The Acknowledgement

na nanana nana nanana nana nanana na

na nanana nana nanana nana nanana na

kahin jaise koi dhun baje

raahon mai dekho hai manzar saje saare

humein hum jahaan mein har jagaah

sapne saajane ki humko mili wajaah

yeh agar jo sach nahi

toh sach bhala hai kya…

yaaron .. apne hisaab se

dil ki kitaab pe kuch toh naya likhon

yaaron unchahon cheezon karo

na karti yeh umar

na karti yeh umar

phir kyun bhala daro

hai junoon…

hai junoon sa jeene mai

hai junoon…

hai junoon sa seene mai

- Song from ‘New York’ movie

Hai Junoon sa Jeene Mai! Junoon! That’s what a man need. Passion is as important to have in a survival kit as much the Swiss knife is.

Five Men, on an over cast Saturday on the 4th Day of July 2009 started on a mission to explore the beauty of Sahyadris on the most beautiful vehicles that man created, the bicycles. One avid photographer and traveler from Hyderabad (Animesh), another a passionate bullet rider and traveler from Pune (Chidambaram), a guy burning to join the Infantry and die of a bullet in chest serving the nation (Arun from Hyderabad), a diehard nature lover, trekker and having the spirit of wind in him from Pune (Akhilesh) and a stupid and crazy guy who knows nothing other than cycling, that’s me (sometimes I get nightmares that my cycle hits a pothole and the rims gets bent), that’s the five men team!

We started from Chandni Chowk at 9.30 am after some tea and Double plate Pohas. The road to Pirangut was a metal piece; we peaked a speed of 60 km/hr in the Pirangut ghat and hit the town soon. We bought 50 five star chocolates there to power ourselves during the ride and some cream biscuits to have it as emergency food for night as the place we were going was mostly uninhabited.

We crossed Paud, the Knife Hill (A sharp hill around which some resort is made) and then came some farm lands.

Animesh, I and Chidam saw a trail going towards a village and started following it and it took us to Mula river bank. We captured some photographs and started back again.

The steep 1 km Mulsi Dam climb greeted us. We were not much tired after the climb as the climate was in our favour . We filled our water bottles from a hotel near Mulsi Village and headed for Palse Village for the lunch. We filled our whole torso with food and started our actual journey.

It has been raining for two hours now. I was riding with Chidam that time and Animesh was ahead of me and others were a bit behind. There was a right bend on the road ahead. A Logan zipped past inches away from me near the bend. Chidam didn’t tolerate this rash driving and swore them . And what! The people in the Logan were just waiting for it. Its brakes got pressed and one after another around 7 hoodlums surrounded me, Animesh and Chidam. We took things lightly, knowing that they too have started from home to enjoy the monsoon and the Pune people are hungry for the beauty of Sahyadris, we used diplomacy to handle the situation. Comments like, let’s leave it, “Kya mast climate hai, lets enjoy the monsoon” “Garib log yaar, cycle wale, ho gai galti, chalo enjoy the monsoon!” put them back in their Logan and there they go away for their destination and we for ours. (I was this polite because the Logan had a logo of a political party)

We reached Tamhini Village around 2 pm and that’s where the unknown began. We took a left towards Lavasa. The road, as expected from satellite maps, turned to a muddy one with a beautiful stream to its right side. With waterfalls and dense forests in view and singing birds creating beautiful music for us, our journey on the muddy road just made us fill with ecstasy. Soon we reached a construction camp site. We met around 15 people, who had come from distant places to work for the development of infrastructure in Pune. Some of them were working on the road project (that muddy road won’t be muddy after sometime, it’s going to be a state highway ) and some were in soil testing project for the construction of a tunnel.

They told us to walk and go carefully ahead as there were rock falls sometimes and it’s narrow at some places. We started ahead and soon started walking as there were steep muddy up slopes. The up slope (ghat) continued for around 5 km. At one point a boulder rolled down just behind me. I told everyone to come carefully in that patch. We were greeted with beautiful waterfall at each hairpin bends. Finally we reached the top and there were huge rocky walls on both sides, I was just praying that the constructors don’t use dynamites on our way .

When I was climbing the muddy ghats, something was going on in my mind… where’s the downhill route that I saw in the map? Then I realized that I misread the map. I mistook the dry river bed, which is the stream now, as a dirt road towards Varasgaon. Even after more than a year of map reading and topography classes in 10th standard I am not an expert in map reading yet, I need to improve and these mistakes will make me better.

From the peak we started mud down-hilling for around 3 km and it was thrilling, the others guys had V brakes, unlike my bike which had disc brakes, and it all got coated with the beautiful golden mud. We cleaned it up with sticks and headed ahead towards Mugaon. We inquired about Admal Village from a shepherd girl at Mugaon (she knew Hindi). Admal Village was our destination for day one; I had seen a temple in that village in the satellite map. It was around 10-15 km more from Mugaon.

The beauty on the valley was marvelous; the drizzle, the grasses, the singing birds, the flower buds, the over cast, the streams gushing over rocks was sipping into our soul.

Soon we reached Davase Village and got stuck in a traffic which was going to Lavasa. Chidam’s bike’s brakes had given up. He had to walk down on down slopes sometimes. We inquired about Admal Village from the guards of Lavasa, it was another 3-4 km ahead, and started our final journey of the day. With drizzles and sweet fragrance of the wet soil we started hunting for the temple in Admal. It started getting dark; it was around 7 pm that we heard a generator’s sound from a home to our right. We stopped; Animesh and I went to see if we can get accommodation for the night. It looked like a private home from the front. There were three ladies cooking, the smell of the delicious food made my mouth watery, I decided no matter what I gonna stay here tonight and have the food they are cooking. But it was not a private home, it was Admal Guest House. The ladies were courteous and asked us to take a chair, they told us the boss will be coming in a while and we can talk to him for accommodation. In conversation it came up that, we are from different parts of India, one from Bengal, one from Andhra, one from Bhopal, and another from Tamil Nadu and me from Orissa, all together exploring the Sahyadris in Maharashtra. What a unity in diversity, infact we didn’t notice any diversity.

We got our cycles to the guest house and locked them with Chidam’s long chain. The ladies offered us black tea, I thought of a moment… Tea… I don’t drink tea, right? Then I remembered my last four teas and compared. The first time was in Kharagpur during my college days, when I had left my Library card in my jeans and given it to the Dhobi, and then had hunt for the Dhobi-ghat on my bicycle which was 10 km away, that was my longest ride (20 km) till Thunderbolts started, the Dhobi offered me tea and I couldn’t say him no. The second tea was when a fellow trekker offered me tea at top of Rajgad fort, that was the first trek of my life. The third was near Pratapgad Fort, it was during my Xmas trip, on 2nd day of the tour, Pawan Yadav and I went to Pratapgad fort and while returning we had a tea, it was a tough ride and deserved celebration. Then fourth tea was during the Kasarsai Night camp, the villagers in Kusgaon were really courteous and saying no to their offer would have been offending, and the chilling night at the graveyard deserved a tea. And so did this fifth one, but the actual thrill for which the tea was meant came after the black tea.

The jeep arrived but the boss was not there, only the driver Maane. We told our problem, and he made a call to his boss but he replied that we will need Lavasa’s permission to stay there. I tried to convince the boss that we can’t go to Lavasa now in dark but he didn’t agree, then finally we told Maane to take us to Lavasa in the jeep. We all had changed into dry cloths and had no desire to cycle, we left our cycles in the guest house and packed up and got into the jeep, with no certainty for a shelter at night we headed to Lavasa Town hall.

Maane gave his number to us and told us to call him if we can’t get accommodation. We got to the town hall and told our situation to the authorities. They called up their boss and he told us we can stay in their hotel for the night but they can’t give permission for Admal guest house as it’s leased out to a contractor. We called up Maane and he told he will come in sometime. We inquired about the hotel and it turned about to be 8000/- for 5 people. Sometimes your status, your position won’t be enough; sometimes your humility will get you there. Maane our savior was back. He had talked to the people who stay in the guest house that we will be staying with them and they had agreed. He told us he will be returning in sometime and will pick up us after dropping the 15 people who were on board his jeep that time. We five started walking out towards the back gate of Lavasa which leads to Admal. We took out the pack of chapattis that the ladies in the guest house had handed us. Those Chapattis were the tastiest things I had in my life. It might seem blasphemous to say those chapattis were tastier than what my mom had ever cooked for me, but they were. They reminded me of the warm kitchen, the earthen stove, and the eye watering smoke from the logs in the stove, my native village and my granny.

Soon Maane returned to pick up us. He told he had arranged a room for us and has convinced the people staying there. We were just ecstatic. The people there gave us a warm welcome, and a delicious dinner was served. If I remember I had 4 more chapattis after the initial 3.

Among people staying there, we met a trekker; he was HR of Creative Constructors, the contractor for construction work in Lavasa. From him I came to know the Google maps of the place has not been updated for couple of year and the new road being constructed is not shown properly; it made me feel better that my map reading skills was not that wrong.

I also met two people from Orissa, one of them was really young, after a long time I was talking in my mother tongue, it was like I am back home. The warmth spread across, I made an instant connection with him, and we talked about our native places and family. Soon the day’s toil appealed us to move unto the cots.

Next Day was over cast too but was much brighter, brighter because we had a good sleep (this we doesn’t include me, I had lot of dreams and with conscious breaks in between, I clearly remember one of the dreams where I saw I have gone Rourkela, my home town from Pune and saw it’s transferred into a biking town with each home having 2-3 high end bikes).

We started riding at 8.30 am after a farewell from our hosts. The ride along the Varasgaon lake was really mesmerizing, the hills to the left and the valley with a muddy stream to the right and the rains to clean the way for us, we went on exploring inch by inch, with shepherds and their cows glaring us with awe, we moved on. We had a grand lunch near Panshet Dam. Chidam and Arun boarded a tempo from there as their bikes’ brakes were not functioning properly and there was too much traffic along Khadagwasla as it was a Sunday and the journey was almost over. Animesh, Akhilesh and I started jack hammering the bikes to Pune and we were home by 5 pm.

This tour was as unique as any other tour that I had till now. The subject of the travelogue is “The Acknowledgement”, because this write up is dedicated to Maane, “Maane, Our Savior”. It’s dedicated to the ladies who gave us the chapattis, it’s dedicated to the employees of Creative Construction who gave us shelter and water to drink, it’s dedicated to the clouds which saved us from burning sun, it’s dedicated to the rain that created the mud for us to have a thrilling ride, it’s dedicated to the earth which showed us her beauty for which we were lusty, it’s dedicated to the singing bird whose name I know not, but still it made our journey so melodious.

- Bani