During the last months of 2014 I spent almost a month in the North East exploring Assam & Nagaland which started courtesy a trip to the Hornbill festival and continued into Arunachal Pradesh hoping to create and sanitize a new circuit for “Karma Yatri’s Event Based Travel” . I traveled a further 1500 km into Arunachal and parts of Assam creating a 9 day circuit around the Ziro festival in Arunachal combined with forays into Assam.
I was scheduled to be back in Mumbai by the 17th a meeting of the KaYa family being scheduled for the 19th of Dec in Pune. Hashim and Abbas had come down to India and combined with Philippe& I, the core members of KaYa were meeting up for a session of brain storming and the obvious excuse for partying. Along with other friends we decided to ride from Mumbai to Pune, planning to make a weekend out of it, and what a good weekend it was- with everyone taking time out of their busy schedules to catch up and plan more for the road ahead.. Here are few moments from that madness..
Having thoroughly partied the night before, the Sunday morning after was relaxed and plans for the Christmas week were on our minds. After a short breakfast , the four of us who were riding back to Mumbai started our journey on one of the first routes of what is to become the BYOB series.
We left Koregaon park and made our way to Chandini Chowk from where the plan was to head towards Paud on the Mulshi road, connect to Lonavala and make our way eventually to Mumbai. It was an alternative to the monotony of the regular Mumbai-Pune highway and we had discovered it over a year ago on a Sunday ride from Pune.
Finally on the Mulshi road following a two lane highway of sorts with some really nice curves and a small set of quasi Ghats en-route we reached Paud. As we turned off from the village, we came across a small reservoir that was begging to be explored – it’s boundary wall was large enough to ride on – so we couldn’t resist. We continued onward to Lonavala through the Aundholi forest.We rode a gorgeous stretch of traffic free, sun dappled road, the beauty of which was only marred by our futile search for food and finally when we did find it, the waiters at the hotel couldn’t believe that we polished of so much food between the four of us. I for one had never eaten so much in one sitting. The weekend ended well with a peaceful ride back home on the Mumbai Pune Highway with more adventures to come – on our minds…
