It’s that time of the year again. the time when the plateau of kaas blooms with wild flowers, and stays that way for just a few weeks. I wasn’t going to miss it this year, and so this ride was planned. It was just me on my p220 and Sandeep on his duke who were in for this ride. we had planned to leave on friday evening, stop at satara for the night, and visit the plateau in the morning. But the plan changed, and one more friend of ours was in as pillion, with the condition that we leave early morning and make it a 1 day trip.
Saturday, 3:30am, the alarm woke me up, and by 4am we hit the road. We all met near powai by 4:30 and started riding towards the highway. The only hurdles in our way at this hour were the countless potholes and occasional rain making it difficult to see the road. After hitting a few potholes in the dark, and cleaning our headlight a couple of times, we exited the city before sunrise. None of the tea stalls or breakfast places were open, so we rode on ahead of panvel. It started to get bright as we reached khopoli so we took the first break to stretch.
I told the guys that we’ll stop at Kamats for breakfast and some filter coffee, but when we reached there we found that the place had not yet opened up. We then moved towards lonavala, but none of the resorts there had opened either. Having no other option, we rode on towards pune and took a short break there, but couldn’t find any good breakfast places opened there either.
The only hope for a decent breakfast was the McDonalds outlet after Katraj, so that’s where we stopped at 9am. The McDonalds outlet there is the worst one i have ever been to. The food was cold and stale, they didn’t have ketchup, they didn’t even have coffee. Luckily there was a CCD outlet next to it that served us some nice hot coffee and sandwiches. we took a long break there, and left at 9am. A few more breaks on the way and we reached satara by 11.
We now had to ask for directions to kaas. One guy pointed towards a roundabout and told me that i need to take the road going uphill, and so i did, only to get stopped by the cops. Apparantly you can’t go around the roundabout, like you normally would, and there was a sign stating that somewhere. we had to go in the opposite direction, take a U-turn and then take the road going up. We paid a 100rs fine and the cops then helped us find the right road.
Here is when i took out the camera and started clicking pictures. The road was a little bumpy at the start, but not too bad.
I was sure that this was kaas plateau, but the real one was still 8km ahead, so we moved on. As we climbed up further, it started to get foggy and eventually started raining. By the time we reached the real kaas plateau, the rain and fog was so bad that we couldn’t see a thing and couldn’t remove the camera.
We waited for a while for the weather to clear up, but it didn’t. Disappointed, we had to turn back and start the return trip. The weather was still very bad, and the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see a thing. We had one close call with a white bus that took up the entire width of the road, with just just 2 small fog-lights on, making it nearly invisible. After riding downhill for a while, the fog cleared up so we took a break at one of the view points.
From here, we rode out of the city and stopped by the highway for lunch at 3:30pm. We stopped at a local hotel and had the best chicken hundi and mutton biryani. Everyone was sleepy and the food was really filling, so we waited there till 4:30pm, while they took a power-nap. Normally, the highway dhabas are known for their hospitality, but the owner of this place proved us wrong. As soon as we paid the bill he wanted us out even though the place was completely empty. He didn’t let us rest there for more than 20 minutes. We then moved on and stopped at a tea stall by the the highway.
By 6pm, we started riding again, and headed towards pune. Sandeep paid a short visit to his brothers place in pune, and we left from there at 7:30 in the dark. The road leading out of pune was completely jammed, which delayed us by another hour. We reached lonavala at 9:30pm and stopped for dinner.
Dinner was done in an hour, and we started riding again. We now faced the thick lonavala fog at 11 in the night. Riding downhill through that fog was a lot of fun. we stopped for a few pictures and some videos.
The others weren’t used to such long hours of riding, and they were starting to get tired now. I led the way from here until we reached the city since i knew the twists and turns in the road and i am used to riding at night. They needed breaks every 20 minutes, so it was a really slow ride back home from here. To make matters worse, it started to rain, and we couldn’t see the road, so we had to ride at 50kmph most of the time. After riding slow, in the pouring rain, with lots of breaks, we finally reached home at 2am. I am used to such long rides, but it took a toll on the others, and im sure they will not attempty anything similar soon. Perhaps the original plan of leaving on friday evening would have been better. All in all, it was still a fun ride.
Experiences on two wheels 