Sometime in 1999, on a rainy weekend afternoon, X and his mother were re-organizing a bookshelf in their house. Among several ancient books of what belonged to his grandfather's time, or possibly even older, he chanced upon a very old atlas - a gift of Space that had travelled through Time.
Flipping through its dog-eared pages, X spotted Czechoslovakia. Unable to pronounce the name despite several attempts, he quietly slunk away to West Germany, jumped over the Berlin Wall over to East Germany, proceeded to the USSR, turned south and crossing the Gobi desert, surmounted the Himalayas and set foot on Punjab's green-and-revolving soil.
All the travelling had wearied him out, and he badly needed some sea breeze. Without further ado, he flew to Bombay, with the prospect of idling away some time at Juhu beach.
So, he ran his finger along the western coast of India, trying to land safely on that gigantic metropolis of the West. Air traffic had always been a problem at Bombay airport, and chances of getting the runway clear were always uncertain. As a result, he overflew south by a hundred miles or so and then....and then something on the map caught his eye! He couldn't believe it at all!
If he had rubbed his eyes at the time, or opened his mouth a lot wider, it would have created a more dramatic effect, no doubt. But this was no time to waste on such antics. So he merely gave the map a closer look - There was a place on the atlas that showed his very name, "X", on the western coast of India. Wow! What were the odds, really! Wouldn't it be great to go there one day... "X goes to X", he fancied.
And now, twelve years after deserting his imaginary aeroplane over Bombay's skies, X landed at Nashik instead. And on Diwali day (D-day, if you will), "X" and two of his pals, embarked upon the biketrip of their lifetime to "X".
A biketrip of 'self-discovery'.
The answer to the trivia of "X", in case you are still wondering, is "Shrivardhan!"
There's a Konkan village by this name, with a beautiful beach to its credit. It pleases the heart that thousands of people know of this beautiful village, a popular weekend getaway from Mumbai and Pune.
It was on the 26th of October that we started for the journey. We were 5 in all, 3 men and 2 machines, to mention nothing of the compass, the map and the old memory. Our plans at the time of cranking our engines were outlined as follows:
1) Leave Nashik for Shrivardhan via Matheran
2) Enough said. Hit the road!
Thus started our 781 km long bike-trip. We rode out on to NH-3, the Agra-Mumbai Expressway, and glided blissfully on the polished tarmac, negotiating the beautifully banked curves of the Kasara Ghats. With the monsoonal clouds having just left the picture, the brilliant golden sunlight tore open the blue skies to beam down upon the autumnal mountains textured in shades of fading green. All this, with the wind blowing in your face and the tarmac sailing past inches below your feet, to say nothing of the distant hum of the engine at constant throttle and the suspension snoring away to sleep, was how it all began.
Occasionally, we would stop for fuel - petrol or chai, as the case may be. At Shahpur, the GPS was unfurled, if I may use the expression, and we headed for Matheran. This stretch of road was mostly broken-highway cutting across agricultural landscape. There were quite a few rivers and bridges on this route, some of them particularly big ones, with the river flowing far below. And then, there were brief spells where the road got pretty rough and we had to dodge potholes adroitly all along. Reached Matheran by late afternoon.
Matheran is supposedly Asia's tiniest hill station. Being a pedestrian zone, one can get to Matheran only either by foot, toy-train or horseback. We parked our bikes and walked along the toy-train track to the village 3 km uphill, trying to elude tourist guides and ghodawallahs. The trek along the narrow-gauge railway had its share of valley-views to offer. We checked in into a cottage alongside the track and decided to spend the rest of the day at Matheran, catch the sunrise from Sunrise Point the next day and leave Konkanwards.
What followed was, we pottered around a bit in the market's handicraft shoppes, helping ourselves to chikkis, starfruit and a jar of mango-fudge. Diwali was being celebrated with lamps adorning the houses. A group of mischievous kids went about setting off crackers near unsuspecting tourists. We retired for the night, and instead of us visiting Sunrise Point the next day, the Sun himself did us an honour and visited our cottage, when we rose by around 8 a.m.
Essentially, Matheran is a village hidden amongst trees. But for the little market near the train station that flaunts cobbled streets, the rest of Matheran is tucked away secretively in the woods. The 'streets' of Matheran are really forest paths. As you stroll along one of these paths, under the canopy of dense trees, you would come across unassuming signboards partially hidden in the undergrowth, bearing colonial names such as 'Belle Vue' and 'Kragie Burn'.
The entire place sits on a hill overlooking valleys on 3 sides, and is dotted by viewpoints with several names. We had our breakfast of chikkis at Monkey Point. Speaking of Monkey Point, Matheran is infested with monkeys. Monkeys on the railway track, monkeys on rooftops, little monkeys bursting crackers...
We started from Matheran in the afternoon and set off down the slopes. We thought that if we could reach Alibag beach by around 5 pm, we could ride along the Beach Highway, watching the Sun go down into the sea.
The ride from Matheran to Alibag was most enjoyable. Here's quoting Robert Pirsig from his book, 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance:'
"Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding."
We managed to get to Alibag by sundown. But, it turned out that we couldn't honour this appointment with the Sun either, and he had to content himself with setting without our company. We rode on, planning to halt at the next village for the night. The road from Alibag to Kashid was alive with Diwali celebrations. Little diyas flickered on with their tiny lights on our left, and waves flirted with the beach sands on our right, as we rode south on that moonless night.
Flipping through its dog-eared pages, X spotted Czechoslovakia. Unable to pronounce the name despite several attempts, he quietly slunk away to West Germany, jumped over the Berlin Wall over to East Germany, proceeded to the USSR, turned south and crossing the Gobi desert, surmounted the Himalayas and set foot on Punjab's green-and-revolving soil.
All the travelling had wearied him out, and he badly needed some sea breeze. Without further ado, he flew to Bombay, with the prospect of idling away some time at Juhu beach.
So, he ran his finger along the western coast of India, trying to land safely on that gigantic metropolis of the West. Air traffic had always been a problem at Bombay airport, and chances of getting the runway clear were always uncertain. As a result, he overflew south by a hundred miles or so and then....and then something on the map caught his eye! He couldn't believe it at all!
If he had rubbed his eyes at the time, or opened his mouth a lot wider, it would have created a more dramatic effect, no doubt. But this was no time to waste on such antics. So he merely gave the map a closer look - There was a place on the atlas that showed his very name, "X", on the western coast of India. Wow! What were the odds, really! Wouldn't it be great to go there one day... "X goes to X", he fancied.
And now, twelve years after deserting his imaginary aeroplane over Bombay's skies, X landed at Nashik instead. And on Diwali day (D-day, if you will), "X" and two of his pals, embarked upon the biketrip of their lifetime to "X".
A biketrip of 'self-discovery'.
The answer to the trivia of "X", in case you are still wondering, is "Shrivardhan!"
There's a Konkan village by this name, with a beautiful beach to its credit. It pleases the heart that thousands of people know of this beautiful village, a popular weekend getaway from Mumbai and Pune.
It was on the 26th of October that we started for the journey. We were 5 in all, 3 men and 2 machines, to mention nothing of the compass, the map and the old memory. Our plans at the time of cranking our engines were outlined as follows:
1) Leave Nashik for Shrivardhan via Matheran
2) Enough said. Hit the road!
Occasionally, we would stop for fuel - petrol or chai, as the case may be. At Shahpur, the GPS was unfurled, if I may use the expression, and we headed for Matheran. This stretch of road was mostly broken-highway cutting across agricultural landscape. There were quite a few rivers and bridges on this route, some of them particularly big ones, with the river flowing far below. And then, there were brief spells where the road got pretty rough and we had to dodge potholes adroitly all along. Reached Matheran by late afternoon.
Matheran is supposedly Asia's tiniest hill station. Being a pedestrian zone, one can get to Matheran only either by foot, toy-train or horseback. We parked our bikes and walked along the toy-train track to the village 3 km uphill, trying to elude tourist guides and ghodawallahs. The trek along the narrow-gauge railway had its share of valley-views to offer. We checked in into a cottage alongside the track and decided to spend the rest of the day at Matheran, catch the sunrise from Sunrise Point the next day and leave Konkanwards.
What followed was, we pottered around a bit in the market's handicraft shoppes, helping ourselves to chikkis, starfruit and a jar of mango-fudge. Diwali was being celebrated with lamps adorning the houses. A group of mischievous kids went about setting off crackers near unsuspecting tourists. We retired for the night, and instead of us visiting Sunrise Point the next day, the Sun himself did us an honour and visited our cottage, when we rose by around 8 a.m.
Essentially, Matheran is a village hidden amongst trees. But for the little market near the train station that flaunts cobbled streets, the rest of Matheran is tucked away secretively in the woods. The 'streets' of Matheran are really forest paths. As you stroll along one of these paths, under the canopy of dense trees, you would come across unassuming signboards partially hidden in the undergrowth, bearing colonial names such as 'Belle Vue' and 'Kragie Burn'.
The entire place sits on a hill overlooking valleys on 3 sides, and is dotted by viewpoints with several names. We had our breakfast of chikkis at Monkey Point. Speaking of Monkey Point, Matheran is infested with monkeys. Monkeys on the railway track, monkeys on rooftops, little monkeys bursting crackers...
We started from Matheran in the afternoon and set off down the slopes. We thought that if we could reach Alibag beach by around 5 pm, we could ride along the Beach Highway, watching the Sun go down into the sea.
The ride from Matheran to Alibag was most enjoyable. Here's quoting Robert Pirsig from his book, 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance:'
"Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding."
We managed to get to Alibag by sundown. But, it turned out that we couldn't honour this appointment with the Sun either, and he had to content himself with setting without our company. We rode on, planning to halt at the next village for the night. The road from Alibag to Kashid was alive with Diwali celebrations. Little diyas flickered on with their tiny lights on our left, and waves flirted with the beach sands on our right, as we rode south on that moonless night.
(more miles to be munched...)
