Eyes got full of dirt, Face got dull and tanned, Feet got tired beyond description, Back was hurting like hell, Tongue got sunbaked like a clay..But Still, Feeling light in my head and joy in my heart (or may be the other way round! ).
This is no poetry, or actually something I did not intended to but my Road trip description to Bhandardara in a nutshell. It took me no time to realize that man! I do like to travel. Fortunately I am blessed with friends who think alike. But my memory is a bit weak and the experience was first of its kind to me and my friends so after some wacky nights and turnovers in between I am afraid that I will forget the little things that gave me such joy during my journey. So then the idea came from aman that why not you post it on your blog, this way we’ll alwayz gonna have the every minute details of the fun time we had.
So our lukkhi wing once again came up with the ideas to do something this weekend thts 14-15 Feb. Fortunate thing is that we never fall short of ideas, and Unfortunate thing is that we never able to implement the same. So a night before we all sat and decide some rules and guidelines that no matter what we are not going to ditch ne plans henceforth, Emosanal Attyachaar to some mebbe! Newayz after so much jaddojahad we managed to arrange 3 bikes (2 Pulsars and 1 Thunderbird) and 5 people, including four of us, B1Lites (Aman, Sahil, Yogesh and Me), and Solanki. So when the stage was set to go, I found that because of that stupid Valentine’s day all the rooms in MTDC are booked so we had to alter our plans and planned to leave Sunday Morning. Isn’t it ironic that no matter how much you try to run away from this Valentine’s Day festival (to some!), you alwayz gets trapped into it. Its like God is having some sort of sarcastic smile on us. Okay, so atleast someone is happy.
So here we are, Sunday morning 3’o clock we all woke up, everyone had their stuff ready by then, Aman packed all his cosmetics, accessories while we were busy looking curiously at him then. Finally at 4’o clock we 5 left from H8 on three of our bikes to our maiden bike trip to some hill station.
So, Lying 170 kms from Mumbai and 70 kms from Nashik lies a beautiful spot in North of Maharashtra called Bhandardara. Famous for its scenic beauty, this place, though not developed enough, lies close to Igatpuri.
Okay then, So I began my journey of a 200 Kms with a broken rear view mirror and a leaky tire. We reached the thane junction of NH3 (The mumbai – agra highway) at 5 am. This was a slow and relaxed ride since we had hardly 180 km to cover. We took our morning tea halt at 6am at some dhaba on the highway and a another 20 mins halts along the way where me and aman tried our hand at some photoshoot. NH3 was in a bad shape for a majority of a portion. NH3 is a 4 lane highway, but there was road work going on everywhere and as a result, there were just 2 lanes free with lots of diversions and roadblocks. We had to keep switching from the left lane to the right lane at many places.
We found some signboard of forest region in between and as we thought that we are already ahead of time so we decided to go over there. After we climbed ghats of somewhere round 1.5 Km dawn was just broke. Sunrise time, it was awesome! The stillness of the early morning scene enables me to take in and enjoy many things which pass me by during the bustle of the day. First, there are the scents, which seem even more generous with their offerings than they are in the evening.
A ride through the craters of NH3 we reach the Igatpuri village..where we had our morning breakfast there at some punjabi dhaba. We thought that Igatpuri ghats would be fun to ride on, but it was full of heavily loaded trucks struggling to climb up at a snails pace and us bikers winding our way between them. So after some more hustle bustle we reached Bhandardara crossing Ghoti on our way at around 10’o clock. Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything. We got our room at MTDC at about 11. Again then the planning phase begun. What to do now, Where to go, Should we rest or straight forward go for some adventure. Once again fortunately we didn’t fell short of ideas, and once again unfortunately we lacked anticipation to implement them. Finally it was decided tht we’ll go to the Island in the evening. We went for a country side walk to collect some stuff to carry to the island. The Island, this was the place in particular which made us to choose Bhandardara in first place, as we heard a lot about it from seniors. We fixed the boat for us at Rs. 600 to the island and back initially but later on tht boatwala screwed the deal and demanded us Rs. 1000, I bargained and as we had no other option we fixed it for Rs. 800 and from 4-9 in the evening.
We all 5 sat in a rowing boat with some 20-25 odd villagers sitting around us. The moment made us think of the scene from Swades. The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist. All of them were looking at us with utter curiosity and some with disguise. When the boatwala was leaving us at the island we make sure to tell him to collect us back at 9’o clock as our very first look of the island was surprised, scary and awesomeeee!
It was a small, tiny uninhabited and isolated island which had no sign of even flora-fauna on it. We thew our stuff at some place and started seeing what this Island has in store for us. We again started photographing each other, making sure that no one gets missed on ne backdrop we cover. In hardly 20 mins time we covered the whole space. There wasn’t enough dry wood for our campfire plan, so then we started getting some scary thoughts that soon there will be dark, what are we going to do then, in a matter of time we fell short of water, fortunately we had pepsi and some other stuff so was relieving to some extent.We were just hoping tht someone will come to our rescue. Discussed the technique on how to catch the fish if in case we have to live on this island only :).
Well, in the meantime we photographed us in very disturbing poses and aman somehow tricked us in stripping and he definitely had a gala time photographed us 4 in those poses which are hard to forget. After having some fun for a while in water we started searching for woods for campfire. We managed to have a nice luking fire in no time, started singing and dark starry night covered us. We all forget the tough time we had so far, no one was any more worry about nething. That night i saw the more no of stars that i ever saw in whole of my life. That night was looking amazing. Its like I’ve randomly been smacked up the head with awesomeness. Totally wasn’t expecting the night to be like this!
At around 730 we heard some sound in water and soon we found 3 men carrying lartens in their hands walking towards us. Those were boatwalas. We were delighted! On our way back to the shore, for whole 1 hour we keep on singing all 70’s ,80’s hits to keep the water alive. And even the stars in sky chorus sings, a celestial melody to the water below.It was a scintillating memory to see our fire still burning deep into the Island. We reached the land and happily handed over the 800 bucks to boatwalas. To be true the effort they put in riding tht thing was worth more then that. We reached our hotel, had dinner and came to the consensus that we can’t afford to have trek now as we all were damn tired and we still had to cover 5-6 hrs back to Mumbai on bikes. Some mean forces made me to sleep on bed with yogesh, i was all terrified and sleep on the edge of my bed the whole damn night. We left at around 830ish in the morning after having breakfast from the hotel. Had lunch at BTC in thane on our way back.
We reached hostel happy and sound at around 230 in the afternoon. Everyone was tired so no one realized how beautiful it is to travel until each one of us came home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
It was my longest journey on bike with my friends and i really enjoyed it, we really enjoyed it. We all knew in our hearts that time the longest journey must take is the eighteen inches from our head to our heart. So We surely gonna have much more of gala time together, doesn’t matter where we go and what we do. So i guess i already broke my keyboard enough, that’s it for now, will keep posting later on.
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