Sudden Escape to Alibaug at Mid-Night

Hello Bikers..

This is a small Trip log from our "SUDDEN" ride to Alibaug. Yeah, the exaggrated word here is SUDDEN. Thats the actual reason to ride. Will know the end of the log.

It was around 9pm on Saturday Night (4th April '09) at Raju da Dhabba & where in middle of a Party which was treated by our wonderful friend, Sunil Menon. We in all where Me(Rachit), Ajay, Adhir, Abhishek aka Bobs & Sunil.

Commenced the drink by a cheers with a funny but wonderful phrase "Cheers to the Lady we love & Ladies we lost..!". As usual we had only one & common topic to talk about is BIKES. No, we never get bored of this topic ever & never run out of words when it has to do everything & anything about bikes.

Suddenly, we went back to remembering the past amazing trips & imagined....... Wish we could go somewhere really far & chill out. The mere reason was not a Booze or Food, but none other than "To RIDE". Yeah, thats what we live for.. Ever since we each of us have discovered our feelings & desire about biking all we want to do is Ride, Far & Faster..!

So, someone of us mentioned, how about having a beer in the night on a beach, perhaps GOA. We started visualizing, & again SUDDENLY a thought without any efforts blowed out saying "How about Alibaug tonight..?" That was the time we started transferring into a species known as "Bikers" from "Human", like a man converting into the Wild Evil Wolf in the mid-night.. ;) It was almost 11pm, the thoughts started provoking our wild brains.. We all where virtually on the beach, feeling the ride on the cool roads. None of us had done a night riding in pitch darkness. This was our first time for a midnight ride, all where on the tip of their toes to RIDE. The plan started rolling & finally confirmed. We decided on going to Khim Beach. Sunil also desperately wanted to tag in, but unfortunately he had some restrictions & commitments from his family so he had to step back. No probs brother, next time sure..! As we had to ride, we didnt continued the booze. We all where drunked next to negligible. Only the taste was beer left out in us & nothing else. All in proper senses ensuring a Safe Ride & no unexpected consequences/casualties which may ruin our journer. We all wanted to pick up some stuff from our house before we could leave, Me went & picked up my Denim & Riding Gloves, Adhir picked up his glove (which was apparently lost later, fallen somewhere), Ajay took his gloves, & Bobs went & had a T-Shirt Change.

So the confirmed list of Rides & Riders where Me(ZMA), Adhir(Discover), Ajay (Unicorn) & Bobs (Passion Plus). Yeah, before moving ahead would like to mention here about a small fall which Bobs had unfortunately, due to the underconstruction of road. Nothing happend, just minor buises & a left indicator broke. This made Bobs very depresses & bit afraid, but we jumped in to cheer him up, & making him realize how wonderful the ride is going to be. He was again in. We all met with the needed stuff & it was time to live. I still remember the line which came up by the situation, "We dont need a Reason to Ride, We make a Reason to Ride", Thats what we did here.

Got collected at our regular spot, It was almost 12am when we gave the ignition to our machines & took off. To ensure a safe journey, we wanted a system to be followed while riding & it was more important since it was mid-night, where the percentage of judgement & visibility compared to the day, reduces.

We got our tanks filled up on a petrol pump somewhere at Sanpada. It was exactly 1am.

(At the petrol pump)

Next stop was little ahead of Panvel, where we can have a small pit stop as almost 50kms we will be completing. Once Panvel passed, we stopped at a small hotel for a while. We had almost completed 60 odd kms & it was 1.50am now. Got freshened up. We decided to have a sequence while riding which has to maintained throughout the ride. A line-up was decided; Adhir being a little experienced rider was leading, followed by Ajay then Bobs & I was at the tail sticking to Bobs. Since he has a bit less underpowered bike, I had to ensure he is not left back alone. His head lamp was also not at all powerful & was helpless in that pitch darkness. As I had a newly fitted Philips White HID Headlight, I sticked with Bobs so he can have a good visually. But my poweful light even helped the leading bikers. They kept an eye from the rear mirrors by finding the white light following them. The lights performed really well, this it the first time I got a chance to test them & was extremely happy to see them making the way brighter in the pitch darkness & helping us get the visibilities of the blind curves on ghat. Our cuising speed was 60-80kmph & we maintained a descent formation throughout the entire ride. We could feel the coolness once we left Panvel, VOW was the word as in Mumbai the Summer is killing us in Day, Afternoon the most & even in nights. We always thought Night Ride is no good being the risk factor high, the upcoming vehicles with their killing headlamps. But the ride which we experienced in the Night was beyond our imagination, the feel was ultimate & cannot be expressed in words here. Trust me guyz, Night is the perfect time in Summers to Ride Well, with utter coolness, Less Traffic. The enjoyment was truly overwhelming, winds breezing through our helmets, leaving a wonderful sound. But the most important parameters while riding in night are Stay Together, A fixed formation, A fixed Sequence, No Ripping & you will have an excellent time of a ride. Thats what we followed, no ripping.. Yeah, even I didnt & surprisingly I was the slowest one being at the tail. But thats what will return us a safe journey.

Finally we made it to the wonderful place, it was now 2.45am. Completed 100+ odd kms. Due to the cold climate none of us realised when did we completed 100kms, not a 1% stress on any faces. The night ride is indeed worth. We thought of checking some places for shelter to sleep. But after a 1 hour hunt, waking up some lodge owners didnt find a place where we can rest our asses. Having a bikers heart, we need no place to sleep. We loved roads. As our planned destination was a beach, we went on the beach. Parked our bikes facing the shore. All we could hear now where the pleasant Waves calling us to step on the sand. Bunch of people where busy sleeping next to their respective shops.

We spotted a boat anchored on the shore nearby. Walked down to the boat & hopped in.

(In Boat)

(The Boat)

Amazing guyz, Who couldnt come,.. You did missed this one.!

The feeling was just awesome, we couldnt expect for anything more. Sitting in the boat, watching the waves coming on the shore leaving back their footprints, The wonderful dark Sky & the Sparkling stars over our head blessing us. Sight was something which we can never forget & this treat was worth the ride.

We where chatting of some good old times, as this was the perfect spot. Had nice talks, leg pulling sessions & it was now almost 4.45 am when we decided to head back home. I was already feeling very sleepy. We started off from there, searching for a hotel where could find tea. Completed approx 30kms & found a hotel at 5.30am. had tea & got freshened up to blew my sleep away. I was wonderfully fresh. The formation was resumed & we where back on the wheels on the inviting roads. We could see the brightness making a way out of the pitch dark night now. Sun coming back to its place & moon trying to make a way out. :)

The curves at early morning 6.30am looked so enchanting & beautiful. Trust me, Much sexier than of a gals ;) atleast for us.!

Cause, we Prefer Bikes over Women.!

(Curve)

(Bobs)

(Bobs)

Curves near the karnala ghat almost turned me on. I couldnt resist taking those cornerings, bursted up my speed & tried taking a close watch of mother earth while making a lean. Sorry, no pix while leaning. Fews random pix, please forgive the quality as they are taken from my Mobiles Camera.

We reached on the neck of Panvel had a tiny pit stop for just 10min. It was 6.40am now.

(Me, Ajay & Adhir)

(Bobs, Ajay & Adhir)

Decided to take the JNPT route, as the roads are amazing straight & nice, where we can get a chance of ripping our bikes.

JNPT Road

Adhir

Ajay & Bobs

Ajay

We hit the JNPT roads at 7 am.

I managed to have a nice top speed of almost 140kmph after a long time, since throughout the ride I was on constant 60-80kmph. It was a feeling of satisfaction. After riding on a pretty good speeds we reached back out places by 8am.

All In all, a great package of thrill, excitement, ride & experience we had. I still remember the reason how we landed up on this ride & smile back. But thats how the plan get instantly cooked up when all bikers get along & it has to do anything with bikes. Since we all want to do is "Ride" till our last breathe.

So now you understand, the meaning of the word "SUDDEN" here. Waiting for the next SUDDEN plan & will roll out the log soon.

Until than Ride Hard you fellow Bike-Minded people ;)..

Got Wheels..?? Lets Ride..!!

RoadTrip Log : Mumbai - Lavasa (25th Jan - 26th Jan 2009)

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 Old National Highway, an alternative to Express way for the bikes. The roads where awesome, ghats, tunnels where fantastic. Am sure every rider was having a wonderful time driving on those roads. On the midway we saw a R15 & ZMA guy zooming off, taking amazing cornerings, quite impressive. That’s the reason I mentioned in this log. We went through Lonavla, ghats of Tiger Valley. Here comes chandni chowk, asked some localites about pune, most of them where not even aware about that a place called Lavasa exists. We started towards main pune & arrived near Lohia Jain IT park, when we saw the map this place was there on it & we where suppose to take a sharp right turn beneath the flyover. We where in outskirts of Pune now perhaps, the roads where bit narrow. All where damn exhausted, everyone was unknown what Lavasa could be, what is the purpose of going there, how are we going to manage our stay & blah blah.. We waiting in some little village to munch something, had juices, vada pav, bhaji & started off. After little enquiry & relating to map we headed for Temghar Dam.

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 Tiger Valley, Lonavla was just mind blowing. You can find yourself being over the clouds, Awesome scenery. After about 100kms of ride we reached a hotel just before Panvel where we had some snacks & soft-drinks. Waited for like an hour & headed nonstop to Mumbai where we reached again our spot from where we started.

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..

RoadTrip to Lavasa..

Click for More pix from Sunil