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Published: January 7th 2010
The itinerary for the return trip was Ponda - Panji - Sawantwadi - Amboli - Ajara - Kolhapur - Satara - Pune - Mumbai. I have traveled on this road for countless times now. I have a number of relatives in this area, whom I intended to visit and also attend two family functions in my hometown Kolhapur! The ride to Ajara is on NH-17 upto Sawantwadi and then a state road that takes you up to the Amboli hill station. It is best visited in monsoon season, when the waterfalls are in their full force and the surroundings are lush green. The high point is a walk in the clouds down the ghat road from the sunset point to the largest waterfall. It was almost undiscovered some 15 years back when I used to come here quite often with my family. Now of-course, come any weekend, it will as crowded as girgaon chaupatty. I had a 'special tea' at the temple on the top of the ghat and reached Ajara an hour later. This town, where I used to spend most of my summer vacations in school, has not changed much. Just a couple of new buildings along the main
road. The next day I went to Pargarh fort near Chandgad with my cousin. It is about 36 km from Chandgad which lies on the Goa-Belgaum road. Its a beautiful road upto the fort. The fort was built to keep an eye on the Portuguese activities and on a clear day, it is claimed, one can see the Vasco harbour. The fort itself is nothing much to talk about. It has some 40 houses with most of the second generation now living in Mumbai. There is a newly constructed temple on the top with a bored but friendly priest. On my way back, I made an unsuccessful attempt of over-taking a truck. The bike wobbled quite dreadfully on the loose gravel but fortunately I balanced it. It jolted out my cousin who was dozing off on the backseat.
My next destination was Kolhapur. From Ajara, a 30 km stretch with alternate patches of good and bad roads takes you to the Mumbai Bangalore Hwy (NH-4). For the first time I revved up my avenger to 90 km/h without even a slightest hint of drag. I love this bike. Its a smooth ride upto Kagal, some 10 km from Kolhapur.
From here all the way upto Pune, crazy stuff happens on the highway. The definition of high speed lane becomes highly relative. Some truck drivers follow their old colonial masters while others go the Yankee way. The speeding skodas, scorpios and their likes do not mind it at all and cut the lanes at their will at 100+ speeds. I actually saw a couple of bullock carts in the high speed lane ! Near the exits, The shoulder acts as a divider and the one-way lane suddenly becomes a two-way lane ! Usually the bikes or 3-wheelers move in the wrong direction but once I saw a Truck moving in the opposite direction! The flip side is you have to be on your toes always and you do not get bored and sleepy as you might on the american freeways! I spent some 3 days in Kolhapur. I stood in line to eat the famous Fadtare misal. This guy has a machine shop and started the small shop just to feed its employees. Now the Kolhapuri misal is as famous as a Kolhapuri Chappal ! Kolhapur is rapidly changing like every other second-wrung cities in India. I saw a movie at the Kolhapur multiplex shelling out 150 bucks on the ticket. But I was happy to see that the typical Kolhapuri had not changed a bit. As there was a power-fault in the middle of the movie, whistles and swearing reverberated the hall.
After a couple of days in Satara, I rode to Pune. Pune's traffic has become an absolute mess. The first thing you notice its overwhelming number of 2 wheeler with equally overwhelming lack of basic traffic sense. Most of them do not have rear view mirrors while others are just lazy to remove it as they do not use it any way ! There are some senseless one-ways and to add to it the sign-boards are completely out of sync with them. A sign board to Fergusson college will direct you to go in the opposite direction on the way. The weirdest and the most hilarious thing in Pune is although the huge posters of one of its
MLA. In his black sunglasses, he does not look any lesser than a villain from a South Indian movie.
Finally I reached Mumbai back on 1st January. I clocked almost 1800 kms on the trip.
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Ravi
non-member comment
Nice Blog
Nice description I was in GB11, we wer 12 members strong. I remember each and every day so vividly. It was really one of the best trips of my life. The campfire ritual @ panjim was quiet annoying tho... your blog made me all the more nostalgic... Thanks, Ravi