hi guys,
well after my last biking trip which was a little more than 450kms to murud-janzira-diveagar-srivardhan-harihareshwar-pune(coatal belt of maharashtra lined with coconuts beaches and the arabain sea), this thursday i set off to the thoesegar winmill farms and thosegar waterfalls in satara district.
I have joined a biking community on the net , and mind you this is not like the biking communites which are exclusively for the same make bikes for eg.. all bullets or all bajaj bikes, in the biking community i have joined its a biking democracy, its open for all kinds of bikes. so in this group i found captain chitnis with whom i have been in touch for a while, he knows i have a thursday weekly off and he asked if i am ready to ride on thursday the 1st of feb to see the windmills and falls at satara . I lapped up his offer almost instantly . Captain chinis is 56 yrs old, and i was in awe of his enthusiasm.
so on thursday morning we met as agreed at the chandni chowk chai tapri( roadside tea stall) and after some instructions from him about the roads , traffic etc we set off. Captain chitnis was leading , i was following him, the road i tell you people was absolutely stunning, it is the pune-bangalore highway and is lovely, i mean the pune roads are so bad that you find even village roads better, but let me tell you the pue-bangalore highway is terrific. I was enjoying the wind blowing across my face and my eyes were admiring the farms and hills all around me as we kept driving. I was taking this route for the first time and was very impressed by the high quality ride i was getting, an amazing well lit 500meters tunnel lies on the way which you have to cross, really fantastic,i was amazed by the engineering work!!! you cut a moutain,then build a tunnel and then a road below, then light it up fully as though it was daytime!! I could have driven faster but since i was following captain chitnis i had to curb my natural instints of a wild horse in an open vast field!!( me along with my yamaha the horse and the roads the fields)
Soon after about an hour or so , i dont remember exactly , we halted for some breakfast. I had bhaji and captain had bhaji and vada pav( guess he was really hungry). We chit chatted for a while getting to know each other better as we were face to face for the first time.
Soon our butts were on the bikes again and we were again riding. As we entered satara city we kept on asking for directions to thosegar, a middle aged gentlemen almost acted like a verbal "tourist map" providing me with all details around places to visit in satara. A 10 min lecture, i heard him patiently and we decided to head towards Sajjangad and then proceed to the windmill farms. The road was again perfect for biking!!! it went on twisting and turning as if a snake was crawling. I enjoyed every bit of it. we took the diversion to sajjangad( a place perched on the mountains) , the climb was superb, a narrow , twisty road heading towards the base of sajjangad, the view from top was amazing, each turn took us higher and closer to sajjangad and we could view the road below while riding on the bike itself which we had just finished, simply breathtaking.
Sajjangad is the place where the samadhi(remains) of shri ramdas swami( guru of the great marathi warrior shivaji maharaj lie) . There are lots of dharamshalas on top of the mountain. Infact on the mountain top a whole city is being constructed, there are temples, schools, and many more buildings are being built, there are phone connections, water,,everything, i expected a barren piece of land and found a whole small city on top of the mountain. At sajjangad captain chitnis dint come along with me on top as he has a knee problem, i went running and hopping and was back in about half and hour. Initially i thought sajjangad was a fort as there are entrances which if viewed from the bottom decieve you to belive that a fort lies at the peak, but instead you find a lot of temples and a small city under construction.
Soon we left sajjangad and left for the windmill farms. The road was again the highlight, amazing twists and turns through the mountains. We could now see the windmills in sight, there were tens,,, wait no hundreds,,, no i was wrong again,,, thousands of them,,, yes friends, more than two thousand windmillls . It was an amazing sight, we were driving right through the windmills, soon we stopped and took time off for a photosession !! We tried different poses and got some great shots.
we arranged the bikes, our caps, our baggage, and the placed ourselves in such a fashion so that the main model(one windmill offcourse) would hog the limelight in the photograph. A smaller transformer was connected to each windmill the electricity gemerated was further transferred to an mseb(maharashtra state electricity board) sub station. I had never seen such gigantic and thousands of windmills together.Lots of fresh wind everywhere and my lungs tried to swallow as much fresh oxegen as they could before they have towork on pune city's polluted air :(
We learnt that many schools, colleges come to see the windmills also, if we would have gone further, the road would have taken us to koyna dam, but we decided to head back to pune.
But and not "BUTT" wait, i almost forgot about the waterfall, i had heard about it before , but it was february now and i dint expect any water due to the heat thats why i had forgotten about it, but captain remembered and i said why not , lets have a look and i said to myself " if there is no water, just pee down the mountain and create a fall" but that was not required, the fall was on, even in feburary the water level was one which had to be appreaciated, i can imagine in the monsoons it must be ferocious. Captain on seeing the water was really exited, he almost said with child like exuberence "mai toh nahaunga" = i will take a bath, i was disinterested, i just took off my shift and drank water from along the edge of the falls, captain bathed away merrily, he said its much better than a jacuzzi, i took a few shots and i myself entered the "jacuzzi" on captain's insistence and boy i thank him dearly, once i entered the water i dint feel like coming out. we werent the only ones at the falls, there were two other couples from satara who were enjoying some private moments and our arrival screwed their happines. we were like the "kabab main haddi" , but we did not care, we were enjoying under the water and i felt like the king of the world once again.
well i guess being a thursday the thosegar falls was deserted thats why we saw two young college couples there , well reminded me of my colege days, well my parents assumed i was in college but i was at some movie, but sadly for me i canont say that i was with some gal :(
We soon got dressed and headed back to pune, on the highway about 90kms from pune we stopped for a late lunch, the thali was really good, nice and whole some with some good , fresh sugarcane juice. I was feeling lazy to drive, i was again following captain , but then after about 10kms the wind energised me and i overtook captain, he overtook me again later, then again i overtook him and assumed he would catch up and not be far away, i rode non stop to pune , about 30kms i was at 100kmph . Here i commited a mistake, i went solo, i assumed captain would keep pace with me, and eventually this did not happen. We went together , but on our way back arrived seperately. I got a deserved firing from captain later for abandoning his partner and going solo, i have learned my lesson, this wont happen again. I am happy that later captain pardoned me and am sending the pics of my 300km to and from journey courtesy the captain's camera!!
I hope you can imagine the fun i had as pictures speak louder than words!!
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