Monsoon Ride of Madhe Ghat

 

                                                            The Monsoon Ride to Madhe Ghat.

Riders and their machines

Subhendu Nandan : Royal Enfield 350 Electra 5S

Neha Kanaskar : Royal Enfield 350 Electra 5S 

Umesh Madan : Royal Enfield Corme C 500

Shafi Ebrahim : Royal Enfield 350 Electra 5S

Ryan Pereira : CBZ

We Rode the unknown place to many people-- The Madhe Ghat  situated in Velhe, Pune District. 

in dense Forest - south west of Pune, bordering Raigad district and close to Torna Fort and Rajgad also backwaters of Bhatgar dam. Velhe is the base village for Torna Fort and Madhe Ghat.

In Maratha history,the great warrior Tanaji Malusare when died in the Sinhagad battle.his body was to be taken for last rites in his native village Umrathe. Tanaji Malusare's funeral procession was taken to his native place from this Madhe ghat route.

What to expect from this place : Nice views of the sunset, amazing  ghat and waterfalls, you may also see some  Red Crabs, peacock and  rabbits. Food consisting typical gavran mutton / chicken,  with locally grown rice is the best here.

There are two ways to go to Madhe ghat, via Pabe khind and via Nasrapur .

1. Pabe khind (70 km)

From pune go towards Sinhagad Road, Khadakwasla Dam, Donje Phata, and Khanapur, Paabe. Once you cross Khanapur you need to take a left turn after around 10 km. you will find a bords indicating the left turn towards Pabe.

After crossing the pabe village after 1 killometer, the road will joins Nasarapur-Velhe Road. From here take right turn, village velhe is around 5km.

2. Nasarapur (80 km)

From pune take Satara road , reach shiwapur then keep following the road and you will find a “Nasarapur bipas from here you have to take a left turn. Take a left turn immediately the Nasrapur village will come.

Once you reach Velhe village you need to take first right turn then left.

From Velhe Bus Stand,This road goes towards Pasli village ( 13 km). we can see “Gunjawani Dam” on other side of road.

From Pasli village keep going straight until the “Kelad” village comes, from here you need to take a right turn and this road will directly go to “Madhe Ghat”.

This way goes directly up to the spot from where we can see the waterfall.

The road Condition is not so good from pasli village, but off roaders will love to get their machines here.

We started the Ride at 8:00 am from Warje which is close to pune city area.

The distance we had to cover was round about 80KM including off-road,  and took the Pabe-khind  route,

and stopped at Donje for breakfast, it was around 8:30,

We headed towards Velhe it was raining and we guys just wanted to beat some heat. The road was amazing, specially in the ghats, if you are a photographic freak …. Then I must say this is one some place u need to roll the shutter of ur SLR's   Subhendu did a decent work on this.

We also took a video in pouring rain while riding our bull's almost 45 degrees slope.

We spotted few of these :

Weather was good to Ride as it’s the beginning of Monsoon,  provided you are one of those riders who love to ride in the rains, a few get grumpy and I am one of them at times.  But when you have the best of people riding along, it doesn't matter to me … Like I always say its not about the destination, Ride is all about getting there,  the thrills and the fun…

Few waterfalls on the way…

When we reached the destination it was raining and the road condition was not good,

Its off-road and with rain and red mud it was all Slime.. including our tyres :

Nothing could stop us though finally we reached the top the plateau :

Took a few clicks here  but couldn’t see much due to fog, we couldn’t wait for the fog to move as we had to head for lunch and we wanted it hot and spicy ..

While our way down we came across a few local bikers on their 100CC who mostly couldn't make it to the top and decide to park their bikes down and prefer to walk about 2KM towards the plateau..

Ryan was a little jittery on this slope hence umesh took over this bike and helped get it down.

Umesh who had already reached down, I advised him to ride this slope again with his C-500.. So we guys can shoot him while riding the slope in rain..

I managed to pull a recording for about one minute by then it started raining heavily, since we didn’t want to put our SLR at risk we had to stop clicking the videos and get back to velhe for lunch ..

     

On way back to Velhe for lunch we spotted lots of Jackfruit trees .. And got our hands on 2 of these..

A Local farmer helped us take it down like a bang.. And the very next moment Umesh Madan got a pillion… his Jackfruit ;)

  

It was almost noon and we decided to come down of Madhe ghat before the lunch gets over..

There is a local restaurant where we were suppose to have lunch : Courtesy Umesh Madan.

W e reached  right on time it was raining we parked our bull's and ungeared our selves

Due to the rain the jackets and the protective gears had become a bit heavier on us..

However over and all this ride was filled with fun… excitement thrill and of course the local food.

Cheers to my fellow riders keep thumping.  We all missed those riders who couldn’t make it to this ride.

  

RIDE-DE-GOA

RIDE-DE-GOA

 

The Royal Enfield Goa Ride, 19th-May-2012.

Staring Point : Pune ConvergysAundh - Candolim Bliss Goa.

We Club of Riding Devils (CORD's) successfully completed the Pune Goa Ride on Royal Enfield.

8 People 8 days one destination one motive and a total of 1600km.

This Ride was more of a Bonding , learning and knowing our ownselves..

Riders and their Machines

Sunder Singh.-RE Electra 350CC

Subhendu Nandan-RE Electra 5S 350CC

Umesh Madan-RE Classic 500CC

Shafi Ebrahim-RE Electra 5S 350CC

Jhones Nadan-RE ThunderBird

Suraj Thakare-RE Electra 5S 350CC

Pillion: Bhavana,Srikant & Xavier.

This Ride was all about Exploring Goa and places around, as we all had been to Goa many times but this was our first time on our Bull's (Royal Enfield)

We all were so excited about this ride as this was our first ride out of state, there was pre checklist.

we were well planned about the ride and decided to take some spares and tools along, which i must say is necessary, apart from standard tool kit, we also carried spare tubes, cables and first aid box. Not to mention Army knives and Leatherman ;)

We all got our bikes serviced least 3-4 days prior to the D-day.

Subhendu (Aka) Babu had a major problem with his bike's clutch oil seal. It had a leak and we all were tensed as it was a long distance to cover, which one wouldn’t dare to unless your bike is in perfect riding condition. You don’t wanna rip your bike apart in the middle of the road, unless you can put it back together, However Babu is Babu he is one Devil Rider and a true believer of Lord Shiva.

So after hunting for the oil seal for almost 2 days we couldn’t get our hands over it, it was out of stock in pune..We still decided to ride (Jo Hoga Dekha Jayega)  Attitude  

We got our bikes tank full with some last moment luggage adjustments and started the Ride - Jai Bajrang  Bali.. 

The Route we took was NH-4 Pune-Banglore Route.

We started the ride with all of us geared up in Cramster at 6:00am, the weather was perfect to ride until it could start getting warm so we decided to have few stops and cover as much KM as we can.

We had a standard formation with a Lead and Sweep.  As we know

A good Lead and Sweep Rider can make a group ride a fun and safe experience.

Umaya the 500CC guy decided to sweep Along with Subhendu.

Me and Sunder were the Leads and Jhones and Suraj were in middle

Suraj who couldn't get the mirrors put on, even after reminding many times had some issues..on the Ride.. Being without mirrors makes u look like a misleading Cornman at times..

We had only covered a few KM from pune towards Satara, a minibus bumped into our formation and caused confusion.

Situation was handled well by Sunder (Aka-Bull) and Subhendu (Aka-Babu)

We had many cars and SUV slowing down by our side to take a quick click / video. It was really feeling a Pride to Ride Royal Enfield on NH-4

Next stop was at a local Dhaba in Satara for a quick Snacks… We also had the local ST-Bus driver who stopped by the Dhaba and told us we shouldn’t have spared the minibus driver as he was rash driving.

But getting into fights was not our motive here..so after a quick refresher and some Re-Bull we continued the Ride.

Took our next pit stop about a few KM from Kholapur .. By now the temperature was raising and we had just stared to feel the heat..

Umaya ran to a near by house and got some cold water for the Riders (Thanks to him for always taking such initiatives ) While I was entertained by a Local Drunkard who wanted to settle in the US of A.

Looking at our bikes and riding gears he thought he could be a lucky camper to get some Dollars..

 It was almost past 10:00AM and we were about to cross Kholapur.

Suraj who is well versed with the city and its surroundings did a quick fon call to his brother and found a local Place where we could stop for lunch. I was very much excited to taste the Kholapuri Mirchi, Tambda Rassa and Mutton  which I had tasted back in 2004 but on a different route thru Gagan Bavda.

This time it was the Famous Garva Hotel, we had  some refreshers and a light meal.

After stopping for about 40 minutes and fixing our luggage we continued the ride on NH-4.

One has the option to Join the NH-17 from within Kholapur - GaganBavda and take the route to Kankavli..

However since most preferable is the Amboli Ghat route hence we had planned this route already..

As we reached the Neppani route Umesh who had been sweeping so far, got chance to check out the power of his Classic 500 and I advised him to belt it full throttle.. Hats off to him he touched around 130 and his Bull was still stable..

No sooner we approached the Neppani road we had 2 more bikers join us.

Who had been riding from Nagpur and had halted in pune last night, these bikers asked if they could get the pleasure  of being part of our formation till Goa, After a quick stop some water and smokes we realized few of us including me were approaching the reserve on our fuel meter. We approached the locals at Kavari Reataurant at the Right turn on the hills of Neppani and got to know there are a few petrol bunks on the Azara rd and ahead.

Since Subhendu's bike had a leak from the broken oil seal we decided to halt at Azara market and get some oil. We got Lal-Ghoda. :P

After filling the oil our next stop was decided to be at the Famous Amboli Waterfall.

around 3:30PM we all stopped at the Amboli Ghat  (except Suraj )for evening Chai. He had no clue that we all had stopped for chai and continued riding until he reached the end of Amboli ghat.

It took him about 20-25 mins to realize that he was riding all alone, we were about to finish with out break and Suraj called and says : "You guys wait for me as I am coming back"

 Finally we all had some snacks and chai and headed towards the Route of Sawantwadi.

Got my tank full here fuel price was about Rs 61/ ltr andin Goa was Rs 54 /ltr

It was the last 50-60KM patch we needed to cover, we reached the Mapusa Circle and the two riders who joined us from Neppani headed towards Panjim and we took right towards Candolim.

We Finally reached our destination at around 6:00PM Candolim Goa.

We got freshened up, Xavier already had some refreshments for us, though we were tired it was the drive with incitement and the urge to Quench our thirst, we decided to quickly head towards the local restaurant for the famous Kings Beer and the Local Goan food.

Since we were exhausted we decided to rest, as next morning we had Srikant joining us and needed to be picked up from Margaon station.

After taking second opinion from Xavier it was decided to pick him up from half route Panjim Circle

Me Babu and Umesh got up early morning and headed towards Panjim to pick up Srikant who had travelled via Train.

Since we had a few minutes before Srikant reached we decided to take a sneek peak at the local market in Panjim.

Babu who is expert in finding the Right Fish ;) guided us thru the market, we found some fresh prawns (live) and sea water crabs. We drank about 5 Coconut water, the fon Rang and it was Srikant who had reached Panjim Circle waiting to be picked up.