After last year's "Lonavala to Mulshi - the road less traveled" ride, I always wanted to get on this route again. Last year I was new to offroading thing, but after my International Roadtrip to Mustang, Nepal & North India on Yamaha R15, I became quite used to offroading.


I hadn't been on a ride since much time, and wanted to taste some dirt as well, so I thought of doing Lonavala - Mulshi ride, but this time we extended the offroading session till Lavasa.

Everybody in Pune has heard about Lavasa, and most of them know only one way of reaching there. I know three routes that leads to Lavasa, there can be more.
1. The usual Pirangut - Lavasa route.
2. Khadakwasla - Panshet - Lavasa route.
3. Mulshi - Lavasa route.
Been on all three routes and all of them are beautiful, the first one is very famous usual road, and remaining two are total offroading trails.

So one fine day [MENTION=86489]Journeykanth[/MENTION] (Sandeep) and I decided to go offroading, he brought his friend's KTM RC 390 and I was on Yamaha YZF R15 V2.0. The route that we are going to take and the bikes we ride are quite contradictory in their nature. Track specific bikes doing offroading, it was going to be fun-filled day.

We met up at CME around 7 in the morning, [MENTION=74353]magnum_opus[/MENTION] (Ashutosh) decided to ride with us till Lonavala, he met us at Dehu road circle. I had never ridden a KTM in my life, and it was very kind of Sandeep that he offered me to ride that machine till Lonavala. I took up the chance and rode it till Lonavala. I am riding Yamaha R15 for quite some time now, and when I got 43 bhp of power between my legs, I knew it was going to be mad ride. The experience of riding a KTM RC390 till Lonavala was more than overwhelming. We reached Lonavala in no time and had breakfast at Ramakrishna. Ashutosh returned home from here and we continued our ride towards Aamby Valley.

Soon we started climbing the hills, it was fun riding here. You have curves in front of you and the track specific bike between your legs, what would you do? You lean into it. We did the same and stopped at this point where the road passes through dense forest. It was time for some photography now. We shot some videos as well.















There was a video shoot going on here, a Mini Cooper was sweeping through curves and a camera man in the car in front of it was shooting it. I am looking forward to see the final advertisement as seeing the shooting-in-progress was so beautiful, I wonder how the final post processed output would look.

We got back on saddle and left the road leading towards Aamby valley and got onto the trail that leads towards Mulshi. The offroading adventure starts from here itself. I don't know what struck through both of our minds, we got off the road and started exploring an open field. We went quite inside and at the end of which we were able to see the air strip of Aamby valley. The view was amazing, even though the sun was on our heads and it was hot there, we decided to spend some time here, took few pictures and returned to the course of riding.















The nice smooth tarmac turned into the broken road with lot of pot holes. First two kilometers were horrible for me, but then I was all okay with it till the end of the day. I am not sure how Sandeep felt while offroading on his KTM, but I am sure he never had this kind of experience before.

There are many diversions on the way and one has to ask locals for the correct route. You wouldn't get lost but it would eat up your time. Somewhere we took the wrong turn and kept riding for kilometers as there was nobody to confirm the route. Later we came to know from the locals that we took the wrong route, it wasn't actually the wrong route, but the other one is better than this one. Last year we were on the right path, this year we took the wrong turn and we had to go through some horrible offroading. Sandeep had some bad time here, he almost fell once when his bike tipped over.

Soon we merged with the main road that leads to Mulshi. I remember a stretch from last year's ride wherein there is an open field with a beautiful surrounding. But since we took the other road we missed it. We decided to ride back a little and see if we can find that stretch, we did find it within few kilometers, but my heart broke when I actually saw it. Last year it was so beautiful, and this time it was all burnt and some mining kind of work was going on here.













We started riding towards Tamhini ghat and our next stop was Pimpri dam. Soon we reached there, and I wanted to take a dip in water but I was little scared at first, but I couldn't hold back the excitement and jumped into the water. A quick refreshing swim and all the tiredness was gone.























We got onto Tamhini ghat road and asked a shop owner for the shortcut offroading trail that leads to Lavasa. It was few kilometers from there. We were already very hungry by now, and there we saw a hoarding for Hotel Kamat which was located at a short distance. We decided to have lunch there itself. The place is nice and the food was good. Totally recommended.

After a heavy lunch and a good 45 minutes break, we got back on road. The first few kilometers of the shortcut trail that leads to Lavasa is made up of concrete, and then starts the offroading saga. The Mulshi - Lavasa stretch is even bad than Lonavala - Mulshi stretch. Big boulder type rocks everywhere and many times there are steep climbs. We kept riding at slow pace and had many balls-in-the-mouth moments. You should go slow, take multiple breaks in between and enjoy the surrounding nature. I would surely like to come here again in the monsoons.









We got onto plain but still broken road after a few kilometers of back breaking stretch. Had a sigh of relief there. Lavasa was not far now, in fact I was badly waiting for the well-known curvy roads of the Lavasa. We had enough of offroading since morning and it was now time for some action.

The run from Lavasa city till Temghar dam was quick. Most of the time I was in control while taking the corners, but one of the hair pin bend did made me scare when I overshot it. I believe you do have to go through one of such incident where you are scared like hell so that you don't go out of control in the flow.

We had a glass of sugarcane juice after the quick run. Sandeep showed me the tyres of our motorcycles, No Chicken Strips. I had this big smile on my face when I took a look at tyres. It is altogether a different feeling, only a biker knows the happiness of it.

We then arrived at my home, exchanged photographs clicked in our mobiles and cameras. The day was well spent together with Sandeep. We rode on straights in the morning, did a lot of offroading in the middle of the day, and had a quick lap at the end of the day. We went through all kind of roads in a matter of few hours.

Here is a map of the route that we followed. The google maps does not show a road between Tamhini ghat and Lavasa. That's what the exploration is, you get to the places that even google doesn't know.





Thank you Ashutosh for tagging along for the breakfast at Lonavala and thank you Sandeep for being my riding partner for the day. You guys are awesome.

Ride Safe! Cheers!