ही श्रींची(च) इच्छा !!

Please don't take the title of the post seriously, its coming from an atheist.

The title is obviously inspired by similar-sounding statements believers make. The objective of using it here is our jinxed (again, inspired by stereotypes) ride to Titwala.

My colleague Nikhil and me have the ride planned for over two weeks now, but had not been able to venture out for two consecutive Sundays as I wasn't feeling well. On the third Sunday, I woke up at 0550 hours (sharp) and started the preparations. Task(s) at hand : picking up water, some food items, increasing the saddle height and filling air in the tyres.

I completed all the tasks but for the saddle height. I just could not trace a plier required to loosen the seat nut and (like a nut) searched the entire house frantically for over two hours, unsuccessfully.

I was always hesitant for the ride because of the destination (Titwala houses a Ganpati Temple) but gave a (full-hearted) "yes" so that Nikhil gets addicted to long distance cycling. Nikhil cycles 15-km each morning but hasnt yet taken the plunge by doing longer rides. A Dombivili-Titwala-Dombivili ride would be around 50 km and enough to get him started, but courtesy the antics of Abhinav it could not happen.

My nephew Abhinav was home for a week before the Sunday and has probably misplaced the pair of pliers. He has the habit of picking up odd things and dumping it in any corner of the house (my sister-in-law says sometimes things are thrown out of the window as well).

8 AM : At the end of two hours of frantic searching, I decided to call off the planned ride. Nikhil may have been certainly annoyed but had his thinking hats on. "Get started on the low saddle and stop at the nearest puncturewalla," he advised. Why couldn't such a simple thing occur to me? Anyways, I had lost all the enthusiasm by now and persisted with my decision.

Not in a mood to let the early wake up on a Sunday go a waste, I walked out of home to ride, anywhere. A quick hop and I started to think - where should I go.

The recently acquired infatuation for ascents took me to Yeoor, the best option nearby.

A Plan.....

Cycling on "zero-gradient", city roads has ceased to interest me. There has to be some fun in riding. And the fun element is the long ascents and the ensuing descends. Staying in Thane, I cannot aspire to ride in the vicinity of ice-capped peaks of the Himalayas.

Hence, a solution : we have lot many of the ghats connecting Konkan with the towns on the Deccan Plateau within our reach. Why not leverage on the proximity and launch a concerted attempt at doing one such ghat road every weekend? As it is, there has been an unprecedented slump in trekking activity.

The plan is simple : take your bike to the base village (for example Khopoli if you are doing the Khandala ghat) by motorised vehicle, ride up to the town/village on the घाट माथा and descend down to the base village to take the same route back home. Most of the ghats in Maharashtra can be done over the space of a weekend. In some cases, you will have to leave Thane on Saturday night and do the overnight travel to the base village/town while in many others, we can enjoy the luxury of starting on Sunday mornings.

Immediate ghats that I can think of : Kasara, Malshej, Khandala, Tamhini, Ambenali, Varandha, Amba and Amboli. Logistics is definitely an issue and a bigger one is finding a partner on this adventure.

The search starts.