Day 2 (Oct 26th)
Route : Mumbai - Thane - Bharuch - Vadodara - Ahmedabad
Kms : 576
For the first time in my life I wake up at the first ring of the alarm clock, and the first thing that comes to my mind is the dent. With a heavy mind, I shrug of the thought and get down to the morning business. Within an hour all three of us are ready to go when I get a call from an unexpected visitor.
![The F1 Roadtrip : Pune to Noida-dsc08454.jpg](https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attachments/travelogues/837709d1692067866t-f1-roadtrip-pune-noida-dsc08454.jpg)
A close friend (black vento owner) decides at the last moment to join us till Vadodara, and was inquiring if we could team up - who were we to say no! The addition in the team costs us a delay of 1.5 hours but we finally get started on the road.
Contrary to what we had read (
about starting late from Mumbai), Ghodbunder road hardly has any traffic, we pass the entire stretch in an extremely short duration. When we finally join NH8, the bridge is stark empty - in the past every time I have passed this bridge, I had always encountered traffic jams - but not this time!
No traffic!
A sight for sore eyes - NH8 Mumbai exit without any traffic!
We continue and decide to have breakfast, and to continue on our "
plan" of experimenting different food options, so we stop at this place - "
Sai Pooja BAR & Family Restaurant". Our first mistake of the day. Learnt one good lesson - a place that advertises the "BAR" in a bigger font than the "Restaurant" is not a place for foodies.
Anyway the toilets were clean, and the setup was actually not bad - had we stopped at this place in the evening, it would have been quite good. As for the food, umm... lets say, we have seen worse conditions
Seating arrangement - pretty decent
Meanwhile I get to stretch my legs & do a bit of photography
Once we are done, we get back on the road. The stretch between Dahisar and Vapi is a wonderful drive; beautiful scenery, broad curving roads, hills in the background - the perfect setting to test the Vento's ride handling capabilities. Except for the initial 50 odd kms which is still undergoing construction (
for over an year if I remember correctly from my previous trip), the rest of the drive allows us to reach 120-140 kmph.
You can figure out we are reaching the Gujarat border when temples start coming up next to the highway!
A rare sight - probably the only bikers we encountered on the entire trip with both wearing helmets. And yes, that was an Harley!
Day 2 - To be continued