Velneshwar Trip – Day 2

~2/22/09

Day 1 can be found here.

I slept light … got up a few times in between and the lullaby put me back to sleep. Everyone should try sleeping with the sea waves in the background. It is some experience. I was up by 6, out with my camera to catch the sunrise. We were on the west coast of India and the sun still rises on the east … but the morning calm is with day light slowly creeping in over the sea shore is a dream beginning to the day. And I was there to catch it all. :)

A loooooooooong walk was in store again. I know … what else one can do on a clean, sparsely populated beach! By the time I got back, the sun was well n truly up and so was Rahul, ready with his cam … Dude u had missed the sunrise … ;) well he was off while I got ready. Cleaning the wound on my foot was a pain…trying to pry out the sand especially. I got hot water thanks to Maruti the caretaker at the resort. He was one more chatter-box who was itching to tell his life story but I got away … we had to hit the roads soon if we were to see the places around and that wasn’t gonna happen if I sat down to pen an autobiography. So all ready, both of us got to the courtyard to have bfast and it was “Kanda Pohe” maharashtrian style … doesn’t it look amazing? It tasted amazing too … I had to word real hard to stop meself from eating another plate :D

Once done with breakfast, we settled the bills … it cost us a total of 730 + tips (haatbhet as they refer to it over here) for a day’s stay and 3 meals which was real cheap for the beauty of the place. Bade farewell at the resort and rode down the village to the temple. We had darshan there and then proceeded towards Hedvi which was another village 9 Kms from Velneshwar. It had a temple was what we knew but it was another paradise situated in a valley with lots of palm trees all around the place. Visited the Dashabujha Ganpati temple at Hedvi and then fulfilled Rahul’s wish of tasting maadi. I did too but I had never liked neera which is the next stage of maadi in fermentation so ……

Now we were ready for our trip back … It was 11 am and I was in two minds whether to go to Pune with Rahul or head back to Bombay. I had an extra day off Monday so that wasn’t a problem but the strain of driving from Pune to Bombay on the morrow was weighing on my mind. I decided that it would be seen on the way … and we rode off … back on the same route towards Chiplun n NH-17. Riding on the road, fresh and charged up was an even greater experience than our trip to Velneshwar. Zip…zapp…left…right… it was breathless :D We reached the highway in no time and stopped for lunch … at 1.30 pm itself, fearing we might get carried away and miss out on it like yesterday. That’s when I noticed some chemical industries near Chiplun … and a Sandvik plant … so Chiplun wasn’t only about fishing … it had its own industries as well.

Lunch done (again fish for Rahul and some Solkadhi before we left Konkan :D) we got on to crossing the ghats; Parshuram Ghat, Boste Ghat and then the uber kool Kashedi! This time around Rahul checked the distance and it spanned 19 kms. I can rave on n on about it but I rest my case and leave it upto y’all to experience it. We reached Poladpur and stopped for tea. I didn’t take longer than few seconds to decide that I was gonna see Mahabaleshwar (for the first time ever :P) and go home for the night. So Pune it was.

We took a right @ Poladpur and sped off. It was a ghat road again, with views of the Pratapgadh fort and bigger mountains than the earlier ones… but the road, sadly, was sad. Not maintained at all considering people from Bombay use this road to go to M’baleshwar. It was bumpy all thru to the hill station and our backs were jammed up by the time we reached our waypoint. Add to that the narrow road and rash state transport buses which we couldn’t pass and it made it even more frust. Rahul had been here many times for his treks so he was aware of it … I was worried about the state of the petrol in my bike as I had decided not to fill up at poladpur and ride on instead. But the steep climbs were guzzling the fuel and the pointer was on “E” all throughout. I was hoping that indicator was not too accurate so I would reach the next gas station without having to resort to pushing it at this altitude.

I was spared … for we entered Mahabi at around 4 PM … and arrived into a traffic jam. It’s a hill station, on a Sunday evening and we have to endure a traffic jam … I had heard how crowded it had become but saw it for the first time. We filled gas and then left towards Panchgani which was the next destination. At one point, as I slowed down at a jam near the lake, I felt a vehicle hit my bike from behind…. On the left side near the exhaust (m talking abt the bike here …) I looked back, ready to curse the soul and saw Rahul grinning … rolled my eyes and moved ahead. People were leaving after spending the day and it was chaotic … not as bad as Bombay or the Pune peth areas but for someone who has a sore back and a lot of bum sores, this was enough. On the way I saw a board “Strawberries and Cream” and I had to stop. Wimbledon and Mahabaleshwar were the only 2 places which were famous for this concoction. My friend Dodi was planning on going to Wimbledon so I thought let me check this location. So we had a huge tumbler full; it looked super and tasted yummy.

The setting sun reminded us that we had a destination to reach and we would need to ride in the dark. So we bid adieu to Mhabi (that’s short name for Mahabaleshwar which has been used by a lot of us folks in Pune for a long time so ….) and rode towards Panchgani and Wai. Panchgani is, as we all know, a hill station famous for its boarding schools… it’s the dehradun of the west if I may call it so… and true to it, we saw a lot of students with their parents walking around the town … but thankfully there wasn’t much traffic here… that is it was flowing … as we crossed the town area, we came to a place with lot of cars parked. It was called Parsi point and it had a beautiful view of the Koyna valley. So we had to stop … The sun had just set so we still had some light to catch our final snaps of the trip.

All done, we started off towards Wai and NH-4. My bums were hurting bad by then and after a break, I just had to ride 15 mins and it restarted. Well we rode down the panchgani ghat and entered Wai which is a decent sized town… made famous by Prakash Jha who shot for all his movies based in Bihar over here coz it had the same feel and also Swades, which had SRK serenading around the town. It was past 6.30 and twilight time… the most dangerous time to drive coz the fading light mixed with the headlights of the oncoming cars can play tricks and make the drivers judgment flawed. This was India so we had to face vehicles with no headlights too, as if it wasn’t enough. Well both Rahul and I managed to drive through … infact we zipped through :D

On the crossroad a.k.a naka where we had to join NH-4, we both stopped, looking at each other to see if the other person needed to stop but honestly it was mainly to give our sore bums some respite. We wanted to get on with it we zoomed off, joining in with the traffic coming down from Bangalore, Begaum, Kolhapur and Satara …

If Kashedi ghat was a joy to ride with its turns and curves, NH-4 was the exact opposite. A straight 2 lane national highway, with a whole lot more cars and trucks speeding past. As I joined the flowing traffic and started zipping through, overtaking the slow moving trucks from the right by giving the indicator and then moving back into the left lane, letting the faster cars pass and all this at speeds of 70-80 kmph, It was pure adrenalin rush. I was reminded of my drives in the US when I drove a Chrysler 300 back from Yosemite on I-5 at 80 mph, zipping through choc-a-bloc, long weekend returning traffic or the time when I drove to and from Grand Canyon at 80+ mph in a Chevrolet touring (I think). That was then (in a car) and this was now (on a bike) and were they both wow-experiences or what!

Rahul had sped along long back, as if he had been transported into a different world, totally at home under these driving conditions. Trust me when I say, the speeds that we were driving at, if we had hit a pot-hole or encountered a villager trying to cross the highway, we would have been dead! No if and buts on that. But that’s where it was a test of our presence of mind and god was looking over us of course so we can die another day :) All said and done, we did come across a couple of tractors with trailer which didn’t have any tail lights and I realized there was a vehicle ahead of me only when I got some 100 meters behind it.

We entered the Khambatki ghat and the Khambhatki bhogda (tunnel) and I was doing 90 kmph, whooping as if Whoopie Goldberg had been possessed (remember Ghost?) Rahul was ahead of me and as I passed him I let out a war cry and it probably startled him up a bit or so I thought. I was right coz when we stopped after the ghat, the first thing he said was “What happened to you mamu? I could hear you over all the sound” :D it was fun!

We reached Khed Shivapur and this was where the roads split – one, the dehu road bypass which went on to Bombay – which was the one I had to take and one to katraj, swargate and Pune city which Rahul had to take. So we said our goodbyes, thank you, etc, reminded each other to send an sms once we reached homes and parted. I took the turn at Baner phata and headed home. By now, I had started to long for home and I did not want to stop anywhere on the way. The very thought that I would be off the bike and my sore-ass would find some much needed and well earned rest was egging me on.

Once home, I parked and took the readings of my drive thus far. It was 9.20 PM on day 2. I had travelled 635 kms through 5 districts and it was all that I asked for from this trip, which technically wasn’t over yet coz I had to ride again tomorrow... Mom & dad were waiting for me and I was glad to see them too. I know it would have been apt for me to take an end-of-journey photo but I was all black with the dirt n grime from the NH-4 drive (coz I had to drive with my visor up as the oncoming lights were distorting through the visor and making it difficult to gauge the traffic ahead) and had no energy to even remove my camera – let alone take a snap. I did not even take a bath… just washed up and ate dinner while I answered mom’s questions.

I had forgotten about sending an sms to Rahul and remembered only when I received one from him. It went like this: “Reached home. Mamu, the 2 best days of biking. A Great trip it was. Loved the ride too much, we will do it once more” Guess that said it all.

The icing on the cake was that I got to see ARR & SM win the Oscars. Day 3 was not much… the normal drive back to Bombay which I have done earlier. The bike did give me a few hiccups and jerks while drove down the khopoli ghat and my hands were trembling bad … probably because of the fatigue. I don’t know how long I can keep going for such ride on my bike but till I can, I will! :)

Came back to Bombay and slumped on the bed … not feeling like going to work. Thanked my stars that I did not have to travel to get to work :D Got an update from Darth that his solo drive to Jaisalmer had to be abandoned at Palanpur itself as his P200’s electronics were fried. Ah well, I guess these are part n parcel of it all. But I know he will ride on…

It was a grrrrrreat trip… and it’s been a long trip-log but I enjoyed it every bit as I did, riding. Hope there are a lot more of these to come :)

“Hazaron Khwaishen Aisi Ke Harr Khwaish Pe Damm Nikle …. “

~KK

Ps. All the photos are not published on the blog but you can find them here.