Topic Approved.

Glued on! You should give a feeler of what to expect in the coming episodes

Don't keep us waiting. The pics are looking good.

Poor Greenie, look the places the guys took her for a bashing.

Doubly hooked, monsoons and country-side is a heady mix.

Cant wait to see the Ninja get abused boss... keep them coming...

Oh you mean absolutely used

^ something on those lines satyen.. something on those lines...

HYperion.... get in the log now.. we cant wait to read YOUR log...

Part 1 : Departure

So here was the plan. Leave from Pune on Saturday 7th August at 5:30 AM in the morning. Leave from Nashik Phata, go to Loni (more on this later), from there to Aurangabad. From here we would go further north to Ajantha. After some sightseeing there, we would move to Lonar through Sillod and stay there for the night at the MTDC resort there. The rationale for this was to catch the sunrise over the crater. We would explore Lonar the next day and then come back to Pune through Jalna,Aurangabad. It goes without saying that all such plans are tentative and it was just as well(as you will see).

Day 1 Route





Day 2 Route




Kashif had run into some trouble, with his electricity bills going through the roof. I cannot comment on what kind of racket he runs at his home but according to him it was a goof up by the electricity board. In anycase, that meant he had to take care of that business Saturday morning and would not be able to join us.So it was going to be Surojit, Anant and me to start off on Saturday morning. Kashif, if possible, would meet up with us at Lonar and then come back with us the next day.


It hadnt been raining in Pune for the whole week, so I was expecting some dry weather. Well, when Saturday dawned it was raining like crazy. Cursing the rain gods, I woke up around 3:15 am.
I was at a movie late the night before and I couldnt get everything packed so I had to wake up early . On waking up, I saw Surojit had left me a message asking me to wake him up when I wake up as well.

I did that,Surojit sounded pretty sleepy when he answered my call(Note this).Anyway, I was ready by 5 am and had left home. The plan was to meet up at CME and then head on from there.
It was raining quite heavily along the way, I was lucky to have my rain-gear on.On reaching CME, I didnt see anyone. I pulled up to the side a little further. I was carrying my camera in my backpack and rest of the stuff in my tank bag. Except, the tankbag wasnt on my tank (I was scared to death of the scratches it would leave on the green tank) but I had secured it to the Ninjas rear seat using bungee cords.I was also carrying the tripod which was slung over my shoulder.The backpack was brushing against the tankbag and causing some discomfort. I adjusted the tankbag a little by rotating it a bit. Soon Surojit turned up. We parked our bikes to the side and sought shelter in one of the closed tapris at the side of the road.

We waited for about 10 mins and there was still no sign of Anant. We tried calling him but he didnt answer. We hopefully assumed that he was riding and on his way here.
Not wanting to waste any time . we setup the tripod and started clicking a few pics.





Around 6:00 am, Anant arrived. He had been late because he had gone to the Pune RTO fuel station to fill up his bike. Rain had stopped by now. We wrapped up and left for Nashik phata. We took a right from Nashik phata and hit the highway enroute to Sangamner. The roads were still wet with recent rain. The traffic was light and the sun was just breaking through.Me and Surojit had to fill up. About 40kms in to the ride, I saw fuel station to the right and looked down to the Ninja dash to see that the fuel light had gone on.So I pulled over immediately. The fuel station workers were still busy waking up. Finally we got the attention of one of the workers and filled up the bikes. It was almost 7 am now.

We crossed Narayangaon and then Alephata. The traffic was beginning to get thicker.I was feeling some throttle lag with the Ninja. I was beginning to feel a little concerned and was thinking of going uptil Sangamner upto Sangamner and then turning back as I could not afford to have something going wrong with the Ninja so far from home.I was thinking about this along the way. I hadnt been on this road for quite some time. It was a pleasant surprise to see the road in a nice condition. There were a few potholes here and there. There were a couple of ghats along the way. One of the ghats chock full with trucks. After crawling our way through the long line of trucks, we quickened up our pace to make up for the lost time so far. We reached Sangamner and started to look for a decent place to have breakfast. We didnt find anything good, so we decided to hold off breakfast till we reached Loni.

Like I said, going through Loni to Aurangabad is the odd way around. It so happened that me and Anant had at one point been in the same school (Pravara Public School). I found this through one of the FB communities. Anyway, both of us wanted to relive some old memories (much to Surojit's chagrin), so we decided to go through Loni. Just before we reached Loni we stopped for breakfast at a small dhaba. Ordered some bhaji and aloo parantha with chai. The food wasnt great , neither was the chai but it was warm and on this cold and wet day, anything warm was welcome. While having food, Surojit confessed that he had been sleepy and hungry riding behind us for the last 30-40 kms. It turns out that he had come home 2 am last night (he had to pick up his knee guards) and then I woke up him up at 3am with my call. Poor guy.

We then made towards Loni, we passed the town. We came to a turn, where the road forked off. One to the left and one that went straight. I could see the direction board on the left said Shrirampur. Anant, then signalled to go straight. saying we could also go straight. The area around here is a farming community with most being sugarcane or grape farmers. We were surrounded on both sides by these farmlands. This brought back some old - school memories for me. Anyway, after passing a couple of times (either of which I thought was Shrirampur), we soon hit a long straight 4 lane highway. This is a nice road and I dare say, for the stretch that we road atleast, that NH4 has more curves than this runway. On the bright side this meant we could do good time. All of us were doing around 90-100 with short bursts to 120. The traffic here was very light. I was counting down the kilometres on my trip meter. We had covered about 80 kms in good time. Aurangabad according to us was only another 40 kms away. All of us were in good spirits because after a late start we had made good time. We soon came to a chowk on the highway. There were some traffic policemen there, Anant checked with them to ensure about our route. To my surprise, they actually asked us to take the left road off the highway. Anyway, we took that road , with some skepticism. Anyway, our hopes of being on time were soon ruthless dashed by milestone that said that Aurangabad was still 110 kms away. It was such demoralizing feeling and to top that off the road we were now on was a kuccha road covered with potholes. We were confused about what route we had taken at this point. This was soon clear to us when we saw that
we were about 10 kms from Ahmednagar.It then soon hit us that we had done about 40 kms in the completely wrong direction and would have to take a large U-turn back towards Aurangabad. This will be clear to you once you see the actual map of the route we took.We grit our teeth and got back to the grind. THe kuchcha road soon gave way to a nice fourlane highway. I was really frustrated. I had to vent off this frustration somewhere. I opened up the Ninja. I must have been riding at about 140-150 kms for about 4 kms. I had lost both Anant and Surojit. I thought of waiting and then said, I will reach Aurangabad and then wait.

So I rode hard and the Ninja responded with aplomb.

The Ninja was a dream to ride on here. The brakes are fantastic and give you enough confidence to ride on the roads at such speeds. The sky was overcast but there was no sign of rain. At this point, I must say that milestones and distance boards in this area very confusing. At one point , I saw a milestone and direction board about 100 m from each other. According to the milestone Aurangabad was still 61 kms away while according to the distance board we were still 65 kms away from Aurangabad. I assumed the worst.I was about 10 kms from Aurangabad when the heavens opened up. I had done about 100 kms in less than an hour.
I slowed down. After riding slowly for about 10 mins, I saw the 220s projector closing in the RVM.I had done about 312 kms after topping up the Ninja, but the fuel light had not yet come on. I didnt want to take any chances so I decided to stop at a fuel station. We stopped at the first BP fuel station we saw. However, since he didnt have Speed, I chose not to fill up. We waited there for about 10 mins. When Surojit finally showed up.

We hit some really heavy traffic near Aurangabad. I gotta say this place has some really bad traffic and the roads look like they have been recently hit by an asteroid shower. Like Anant said, why go all the way to Lonar when you get to see some really humoungous craters right here.We filled up in Aurangabad. We wanted to stop for some chai as all of us were really wet by now. But it was raining like crazy and we thought we would escape the pathetic city traffic first and then stop. So we followed the signs to Ajantha. We had to dodge some water filled puddles on the way. Soon we were out of the city and on our merry (but terribly wet) way to Ajantha. Ajantha is another 100 kms from Aurangabad.After about 40 kms, we remembered that we had to stop for tea. We didnt find anything for the next 2-3 kms. We decided to stop at the next place that we saw.

We soon stopped at what looked like a Dhaba.This was our first real stop after breakfast. We were wet, cold but and a little tired.It was almost 1:30 pm. It seemed to us that it would be better to stay over at Ajantha. The rain and bad roads had really slowed us down. We would have to take the roads doggedly, which takes the fun out of a ride. Also, we would be travelling on unknown roads in the dark. Most importanty, looking at the rain we were seeing around, it seemed unlikely we would be able to see a sunrise (which was the primary reason for us to stay at LOnar for the night). Taking all these factors into consideration, we prudently agreed to stay over at Ajantha for the night. We called up Kashif to notify him of the change in plans, but he told us that it would be unlikely that he would be able to start off today as MSEDCL officials had sent him to chase wild geese.In any case, if he did start, we told him we would be staying over at Ajantha.


Now that our minds were made and the schedule for the day less hectic than before, all of us relaxed.We cast of all our protective gear and ordered some tea. While the tea was being made, the cameras finally made an appearance. Unfortunately it was raining heavily outside and we could take a lot of pictures.





Soon the chai arrived. Again, we were disappointed with the taste. But it was warmed and it helped. Not satiated with just one glass, we ordered another. Unfortunately, the local propreitor said they were out of milk. It seemed that the Dhaba was still not functional and was under construction. We were lucky to get any tea at all. After the much needed break, we packed up and moved on. The road was now filled with occasional potholes and puddles. Thankfully, at all points the signs were quite clear about where Ajantha lay.We had no trouble following the signs.It was still raining.We were about 30 kms from Ajantha and yet the local businesses had already started taking names that had Ajantha-this or Ajantha-that.This must be a really popular location. We soon arrived at a ghat. It had stopped raining. This was a nice little ghat. Anant had some doubts about whether we had missed the road again. I recalled the last time I passed by here, that there was a ghat before we came to Ajantha. This was soon confirmed as we could see the dome down below. It was Ajantha in the distance. We had finally arrived and were within 10kms of our first major destination.

Here is the actualy route we took, (the red part indicates the actual route we were supposed to take),





I apologize for the lack of pictures in the first part. But it was raining all along the way and we had to make up for lost time so we cut down on the photo breaks as well.


Next Part : Ajantha

I am in the process of uploading right now.. will be uploaded in post #10

Only to people who are interested in joining. Actually we are going to do a finale for this season soon. We have a guest appearance for each finale. Last time it was Nav. This time, who knows?

Guys this is nothing. There were more Ninja acrobatics than pics show. Just wait and watch.

hmm detailed pravachan

100 km in less than an hr....now I know why Surojit told yest that he rode 30 mins at his top speed to catch up with you guys.

Lovely writeup...waiting for more...
And listen...no finale till sept 12

We are working on an apt finale.. Hopefully At least 2 episodes before we get there.. The finale has to be an Eid + Ganseh Chaturthi Weekend ride..

Nice writeup.