* and moi

Supporting role: Pulsar twins (150 and 180 dts-i)

After the euphoria over our last trip had died down, after ‘n’ number of people had told us that we were ‘mental’ to ride such a distance on a bike, after ‘m’ number of people had told us that we were “kewl”, after I got a earful from my sis to take proper care of my back and after I got some good comments about my blog it was back to life. The next two months were uneventful (oh, I did manage a quick trip to Thane) and we seemed to be fully submerged in earning our chapati, sabzi and chawal. Then one day, around mid April, Marshal pings me on Yahoo messenger (the lifeline of all techies) saying that time was fast flying by and we needed to plan and execute another trip ASAP before the rain gods played spoilsport. Mesgs wnt bck n frth n v decd tht 13^th wknd wd b gd. We decided to fix the date and take some time to finalize the destination. Soon Shoelace and Viks were roped in and everything was set. It took us till the week before 13^th to settle on a destination. Guhaghar was Marshal’s choice, me had no problems in going to Hell as long as it was on bikes but Viks and Shoelace had second thoughts, citing distance and temperature as the reason, both being much more than what they had bargained for. Here Marshal has to be commended for coming up with the appropriate points to convince them.

So according to plan we reached Marshal’s place the evening before and all of us met there to put the final touches to the plan. Yeah!, that was the reason we told Marshal. Actually the more important reason we met there was that we would get to savour his mum’s cooking. Its was too good. We decided to leave at 4:30 AM the next morning and make up as much distance before the Sun came up and tried to roast us. Why 4:30 AM? That is a good question but since it was Marshal’s idea I will let him explain that. Viks left for home so that he could pack for the trip. We were to pick him up the next day and continue.

Morning came and it was Marshal who wanted to bathe before he left home. I didn’t even try to understand why he had to. So it was 5 by the time we left his place and 5:15 by the time we picked up Viks and started the journey. The road goes through the Katraj tunnel and that road will win a “worst road in the world” contest any day. With all those trucks on the road, it’s absolutely crazy to drive there. So like the last trip it all began with that nightmare of a road. Somehow we managed to get out of there and soon were on the highway going at 90kmph. We took the same route to Bhor that we had taken the last time and it was quite nice too. We stopped at Bhor for breakfast of chai, biscuit and chips for Marshal who was on a fast( he does it every Saturday) Then started the ghats from Bhor to Khed. The problem with the roads here is that the contractor has forgotten to put the last layer of fine tar, maybe he thought that people going on that road would have backs made of titanium, it was like riding while sitting on a vibrator strip working at the maximum. But once we reached Khed the roads improved. The rest of the road all the way to Guhaghar was very good and it was great fun riding on it. 100 kmph was normal and Viks touched 105 kmph on the 180. The one thing to remember is that near Mahad you reach a fork from where you take the road to Panjim. So officially we did not touch Mahad. Remember this if you plan to go on this trip. The whole trip went without much incident and we reached Guhaghar at 12:30, a distance of 250 kms covered in 7.5 hours. Not bad I would say.

Once we reached there we had to find a place to stay, me and shoelace found a place and decided to stay there but Marshal and Viks weren’t convinced and so we looked some more. While looking around Marshal saw a house and asked a passerby whether he had any idea if the place would be rented out and believe it or not he did help us get the house. So we got a room with 4 beds at Rs 50 per bed, yeah that cheap…. It was just about 50 metres from the beach and we could see the beach from the room. Awesome. All credit to Marshal for being a stubborn Ass J

We got rid of our travel clothes and had lunch, came back, took a walk to the beach, came back and fell asleep. Got up in the evening and again went to the beach. This time to get wet. The waves were too powerful and the person who gave us the room advised us to not go into the water too deep as the sea was never in a great mood but we did manage to get into waist deep water. Shoelace decided to stay on the beach for some reason, how he managed it is too far beyond me. Maybe he decided that the planets weren’t aligned properly for him to step into the water. Whatever…..

We watched a nice sunset; it’s amazing how each sunset never fails to make you go “wow!” I remember a quote I read somewhere, seemingly said by Abe Lincoln. “….how can you look up at the stars and not believe in God.” A beautiful sunset has that effect on me.

Dinner was at another one of the restaurants in the place and like in the afternoon, the only good thing there was the sol-kadi and aam-ras. So let me not waste more bytes on that. We found a place to get beers and then took it to the beach for consumption. A beach at night is nothing like a beach in the day. The combination of darkness and the sound of the waves crashing can be very scary, a very appropriate place to indulge in some intoxication. That day was different though, it was full moon or a day later. The whole beach was lit up with moon-light. At one time the scene was such that moonlight was streaming through a break in a line of trees and illuminating just a band of the beach where we were seated. I looked at the gang and sighed…I am sure that if I had been there with a girl it would have the best chance to get lucky ;-) sadly it was just us boys so I continued drinking, having another reason to do so. We even dug pits and hid all evidence of us having drunk there. After a bottle of beer even that seems like fun. Marshal though kept away from the “vile and unholy” liquid citing religious reasons. “God, please take him into heaven. He works the hardest for it.”. After the drink and the associated brainless chatter and actions we returned to the room for much needed sleep.

Next morning everyone rose showing no ill effects of the previous night’s high-protein liquid diet. The morning was kept aside to visit a couple of tourist attractions, we were tourists too after all. We visited two temples in Hedvi and Velneshwar and paid our respects to the Gods. On the way Viks and me saw some mango trees and decided to try our luck. Viks got off the bike and started walking towards the bike; suddenly out of nowhere a lady appeared and we had to give up. On the way we stopped for breakfast and when marshal and shoelace reached ,I started narrating our story. Shoelace looked up at me with the I-have-the-birdie-in-my-mouth look and Marshal reveals two shining green mangoes, freshly plucked. It seems they were also attracted to the same set of mangoes but were lucky to get their hands onto them. Lucky dogs…

Earlier in the morning we were approached by a person who said that he would cook lunch for us in traditional coastal Ratnagiri style and since we had two not-so-good experiences with restaurants we agreed to it. After the visit to the temples we went to the guys place for lunch. I have to admit the food was GOOD, so much better than the fare served at the restaurants. Prawns masala, fried fish, bhaakri and rice. All of us stuffed ourself. Viks had the vegetarian menu, which was not all that bad either. The only problem was that the host would not stop talking. He just went on and on and on like one of those History teachers teaching us absolute c*&# even if we did not want to learn and who could go on even if there were just four walls or maybe even without them. It was only the good food that had us nodding our heads to his umpteenth topic of discussion.

Lunch was followed by an afternoon siesta and then more time on the beach. This time though we managed to make our own sand castle; if u call 5 cylindrical shapes bordered by sand, a sand castle. But we did spend a lot of time on it and it was fun so no probs.

Dinner was ok with prawn biryani being the main attraction, poor Viks had to make do with chapatti and srikhand. The rest of us are vegetarian too but only when there isn’t anything else. Thank God for that.

More “vile” liquid on the beach followed but now it was just Viks and Shoelace, me having had a lot for dinner and Marshal continuing his religious beliefs. It was another moon lit night and a repeat of the night before. We retired early coz we had to leave early the next day.

The next morning we left at 5:00 Am. This time we took the route which passed through Mahabaleshwar. The roads were much better and we made good time all through the trip. Nothing much to write about it except that my bike touched 110 kmph somewhere during the ride. The official top speed for the trip. We reached Pune at 12:30 having endured the Katraj ghat on the way back too. After driving on the highway for so long, once we reached the city the noise and the crowd was too much to handle. We reached Viks’ place and then went to a restaurant close by where we had lunch before dropping Marshal home and returning home. Finally....

It was a great trip, not as good as Dapoli with regards to the food but better becoz the roads were better and the trip lasted longer. We did around 625 kms this time compared to the 550 odd last time around. This time too we managed to keep our bones together and the bikes too, so that’s another feather in our caps. But the idea to ride pillion was great since it helped us to travel faster and is safer too (it’s ok Viks, don’t smile)

We are back to the grind, hoping to make another trip soon but with the monsoon just around the bend it will be sometime before one happens. We will have to make do with Lonavla till then I suppose.

Asta-la-vista

Route:

Pune to Guhaghar : Pune-Nasrapur-Bhor-Khed-Mahad-Poladpur-Chiplun-Guhaghar.

Guhaghar to Pune : Guhaghar-Chiplun-Poladpur-Mahabaleshwar-Wai-Pune.

Distance : Pune to Guhaghar- about 250 kms

Hotel Info:

There aren’t any great places to stay but if you search hard and are lucky you will find something to suit your taste and budget.

Tips:

1) Take the Mahabaleshwar route if you are on bikes, the roads is much better as compared to the Bhor-Khed section of ghats.

2) It’s much better to double up on the bikes and switch positions often. The rider has it better than the pillion from my experience but it remains to be heard from Viks whether he thinks so too. Riding pillion to me is considered to be their worst nightmare coming true, by some people.

3) Be ready to survive without mobile phones. It a refreshing change if you ask me.

4) Tell someone your plans and call them, if possible, just so that they don’t worry.

About the bikes

The road over the whole journey was good except for the part from Khed to Bhor so the bikes were really given the stick a lot of time. A lot of distance was traveled at more than 80 kmph. On the way back, some 30 odd kms from Pune Marshal said that the 150 wouldn’t go above 80kmph so we decided to stop for sometime. Apart from that we did not face any problems and the bikes performed flawlessly.

*names have been changed to protect privacy.

Trip to Dapoli

The first trip……at long last

It took me 4 months of riding my bike to convince myself that I could venture on a long distance trip. All this time I made sure to talk to my friends and touch their adventure loving nature in order to be able to chalk out something. Finally in the last week of February Marshal* was convinced too that we were ready to take on something of such magnitude.

So the planning phase began of course by getting our hands on a map of Maharashtra from Crossword (65 INR). Then we met on the Wednesday to plan out things so that we did not keep anything pending till the last minute and forget it in the process (I follow agile methodologies at work; seems to have rubbed off..). It was decided that we would leave on 4^th morning at 5:30 so that we could reach our destination before noon (estimating is something that you get better with experience, we learnt it thru this. Btw estimation is another part of agile)

OK so much for the planning, let me start with the trip.

Destination: Murud- Dapoli- Ratnagiri- Maharashtra.

Cast: Marshal*, Uv*, Viks* and moi

Supporting role: two Bajaj Pulsar 180 dts-I and a Honda Unicorn.

4^th March, 2006

Finally the day dawned; actually we left before dawn. The plan was to leave at 5:30 am but it was 6:15 by the time we started. The good news was that Marshal had managed to get his hands on a map of the Konkan and he was smart enough to get 4 copies of it. This map was much better than the one we had bought and it helped a lot on the trip.

We hit the route to katraj ghats. The roads here are a nightmare and we traveled 2-3 kms on the ghat in 1^st and 2^nd gear, not exactly highway driving but after the katraj tunnel we reached the newly built roads and hit it hard. All of us reached speeds in excess of 100kmph and marshal whose bike is the newest of the lot hit 100 for the first time. Welcome to the “over 100 kmph” club, Marshal. Soon we reached Nasrapur where we had to take a right turn on the way to Bhor. Here we had our first stop for chai and directions.

After this we continued on our way to Bhor, this route is absolutely awesome. The sun was just rising and the road was lined on both sides with lush fields. It was a scene straight out of DDLJ. I have to admit that I hadn’t experienced a sunrise for sometime and it was a pleasant change. Also for people living in the cities, India is still a land of villages and farmers, go out and enjoy the beauty of the rural India. We also saw a lot of children on their way to school. The other good landscape is when u ride over a bridge with the sun rising on one side, it’s breathtaking. We reached Bhor by 8 am and then proceeded to Mahad. The roads are quite nice and it took us another couple of hours to reach Mahad. We reached there by 10:15 am. After this we did the mistake of taking the wrong route, wrong not because we got lost or anything but because…..read on.

From Mahad we took the road to Mhapral which was covered in quick time. And then we hit the road to Mandangad where the inevitable happened. While cruising along at one junction we saw a dude flailing his arms as if he wanted to tell us something. We turned back and he told us that the road ahead was closed and that we would have to take a detour. What a detour it was!!! There was no cemented road, tar road, gravel road absolutely nothing just a lot of red mud (now I know what Mars looks like). We must have traveled only 10 kms or so on this road but believe me that was the toughest part of the trip. The bikes were spewing mud and if any big vehicle came around we would be in the middle of a sand storm. By the time we reached Mandangad we were covered in red dust. Everything was red….our bikes, our jackets, jeans, boots. We spent 10 mins dusting all the mud off and took a long break for breakfast. Marshal and Uv were fasting (they do it every Saturday, good boys..) so they went in search of “fast” food while Viks and I tucked into missal pav (with extra pav).

After we had relaxed a bit we started on the way to Dapoli, this road was quite nice and we made up some time. If you ever take this route keep your eyes out for a right turn to Dapoli. Some idiot has stuck a poster on the milestone here and you might miss it and reach Khed instead. We reached Dapoli around 12:30 and from there we had to travel the final 17 kms to Murud. The funny part was that we thot that we had to go to Harne ( I christened this “Hernia” coz it caused us so much pain) and after traveling all the way to Harne we realized that we had to go to Murud which was 3 kms before Harne. It’s really frustrating when you are so close and you get lost. Finally we reached Murud and when we reached the hotel that we were planning to stay in, it was full. Wow!!! This was getting worse. We then left it and found another hotel where the guy at the desk was doodling. I have to talk about this old man. It was as if he was doing the world a favour by sitting there. All the time we were speaking and he was busy with his ‘art’. He wouldn’t reply properly and generally looked as if he was angry at everyone. Maybe he wanted to become a painter, is it our mistake that he did not! Good that he didn’t, he didn’t look all that good at it. Ok so much for the guy. We left the place and were able to find a hotel named Kshitij where the rooms were for 500 INR and an extra bed would cost another 100 rs. More than enough for us.

Even after riding for nearly eight hours all of us were eager to get wet and the beach was too good. We had a lot of fun and then three of us dozed of on the beach while viks took the opportunity to create a masterpiece in the sand. Believe me this guy is talented, hope he takes it as a more serious hobby (riding with us I mean….) we then took our bikes to the shore and went riding on the sand. Sadly it’s not all that fun as it looks in the movies coz it’s quite difficult to keep the bike going in a straight line and the sand is not the best surface.

We returned to the room and had dinner. The dinner was lip smacking, very simple but very tasty. We also had a round of sol-kadi to wash down the food. I had a fried pomfret and like everything else, it was UMMM….

Like I said earlier two of us were fasting and so they could not have fish. Guess what they come up with… they tell the cook to fry fish and send it to the room so that they can have it after 12am by which time it would officially be Sunday. Wah!!! Go techies go! The funny part was that by 10 we were absolutely tired and wanted to sleep but since we had ordered the fish, we had to stay up. So we go to the beach again at close to 11:30 and good thing that we did. The sky, that night, was scintillating, I have never seen a night sky like it, never. It was as if some millions of diamonds were sparkling in the moonlight. It was just mind-blowing. And to think that we miss out all that because we never have total darkness in our cities. If I had to go there just to see a sky like that again, I would. We managed to stay up till 12 and devoured the fish and slept well satiated.

5^th march

In the morning we decided to go to one end of the beach where supposedly, was the confluence of a river and the sea. Sadly it turned out that the river had dried out in the summer. It was disappointing but we decided to ride our bikes to the other end of the beach. Marshal suggested that we do it bare-chested and everyone jumped to the idea. So we ride to the other end of the beach and we spotted a flock of seagulls. We park our bikes and ran like crazy in order to create a scene like the movies. It looks better in real life. There were at least 500 hundred birds and watching them take off was really cool. That was the end of the trip. We came back to the hotel, had lunch (which was again finger-licking good) and started the return journey.

We started the trip back at 1pm and this time decided to take a different route. The route on the way back was much much better. I have to say that I was particularly impressed by the stretch from Dapoli to Khed which was smooth like butter. I decided to test the limits of my bike and opened the throttle all the way, three times. The fastest I went was 119kmph, not 120. All the three times the bike was just refuse to move above 119 as if there was some invisible finger of God stopped it from going further. So that’s the official top speed for my bike. The road on the ghats too were good and it was too much fun to flick the bike on the curves which just wouldn’t end. The best part of driving curves is that if you nail a turn it’s a rush… there was no dearth to it since there were endless curves on the ghats. The road was good all the way back till Paud after which it became a nightmare. Pune municipal authorities, please do something about it. I never found such bad roads as those in pune during my whole trip. Wake up guys….

It took us 7 hrs to make the trip back and we reached Chandni chowk at 8pm. It was truly memorable, more so because this was our first endeavour and we managed to complete it without loss of life or limb or plastic or dents.

All of us thought that it was a great idea and the execution was even better. Also we decided that this would be the first of a number of such weekend trips that we plan to go on in the future.

Some riding tips

1) I think it was a good idea that we decided to tie our bags to the leg-guard and not carry it on our shoulder because it would hamper our riding and also carrying the weights for such a long time would result in really sore shoulders.

2) If you want to do something like testing your bike’s top speed, try to talk yourself out of it. If you still want to do, try and ask your friends to scare you out of it. If even after that you want to do it, make sure that you are at the head of the group when u start so that someone sees if, God forbid, you are lying on the side of the road.

3) Take frequent breaks and carry a lot of water.

4) Don’t stretch yourself too much while riding in order to impress others, an accident 300 kms from home is worse than one in your own city.

About the bikes

All the three bikes performed exceptionally well, we had absolutely no problems during the whole trip. They were ready to go on and on and on till we gave up. Just that all the red mud and the sand from the beach left it looking too dirty and we had to wash it before we started the return journey.

Hotel info

Kshitij hotel,

Post Murud, Dapoli,

Ratnagiri- 415713, Mahrashtra.

Phone: 02358-282961 (R)

-234603 (O)

Route info

While going:

Pune- Katraj- Nasrapur- Bhor- Mahad- Mhapral- Mandangad- Dapoli- Murud (Distance: 232 kms)

While returning:

Murud- Dapoli- Khed- Bharne- Mahad- Mangaon- Nizampur- Tamhini ghat- Mulshi- Paud- Chandni chowk- Pune. (Distance: 256 kms)

I would recommend the second route because most of it is through national and state highways but I have to say that it’s not as scenic as the first one.

*names have been changed to protect privacy

The beginning of the journey

Ever since I bought myself a bike (Bajaj Pulsar 180 dts-i) in Oct,2005 I have been waiting to take it out for long drives on weekends. I waited and waited and waited some more. Finally on 4th March, 2006 I finally took it out on a 500+ km ride to a beach in the Konkan with three of my friends.

After i returned (or maybe on the way back) I decided two things
1) I have to do this again.
2) I need to let the whole world know.

This, I hope, is a series of funny, informative and entertaining posts on my experiences as a traveller!