Married to the bullet:Part-10:Matheran Trip

Date: April 12, 2009

Days of Marriage: 6 months 17 days

Odo at 9850 kms

The last weekend I went nowhere thanx to the "camera drop" and the amount I had to shell out to get it fixed. This weekend I was not willing to sit at home and rot my ass, so when my flatmate sent out a mail asking for the nearest destinations that we could visit, along with his brother who would pop in from goa, I was really excited about burning my tyre on the asphalt. Finally after a couple of days with mails going here and there we decided to fix the destination as Aurangabad. Did my R & D (I always do) on the place and send the final mail stating that the road was smooth like a carom board and its going to be a 720 km round trip if the Ajanta caves are to be covered. The sissy in concern, chickened out hearing the distance and I was left sitting at home on Saturday sulking about the lost opportunity.

In the evening the other roadie Kapil a.k.a “Dancer” returned from his usual MG road eye candy visit and he suggested to have a short trip to matheran. Well me being really pissed off at that point jumped in to say, “Voila-we leave tomorrow morning” for the short 250 km round trip. I thought of roping in my friend from college days Deen a.k.a “Doley Deen” , the proud owner of a brand new machismo 500, to help him get his machine run-in to 500 kms. The lazy bugger didn’t want to wake up by 0600 hrs so we postponed the time to 0700 hrs for him.
So the riders along with their machines were
The Man: Deen (DD) a.k.a "Doley Deen" . Known for his eye-popping biceps and for his verbal assaults

The Machine: Machismo 500

The Man: Kapil (KK) a.k.a the "Dancer". Due to the way he dances both on and off his bike

TheMachine: Passion 100 (Dont be fooled! He rides over the top speed of the bike and is always bang on the money)

The Man: Jayanth (JK) a.k.a "NightHawk" -for being the nocturnal animal that he is

The Machine: Electra 350

Finally after a couple of hours sleep in the night, the next day dawned and we were ready to zoom. We met at my place in Aundh, filled up petrol, took the Baner route and entered the highway. The itch was there to zoom past 100 as usual but then DD couldn’t exceed 60 before his first service. So we strolled on the highway for some time and then zoomed off in the last 20 kms and reached Lonavala in 70 minutes.

Had chai and vadapav at our usual tapori on the descend just after the Aamby valley turning and waited for DD to catch up. He caught up in around 10 minutes and we had another round of steaming chai.

Then murphy’s law struck. The Machismo 500 simply would not start. Here the kick was not a good option because it was simply not moving even after we were standing on it. Seems the 500 needs a bigger kick than a 350. After a couple of inquiries, found out a mechanic very nearby in the Kumar Resorts “Galli” and convinced him to look at the bike. That’s when I get the phone call from KK that DD’s bike has started and they are on the way. My fuse (which is short ) was blown and the "assaulter" was getting assaulted and asked them to get back. The words had the impact and they returned only from the same direction (seems they had gone in search of me). The mechanic just inspected the vehicle and said that the problem was bcos of the float valve getting stuck and hence was no problem. "Just give it a tonk using a spanner and the float will float gain". We thanked him, dropped him back and set off for matheran.

Now the lonavala ghats were like usual stuff for me and we drove up and down fast to reach "Chowk" from where we took the right to matheran. The road was bad in patches but we were still going at 70s and managed to reach there in around an half hour. Me and KK took the left climb to matheran and the drive up was just orgasmic. I was literally roaring my bike up the hill and was going in 40s and 50s except at certain parts. We reached up in half an hour and was surprised to see the number of vehicles on the dusty hill top.

It seemed to us as if the whole of Maharashtra was on the small hill top -all omni taxis and lots of other vehicles. We managed to park our vehicles and waited for DD to catch up. The wait turned out to be a full one hour as our pal had missed the left turn for the climb up (which duly had a big sign board in front) and gone a further 20 kms ahead. Now the "assaulter" was back to his level best of verbal barrage for us not stopping at the turn.

We took the entry tickets. The best thing about the tickets here is that they all have a map behind it for your reference. So much unindian that is!. We started walking a lil bit and realized that the chickens in our tummies were crying out and we walked a couple of kilos to bazzar peth to feed them out.

We found out a bar looking restaurant called “Divadkars” and seemed to be a pretty nice one with a good ambience. We decided to have food on the tarmac just outside and was duly informed that there is no better way for the monkeys to feed on you and was duly dispatched inside . We downed only a lil bit of eggs and the chickens that gave them and a breezer (its a baby drink) so that we could continue our exploration further after lunch.

It was already 1400 hrs and we decided that we would cover three points, the Maldunga, the Monkey and the Hart points in a couple of hours. The transport modes available are the horses, the cartpullers, your good old legs and the ambulance. We gave the horses a miss and relieved the cart pullers so as not to break their legs to save ours.

The legs were set in motion and we were off to maldunga. The maldunga is a detour from the main route and its much denser than the other routes and after much walking, climbing trees and running down we reached the point. It was an awesome sight and the view was good. We took pictures and DD was into his adventurous ways of trying to pose for snaps that could have led to a full insurance claim, if he slipped.

We then started to the monkey point and the machismo was as usual behind and whining all the way. After another “ded” kms we reached there and surprised to see only a single monkey on the monkey point. Was wondering why they didn’t name it “the” monkey point???. It seemed to me that all the other monkeys were on their annual mandatory leave on NASA space shuttles to the moon :-). This place also had a small tapori rightly called the “Monkey chai point”. The view was very similar to the Maldunga point though with a different offset. We had a chai that too a steaming hot and refreshing one just made for us. There came a couple, with a couple of kids in tandem. and they were throwing biscuits to the monkey. Out of the blue one more monkey appeared and both of them were beating "Yuvraj singh at point" in their catching skills :-)

We then inquired abt the Hart point and found that the view was again similar with an offset and our machismo this time again wouldn’t start. Even after a lot of coaxing and cajoling he refused to start. So we decided to call it quits and return back to the main entrance.

DD suggested us to take a different route (he simply didn’t want to walk) and we took the route and couldn’t find anyone on the same. That’s when we saw this tree in the shape of a channel [V] logo and a rock in between and asked the dancer to pose for his photo in the [V] The dancer was more aggressive and waltzed his way onto the tree and stood on top of the [V] with his legs wide apart. We took the snap and he theatrically jumped from the tree and landed his feet on a small stone and hurt his ankle. Now I needed to take care of a "whiner" and a "limper". Finally to our relief after a km or so we found the semblance of human civilization and soon joined the gate
A couple of bottles of chilled water on the mouth and head to refresh ourselves and we were back on our machines and zoomed down hill. The omnis drive pretty fast so I just followed one of them going in the 60s and was promptly downhill in 15-20 mins. DD went up to fill petrol as we waited for KK to join us. This time we gave the chowk route a miss and chose directly to go to Khoppoli.

We were trying to ride at around 80 and the wind was blowing into us laterally. It seemed to me that my front tyre was going in one direction and the back tyre in another. I thot my back tyre had got punctured and stopped to check and found nothing. That’s when I realized that its bcos of the wind. Wind riding at high speeds is extremely risky and the bike can sometimes shake bcos of the wind. So we slowed a lil bit and then took the turn to khoppoli. We found a straight road with an ascend and DD was in a mood to race his machine. We stood side by side slotted the gears and accelerated hard up the ascend and to only find that there was a steep pot-holed descend after that. I saw DD trying to hold on to his bike while he was going downhill @ 70. I promptly shut my accelerator and strolled down. So much for the drag race :-(

That’s when I saw this sporty looking scorpio going at full speed probably half a km ahead and spirit of racing to catch up with him revved. Began to drive full throttle and since the corners are easy to take on the bike caught up with him in no time and whizzed past him and found that have reached the pune highway. Waited for the others to catch up while I enjoyed a good refreshing “NIRA”.

Soon the guys caught up and had a NIRA and were off to Lonavala. Waited for them at the turn into Lonavala and KK caught up in no time but DD was no where to be seen. Finally after 5 minutes he caught up after a minor fall on the ascend. Nuthing much happened- the bike just dropped from his hands at zero speed and the damages seemed to be minor. The handle had a minor dislocation and the foot rest was a lil torn and the indicator joiner was broken. Not a scratch on the chrome though. We took out his spanners fixed the handle and swapped our machines. DD promptly zoomed off on mine and I was left strolling the bike at 60.

There were a lot of differences I noticed with the Machismo 500. Firstly, the seating position is more elevated than mine and it looks as if you are really sitting on top of the bike. It is also easier to uppen your gears with the back heel on this one than mine. The acceleration of this bike is awesome. It aceelerates from 0-60 in no time and it doesn’t even feel like you are drving at 60, its more of a stroll. One problem I found out though, at 70, the vibrations are a lil too much compared with my bike and the worst thing is that you can feel it on your balls.

Finally caught up with both of them at Dehu Road and KK and myself went to Aundh and DD to Koregaon Park.