After the meetup with Pune xMen, me & Soumen started our sprint back home. But I was in dire need of a tankup. After loosing lots of time we finally found a BP bunk, where I filled the tummy of my beast! By the time we were back home it was almost 11.30PM I guess. I just ensured that my stuff is packed and I'm ready move once I get up in the morning. Doing that took almost another half hour and by the time I could actually wound up in bed was way past midnight. I got to bed thinking how I would manage to get up next morning!

Sleep! That was something that eluded me that night quite a bit. I just managed to catch a few winks here and there and finally got sleep aroung 3AM only to get up shocked at 5AM to see that I had slept way past departure time! Lazily I managed to get ready, which took another 40 mins. My bike was drinking a bit oil and Niranjan had thankfully lended me 100ml of Motul 5100T for a topup of the oil in my bike. I bid adieu to a sleepy Soumen at 5.50AM, as I needed cash for the trip I pulled over at an atm close to his house and finally it was 6AM that I finally started.


The Ride

I was riding without the thermal lining of my jacket and the Pune chill was making its presence felt. 850 odd kays away was my destination, I knew this was gonna be one fast and very BORING ride back home! For the first time in the entire trip I powered up my mp3 player just so that I don't get too bored. Hitting the highway from Soumen's place was easy as it was a straight road with hardly a soul on it. I was taking it easy on the bike as I did not want to start ripping yet, letting the engine oil warm up reach optimum operating temperature.

This route has seen many unsuccessful/successful attempts at the much coveted IronButt saddle sore ride and I in now intented to do anything close to that (but realised later that its not so far away a goal either). After I was on NH4 I upped my speed marginally, early morning's cool temperatures+scarcity of people on the road meant only that I must utilize this condition to the max to cover as much distance as possible. I soon hit Katraj tunnel, man what an experience, fully loaded bike with all gear on and without crouching I touched 122 kmph with ease...thanks to almost zero turbulence. I made up my mind that I need to come there to do a top speed check of my bike sometime.


After this roads were pretty good and the next landmark to come was the Kambatkhi ghats. Now there was a toll gate at the beginning and quite frankly it had me confused if the ghats is a one way or a two ghats. Only when I finished the ghats after crossing over to the other side of the mountain did I realised how much time I had wasted behind crawling trucks not overtaking them for fear of oncoming traffic .

I guess I had done about 130kms and the cold was getting to me, I just had to take a pee break . The sun was also just rising up so I hoped that temperatures would rise a bit, but that was not to happen till atleast past 10PM.