Trip Log : Mumbai – Lonavla
Back from a memorable RoadTrip & here I try to put up the trip log together which I could remember. Following where the Rides & Riders :
1. Rachit (ZMA)
2. Nitin (Avenger)
3. Adhir (Discover)
4. Ajay (Unicorn)
5. Anil (Stunner)
6. Tushar (P150 dts)
7. Jayesh (Pillion)
8. Sunil (Pillion)
9. Abhishek (Pillion)
Route : Mumbai – Lonavla – Pune – Lavasa
Total Kms clocked : 440
Date : 25 Jan – 26 Jan 2009
Contribution: We contributed 1500 from each of us which will include most of the activities as much as possible. But we try to squeeze everything in it.
Alright, so let me start now without any more waits… The meeting point was our regular (Carrom Centre) place in Kanjur Marg/Bhandup, though had to pickup Tushar on the way as he resides in Kharghar. The decided time for meeting was 6am & to be left by 6.20am, but as usual this is only hypothetically possible. Hence all gathered up by 6.30-6.45 after continuous nagging on phone. Like usual we broke coconut as a good luck before commencing the journey & took off. We where 8 of us & 5 bikes, started heading towards the highway & vow it was an awesome scene, where people from the area where stunningly watching the convey with a great exclamation on their face. Our next stop as usual was a Petrol Pump in Airoli. Unlike previous road-trips, this time we had decided to do some good photography where bikes & riding is focused. Though we tried our best but we will keep getting better next time. Fueled up each machines at the gas station with 10lts & checked for the appropriate tyre pressure. Next stop was Panvel (as usual) dhaba for the breakfast. As we had to pickup Tushar from Kharghar, me & anil waited for him & the others headed to panvel, later we reached there. All where dead hungry, just wanted to gulp anything we get to eat. Ate dosas, misals, idli, mendu vada, etc..etc.. Now it’s making me tempting as even am hungry while writing this, so better I stop the list. J At panvel I spotted xBHPians with whom I had been for the Mumbai - Malshej Ride : Aman, Cosgeo & their friends. Me & Nitin met & Chatted with them for a while, they were heading for beaches in Konkan.
So the time came to drive to our destiny, started our bike & headed towards pune. Since none from us aware about the exact directions, based on the map we wanted to reach Chandni Chowk first then will see the further route. While on the way abhishek managed to click many pix while riding, formations, teasers, etc. Everybody was driving on a descent speed of minimum 80kmph, I guess even me J. We where driving from the
The moment village got over; nice roads arrived & gave us & our bikes a pleasant relief of further drive. As we where driving we started encountering sign boards of Lavasa way, it was an amazing feeling. We halted for a while near a temple on the midway of some ghat. Jayesh my dear pillion left me because of the cornering I was talking about & Sunil choose to be my pillion. Though it didn’t made me any difference while riding ;). Here came the awesome twisties which we all dreamed & talked about, vow those curves on the hill was awesome. The roads where much more beautiful then we even thought from the pictures, not a single minute pothole. Sexy curves, I fallen in love with those fantastic arcs. Me & am sure all of us where having the moment of our lifes taking those mind blowing corners. Sunil was missing a seat belt & wished he could have a air-bag feature too for him as I was trying to lean the maximum I can do. After-all I spent my days reading about the leaning stuff. All of us enjoyed & learned a lot about the riding experience. More perfectness, more alertness, safe turns & many things where self learnt by riders. Every body confidence increased as we rode more. Then came the Temghar dam, man.. it was beautiful. We waited out there to click some nice pix & take a pause for a while. Spent around I guess 30 min to click snaps. As we wanted to leave for lavasa, we left from there ajay first started went bit ahead & finding no-one following tried to wait. We where just behind him, he stopped his bike & moment he got his feet down, got a feeling of nausea & fallen down along with his bike. We stopped & rushed to pick him up, it was due to bit of dehydration on heights & lack of water. Our bikes has stopped on middle of the slope, so we had to keep it in gear. Ajay managed to get up & decided to drive himself assuring he can do it, Adhir went to get on his bike, took his stand off & it being in neutral I guess don’t know what happen even he & bike collided. It was a funny fall sequence J. We left from there & headed to lavasa, guess it was around 8-10 kms. I decided to tail everyone & Ajay just to ensure they get up there safely & I don’t miss anybody else’s fall..lol..!! Finall… we reached Lavasa, it had a gate to enter & later we discovered it needs a permission to enter the private city. Hence there was no way we can enter in there. There was a small so called dhaba next to it where we stopped for a while, had water, thankfully vadas & halted to decide “Now what”. While all where sitting on the “charpai”, a local guy came to us & he asked whose camera is fallen near our bikes. Abhishek rushed to pick it up, got it & we all where wondering whose it is. We tried to see if somebody has his camera missing. But after a long wait, the camera wasn’t claimed; by default we decided to keep it. Though it was a Kodak 7MP camera which had 2GB memory card in it, we thought god blessed us with a camera for our group to be used in common. God wanted us to reach up there & take the camera J, which we did, as we cannot deny gods request. Hehe..!!
Alright, so we decided to come down back near pune & try to find place where we can eat, drink & may be spend night. On the way we managed to find 2-3 good affordable places where could stay & drink. But our dear friend Anil suggested us that we will get bored if we decide to stay in this village as nothing was around & if we stay in Pune city we may many options to roam around places. All where confused & hungry so we decided to find a good hotel first where we can eat & booze a bit & then decide the further agenda. Found a nice hotel, everybody ate as it got a chance after 20 years. Anil mamas’ suggestion was taken a decision & we headed to proper Pune city. I called up my friend Vijendra Ket who was an old colleague of mine & Jayesh so he could help us finding some places. We realized that pune city has started looking at the frequent traffic & signals. No offense, but there’s zero riding sense inside the city. So many times I saw a Man his wife & a 2-3 year old baby in her hand & her husband in doing a zig-zag, jumping off signals, not even looking at side mirrors, forget the usage of turn indicators, screw the signals..!!. Though we didn’t faced a problem in riding there as even Mumbai has this kind of traffic so was nothing new, but yeah the lack of driving sense was something new us. But yeah we atleast decided most of the times in our future ride whatsoever happens no passing through Pune city. I don’t want to blame the riders, but this is may be due to the system been developed out there. So come out of this, we met Vijendra at Deccan Gymkhana. He has seen a place for us, we entered there & saw the rooms.. They where pathetic, toilet-bathroom outside in common, a room is of the space required for two beds. We jumped off from that hotel & decided to find other. Saw around 8-10 lodge, hotels, most of them where pathetic, some good ones where damn costly for us to spend just for a night. It was almost 11.30, ajay called up his friend (am sorry don’t remember his name) & he knew some good lodge where we finalized to stay. It was the worst time we had, sitting on the road till almost 11.30pm. But finally the rooms where good, we booked three rooms. Most importantly toilet/bathroom where inside the room, hot water facility, television, nice beds, clean, what else can we expect. So around 12.30am we decided to step out for some food & good booze. After knowing from localites, we came to know a lone bar would be opened at that time called “Pyasa”. Following the route been narrated to us, we landed up in another place called “Budhwar peth” (am sure people might be laughing at us reading this). Yeah it’s a red light area. We entered the bar, it was scary man.!! As no more choices we had, thought of atleast fulfilling our stomach. We asked waiter to get 4 beers, he promptly asked for 400bucks before getting them. All of us where stunned, on asking him the reason of this prepaid policy, he said as this place is risky anybody has to run anytime. This added in our scary thoughts. We had beer, though the food was disgusting, But we had that as where dead starved. Went back to the hotel, had a nice sleep. Woke up around 8am, we decided to see some nearby good places. I called up vijendra & asked him to help us taking to some place. He suggested us Shaniwarwada (A fort of peshwas-Bajirao). A nice place, beautiful. It was around 12pm we done with it. It was a piercing heat, due to it Adhir faced some problems on his skin. Suddenly there was some sore kind of infection on his skin due to allergy. We decided to go to Vijendras house, as it was on our route itself, so adhir can take a cold water bath & get fresh. We took a tablet from chemist & reached Vijendras house. He had a nice 3BHK flat, where his Bhabhi gave us a nice Sarbat. Meanwhile adhir took a cold water bath & had coccum sarbat. Thanks a ton to vijendra for his kindness. So now was out time to leave from there & head back to Mumbai. We decided not to stop until 50kms of non-stop drive which will help us to reach fast. On the was as it was a evening time, the scene at
All in all it was a wonderful trip, all riders where riding very well. Was lot of improvement in specially Ajays riding from the last trip to Alibaug. Anil as is was good. There where no problems at all, safe, after all the tough times we had where a part of venturing & adventure. This trip we specially enjoyed the real ride on beautiful roads filled up with amazing curves. We all are again curious to have a longer ride than this very soon. You can find lot of images from our trip below. Will soon come up with another trip log as we do it.. so hold on till the time..!! Happy Riding to all the bike freaks out there.. Good to see similar species of Bikers do exist on the planet..
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| RoadTrip to Lavasa.. |
Click for More pix from Sunil
