"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is
to move." - Robert Louis Stevenson
Prologue
Bhpian swapszone is the expert on monsoon drives: he plans 2 every year, one to Malshejghat and the other to Lonavla. This year too, he planned Malshej and posted the Monsoon drives thread on this forum, which was how it all started.
Unfortunately, last minute developments forced Malshejghat out of the question - there was a landslide and the road was completely blocked with debris.
Fortunately this did nothing to dampen our spirits as we were doing a drive irrespective of location (refer apt quote above). The location was fixed as Bhandardhara - one of the many implosions of beauty and greenery that's littered around the face of Maharashtra during the monsoon season.
Route map for this drive:
Unfortunately out of 12 cars which were initially confirmed on the TBhp thread, only 3 cars ultimately made it.
Fortunately swapszone had 3 more cars of his friends joining us, which made for a total of six cars and fourteen people. Six cars was actually the perfect number for this trip. Any less, and it wouldn't have been as much fun. Any more, and we would have faced problems in parking at certain spots we visited where there was just enough space to park our cars.
List of cars that made it:
1) Honda City
- Swapszone + wife (Tejashree) + sister (Shruti) + baby son (Yuvan)
2) Maruti Swift
- superbee
3) Skoda Laura
- EagleEye
4) Chevrolet Beat
- Miraj Choksi
5) Maruti Swift Dezire
- swapszone's cousin Sahil Patil + 4 friends
6) Toyota Etios Liva
- Anupam Pathak + Tejas Desmukh
Off from Mumbai
Every day when you get up to go to work, you have to snooze the alarm a dozen times before you finally pull yourself out of bed and force yourself into the bathroom to get ready.
But on a day when you're about to set off on a road trip, you wake up before the alarm sets off, sleep doesn't really matter, you're ready in a matter of minutes and have already grabbed the car keys waiting for the clock to strike 6. Don't tell me it's just me!! I'm like this whenever there's a road trip to look forward to!
Our trip on 28 July too started this way, with me initially driving to swapszone's place and reaching there by 6.30 am. That turned out to be the unofficial meeting point where we joined up with the Dezire, Beat, and the Liva. Introductions were exchanged and some chatting about the routes and sights ensued. It was finally 7 before we set off. That's myself, the Liva and the Beat. The City and the Dezire would catch up to us as swapszone's family was taking time to get ready.
Superbee was waiting at R Mall in Thane, from where he joined us in the mini convoy. We then proceeded to the final meeting point after the last flyover in Thane where the remaining 2 cars joined us. After the customary chat, we were ready to hit the road! The time was now almost 8 am.
We crossed the Thane toll naka pretty quickly but since we had gotten later than we expected to be, we encountered medium to heavy traffic on the NH3 till the Expressway toll gates.
After that it was easy going, and without much fuss we reached Shahapur by around 8.45 am, where we all pulled into an HP petrol pump to fill air and water for windscreen washer. This was also where I first fished out my camera, so the pictures will start now.
That's Miraj, Anupam and Sahil in the picture.
We had a small drinks and chat break of around 15 - 20 minutes and after that pulled back onto the road. Being Sunday, there were bound to be other weekend tourers on the famous Nashik highway, and soon we spotted a large group of bikers on Royal Enfields.
Watch out for another pic of these bikes towards the end
Till this point it hadn't rained at all - what 'monsoon' drive is complete without rains? So I guessed the rain gods blessed us, because it started showering right then. I am one of those people who loves driving in the rains and that's when the drive became all the more enjoyable.
The monsoon in all its fury
Around 9.45, we saw the large, inviting parking area of the Hotel Dalvi Darbar. Since a lot of us had not had breakfast yet, we decided to stop over for some gastric satisfaction.
Here are the rides lined up swapszone and his naughty son Yuvan Some members of the gang Delicious pav bhaji
The food at the Dalvi Darbar was ok. As we flushed down Pav Bhaji and Uttapam with coffee, we talked about how much fun the drive had been, not having a clue what else the day would bring us. A lot, as it turned out!
When we got back on the road almost an hour later, we noticed that there was quite a lot of other activities going on on that highway that day. Apparently some 51,000 people were on their way to Shirdi in 1100 buses, so the road was full of them. Also, what I imagine to be some political party was doing campaigns by blocking the roads and handing out flags.
At one point just before Kasara, things had gotten so bad that the traffic was at a standstill for as far as we could see. Frustration was building up and images of the trip getting ruined because of some stupid traffic jam were floating in my head. But luckily for us, just at the point where we joined at the end of the traffic jam, there happened to be a small road to the left which would serve as a detour around the traffic jam. This was confirmed by Google Maps.