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
OK so much for the planning, let me start with the trip.
Destination: Murud- Dapoli- Ratnagiri-
Cast: Marshal*, Uv*, Viks* and moi
Supporting role: two Bajaj Pulsar 180 dts-I and a Honda Unicorn.
Finally the day dawned; actually we left before dawn. The plan was to leave at
We hit the route to katraj ghats. The roads here are a nightmare and we traveled 2-3 kms on the ghat in 1st and 2nd 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,
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 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
5th 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
It took us 7 hrs to make the trip back and we reached Chandni chowk at
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)
*names have been changed to protect privacy