R I D E O N T H E E D G E
By
A J A Y A D H I Y A
A true biker rides for the sheer pleasure of riding, the bike his accomplice, the curving road his playing fields, and the challenge of the open road keep him on the edge.
This is my dream ride, the ride that I regard as one of the best, the most challenging, and rewarding of all the rides I have been fortunate to have experienced, in over 30 years and 2,00,000 KM of motorcycling.
The ride from Pune to Varandha is a fantastic Bikers route, a hundred KM each way, with 2 Ghats, 40 KM of 4-lane-highway, 20 Km of country roads, with a river flowing by, and 2 huge dams, Bhatgar, and Deoghar, by the road side, and a further 40 KM of curvy mountain roads, switchbacks, and then the majestic view of the valleys of the Sahyadri-Konkan ranges!
A veritable bikers heaven, with challenges at every turn, but to be taken with caution! But then Biking is truly for the brave, and the skilled, not the foolhardy, not if they wish to enjoy it for long!
Ride well within your limits, this is not a road for heroics, it will bite back very badly, with reverse camber, steep slopes, uncertain road surfaces, gravel, and errant drivers rushing in from the opposite side, around blind corners!
And I had, on so many occasions, with me, an RD350 as my steed!
THE RIDE:
I awaken at 5 am, my eyes open with no morning-alarm, other than the desire for the ride. A quick shave, and a cold shower. A hot cup of tea, and light breakfast of Bread and jam.
I gear up for the ride.
I pull on jeans, tough riding shoes, thick long-sleeved T-shirt, Leather jacket, and gloves, and clean the visor of my Helmet. I also carry with me the previous day’s newspaper, to put inside the jacket, to cut out the cold of the morning darkness, outside the city, where it gets colder than most people realize.
My Bike, the RD 350, a faithful friend for more than a decade and a half, is clean, inspected, ready and topped up with fuel. A strong shove on the Kickstarter, and it awakens, with a sharp bark from its twin exhausts, and I let it idle on for a while. As it warms up I flick overnight dust off the tank..
2 minutes later, I swing aboard, snick the bike into 1st gear, ride out of my lane, and at the corner, slow down using both brakes, testing them for effectiveness, by sheer force of habit, learnt from years of riding.
I then turn onto the deserted main road, running through 2nd gear to 3000 rpm, upshifting and staying in 3rd gear for a little longer till 5000 rpm, before upshifting to the next gears, simply to exhult in the punch of its acceleration, the sound of the bike like ripping calico, crackling through the morning silence of the sleeping neighbourhood.
I leave Pune at 5.30 am, get onto the Bangalore Highway, past Katraj village before the madness of the traffic, fly safely over the 4Kms of lovely wide ghat road of the Katraj Ghat, then through the tunnel, and down the other side. The bike simply rides better as soon as it realizes it is en route to its favorite destination.
The morning breeze keeps me awake in my helmet, but my fingers can freeze up, so I practice finger stretches as often as I can.
As I run through sleepy Shivapur, at 6 am, no fruit sellers or Bhelwalas are in sight. The air is fresh, sweet, with farm lands yet untouched, on both sides, and at this time of day, there are no trucks belching smoke as they crawl up the Climb. But by 6.15 am, I remain alert for the incoming hordes of Buses coming into Pune from Goa, Bangalore, Belgaum, from anywhere south…
The Bus-drivers just cannot see a Biker, even less so if he is in Black leathers, and helmet, so I ride with my headlight on, and wear Bright jackets, and helmet, and plan for the worst that I can imagine the Bus-driver capable of doing .
By 6.30 am, I am past Nasrapur, and run up along the four-laned National Highway, till at 37 KM from Pune, I reach Kapurhol village. I take a right turn off the National Highway, towards Bhor.
I exercise great caution at the turn off, which is not well marked, and there is often traffic coming in from the other side.
Then it gets truly interesting. The traffic dies off, the road is wonderful, gently curving, down to a stone Bridge, across a river in a small gully, a stone bridge that looks as if it will last forever, but in all probability will be demolished and replaced by a horrendous cement concrete structure, that will be cracked before it is inaugurated, that will have hard expansion joints to destroy your Bike’s suspension, and your vertebrae, and give you a lifetime gift , Spondolysis…
I ride past the Bhatghar dam, where the river makes an impressive horseshoe, and the view is spectacular. I ride down into the valley, then across the old Bridge, about 50 KM from Pune and I am in the main square of Bhor town. I swing left past the State Transport Bus-stand, onto the byepass around the crowded Bhor town, and as I come past the Bhor jail, I turn right, and onto the Mahad Road. I watch out for the People-carrier jeeps, racing in their own version of the Acropolis rally over road or soft shoulder, all in search of that elusive passenger…
Then I leave all that behind.
The ride truly moves into another gear then.
The terrain changes, the vegetation thickens, different from the sparseness of the Deccan plateau, and I race past palm trees, common along the coastal areas, but foreigners here. The road surface deteriorates, as this road is not apparently on any politicians priority list.
But then as I ride into the Mountains, the magic spell is cast.
The river Nira flows past on my left, the switchbacks increase in number, the gaps lessening, the camber often reverse, there is gravel on the road, and cattle, and their droppings, suddenly around the next blind corner, and if distracted for a fraction too long, by the sheer beauty of the river, the forest, and the morning mist, I can be certain that my leathers will bite dust before I can catch myself going down.
Then I reach the Deoghar dam.
It was 5 years in the making, and has claimed, under its waters, the old road along the banks of the Nira. On my first ride after the Road was reopened, I was apprehensive that it would have lost its old magic. But no, the engineers have done a fantastic job, carving out a new road from the crusty Mountainside, a job as great in scale as the new Pune Mumbai Expressway, but with no fanfare, and no Credit being given to these Brilliant men and women of the Roads Department. I doff my Helmet to them, in tribute, and apologise mentally to them, for my apprehensions..
As I climb up on the new road, alongside the right flank of the dam, a couple of left and right turns, and I see the fantastic vista , the sight of the new dam, the backwaters stretching away to the west, into the mountains and around hidden corners, behind the trees, and into the mists.
I ride further, and at every turn, the backwaters come into view, spectacular collages, of dense green foliage, set against the backdrop of the changing colours of the calm waters, the silent fingers of inundated trees, like periscopes from a world submerged, lost in the flooding of the habitat, the chaos of man-made progress…
I stop and pull out my camera, and shoot frame after frame, but soon realize that if I stopped for pictures of every lovely spot on this ride, my ride would last for 3 days. So I climb back onto the Bike, pull on my Helmet, jackets, and gloves, and start off again, loathe to leave, but promising to return again for the pictures.
The road tightens up on itself, and climbs, and falls, up a slope, and down a valley, across a large bridge, that looks like an ancient Roman Aqueduct, that can rival the Bridges of the Konkan railway.
I ride further, the road now rising all the time, around curves, and waterfalls, too numerous to count, through forests that crowd my road, the road-width narrows, the bamboo thickets change colours, green, gold, orange, its leaves long and sharp.
Flowers along the road, red, yellow, orange, blue, white, firmly entrenched, they cling into the mossy earth, difficult to pluck, even if I tried, reluctant to let go, refusing to humour the transient fancy of this passing traveler, so intent only on impermanent passage.
The ride seems to stretch on longer than the actual mountain distance of 40 Km, and I wonder how long this magic will hold me under its spell.
But then a sharp right turn, a small straight section of road, a quick change up through the gears, a strong burst of acceleration, to the summit, and as I crest the rise, I slam the brakes, my jaw drops, and I stand transfixed, by the sight ahead of me.
I park the bike on the side of the road, and swing off the saddle. As I listen to the ticking sounds of the bike cooling off, I walk to and stand on the edge, and look on in wonder at the sight ahead of me.
I can do little but gaze, awestruck, as one can barely comprehend the vastness of the Sahyadri Range, the indomitable forts of Chhatrapati Shivaji, his worldly Kingdom, that seem to symbolize the unrelenting strength and wealth of his real Kingdom, in the hearts of his People, in the spirit of the hardy Marathas, their thirst for Swarajya, the freedom from domination.
The valleys, the cliffs, the sheer grandeur of the vista, are all on a scale so great, that the Lonavala-Khandala valleys, on the Bombay Pune road, so embedded in the memory of every Biker from Pune or Mumbai, seem dwarfed, by the sheer size of the Varandha Cliffs.
The Valleys seem more than a kilometer deep, and the sheer cliffs rising from the valleys numerous, and proud, tall, and majestic. Beyond the Cliffs and the valleys, the fertile coastal plains of the Konkan stretch away into the heat haze.
The road further down to Mahad is visible as it clings along the sides of the cliff, and across a small ridge, where there are huge drops on both sides, and the cross-wind threatens to blow you off if you are not watchful.
It slinks along the base of a sheer cliff a hundred feet tall, overhanging the road, and there are caves at its base, where there are tea stalls and food stalls, and traveling people halt there, unmindful of the apparent dangers. I think they believe that the God who created the wonderful place would also look after them, and protect them from such hazards. To be fair to them, I have not heard of any boulders crashing down on anybody there. I however prefer not to overload God with the macro-management of his human creations, who, I am sure can, and are programmed to do, their caretaking themselves, in a decentralized fashion, instead of calling upon him for divine intervention in ever minor crisis, and hence I avoid stopping at that place.
I gather my senses, and pull my eyes away from the unbelievable view.
I see a tea stall on the side of the road, where strong heads of steam are wafting off from the kettle of tea that seems to be always on the stove. The fragrance of the frying of Onion Bhajiyas slips in under my visor, and all promises and resolutions for strong dieting methods, keeping off fried stuff, are cast out into the deep valley before me.
I walk into the covered shed, and take off my helmet, my jackets and leather gloves, and then the morning cold gets to my skin.
My hands are tingling, with the thrill of the ride, the adrenaline rush, as I rode through corner, and corner after corner, the mind alert for changing of the camber, the gravel, the sudden truck around the hidden bend, the lacing of series of corners into a graceful fluid ballet, where the bike was my willing partner, and the moves sweet, sensuous, and intoxicating.
A strong breeze rises from the valley floor, and whistles through the trees. It curls around my collar, and into the damp sweat between my shoulder-blades.
I sit , and stretch, waiting, expectant, in that quiet restful place, listening, to the stirring of the kettle, its rhythmic sound, the tea boiling up to the brim, and then subsiding back to churn and boil away to the colour and consistence of earthladen water, flowing free down the mountainside, in these hills, to settle in , and make fruitful, another world.
The bhajiyas send fingers of fragrance to tease me, and then he places them on my table, together with tea in a 5- inch tall double glass.
I cup the glass into both my palms, and warm the fingers that had frozen cold, and when I get the sensation back into them, I pick up the bhajiyas, their aroma and fragrance, enhanced as always, by hunger , and then with the shameless haste of a truly hungry man I wolf them down, and wash them down with tea, which never tasted better.If you reach here in the monsoons, then often in the Varandha Ghat, itself, you ride through sheets of rain, and through fog so dense that visibility is down to 5 feet. The crest often is hidden in cloud, but then if you are lucky, and blessed, as once I was, then, perched as you would be on a clear summit, you would see stretching out before you, an ocean of Cloud, with the Mountain peaks like islands out of the ocean.
I have often been called an Agnostic by my friends, but at moments such as these, it is difficult to be anything but a believer, in that Divine force that created something as marvelous as this.
Humbling yet uplifting
In the majesty of the Presence, my mind is calm, and at peace.
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