Married to the Bullet:Part-2:The Lohagad Trip

Date: Oct 10

Odo at 1200

Days of Marriage: 15

Craving for a good drive and knowing no place around Pune, I persuaded my roomie Kapil (KK) and my friend Joydeep (JD) to take up a Lohagad Climb on my only familiar route the good old pune-Lonavala route. After much persuasion both of them agreed. Joy didn’t want to take his antique eliminator along and joined as my pillion. Kapil was hesitanat to take his Passion on the highway and his experience on the highway was nil.
We took the Aundh-Wakad route and reached waked and then sped off to the NH4. There is a small diversion to take otherwise you might end up on the expressway. So we waited for Kapil at the diversion to signal him. He caught up with us and we got on to the NH4. We zoomed off to lonavala and stopped at XXXX for a cup of steaming chai and waited for Kapil. After 15 minutes of wait and his presence nowhere in sight we used our business continuity plan a.k.a the mobile phone. He didn’t pick up the phone and we diecided to get on our way. Partly thru we get a call informing us that our pal has reached lonavala. So we joined him there and had breakfast and took the slight return trip to lohagadd.
There are no signboards anywhere and ppl gave us confusing directions and we finally managed to end up on the right road. We were driving and driving and there was no fort was in sight. We took a small stop at a restaurant for a chai and was duly informed that we have overshot and Lohagadd was 30 kms behind L. So we returned back in the scorching sun and found a boat ride on our way back.
But there was a slight problem. There was a descent to make which was full of gravel and kapil was the first one to go. He slid the bike by jumping around stones and somehow reached down. I was a lil hesitant on my 185 kg monster but the descend was smooth probably bcos of the (185 + 63) kgs that came along with it. We took a couple of snaps of the ducks along the water and took a speed boat ride and went for Lunch. The lunch was good and we were sulking about the climb to make.
Finally we reached Lohagad and was informed that there was 1000 steps to climb L. We started off with hope and with so many pitstops and water breaks in between and an hour of excruciating climb we reached on top. The view from the top was awesome though there was nothing but a plane ground with dilapidated buildings and a temple on top. We went around the whole fort snapping before the camera decided to call it quits. We rested on top, made an entry into the registrar and went downhill at a fast pace. We were at the foot of the fort in 20 minutes.
Had refreshing Nimbu pani from a vendor and zoomed home without any breaks.