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Monday, August 02, 2010

Memorable ride to Bhimashankar

Day : 01 Aug. 10
Left to Right => Girish, Ashish, Suhas, Jyotish

Bike : Thunderbird twinspark (me and Jyotish), CBZ xtreme (Suhas and Girish)
Distance :
Kothrud Stand to Sadhu Vaswani Chowk to Bhimashankar(Pune => Chakan => Khed => Chaskaman => Wadi => Bhimashankar) : 124 Km
Note : There is turn immediately after Khed/ Rajgurunagar ST stand if you want to go by Wadi/ Chaskaman road - ask the local people for directions.
Bhimashankar to Kothrud Stand (Bhimashankar => Ghodegaon => Manchar => Chakan => Kothrud stand) : @ 124 Km

Rain : Almost throughout journey, medium thunder showers.

Road condition is mostly good - advantage of Chakasman road is less traffic and
 great scenery

Road condition : Mostly good -
Chaskamam - wadi road condition is good and
road via Ghodegaon is also in good condition. (This road is broader but has much more traffic as compare to Wadi road)

Lessons learned :
1. Do not stretch schedule too much.
2. Do not keep distance more than visible range from fellow bikers.

Extra caution : Do not rely on mobile or phone network. You may not get any opportunity for telephone communication in 20-30km radius from Bhimashankar.

Thanks to many blogger users who have written good information about Bhimashankar and the roads. Thanks to almighty god Mahadev for making our ride safe.

I started from home @ 7.10 am - reached to Jyotish's home (near Sadhu Vaswani Chowk) and then we two reached Bhosari to join our friends. Instead of planned 5-6 riders we were only 4 - others did culti.com :P. We started our journey @ 8.30 am from there.

We thought it is only 80km road from Bhosari - so we were not worried about schedule. We took first break at Chakasman-dam. The dam site is beautiful and probably it was just trailer of the beauty of mother nature ahead.


Second major stop was near Bibi-gaon. There is Swayambhu temple of Mahadev. Girish told us that the mandir (temple) is good and lets visit the temple on top of hill. The temple is really beautiful and one can get superb view of the region from this location. Good thing is the sadhu-baba in the temple allowed us to take photographs :).
Swayambhu Mahadev Mandir

Chaskaman dam - taken from Swayambhu Mahade temple

Another photo of Chakasman - taken from Swayambhu Mahadev Mandir
Photo of road - taken from Swayambhu Mahadev Temple


Afterwards we went to Girish's cousin sister's home. His sister gave us tea and prepared delicious lunch. I think this is first time I have taken lunch in proper village home (home with farms around). By the time we started for our planned destination - it was 2.30pm and Bhimashankar was still 32Km ahead. We thought it as 30-40 min journey.

We travelled 10Km or something and we were unable to find our fellow bikers Girish and Suhas. Mobile networks were not working!. We then started for the ghat (which is little difficult from the wadi side - I think the one from Ghodegaon side is different ghat and is easy). The scenery around the ghat is very beautiful - most of the ghat goes through forest area.
We waited again in ghat section for Girish and Suhas but could not get them :(. Finally we decided to reach temple. When we were @ 10 km away from the temple it was @ 3.20pm time but it feeling like it is 7pm. Because of clouds there was very less day light. There  were boards around informing the animals found in the jungle area - includes bibatya (leopard / panther). I was using my TBTS high-beam light but could hardly see anything beyond 5-10 meters (no wonder my judgement went wrong on 1-2 turns). I was really afraid - thanks to Jyotish who convinced me that nothing is wrong lets go!

Om Namah Shivay - Bhimashankar temple photo from one of my earlier trips

We reached temple @ 3.45pm. I wanted to call home and asked there for coin-box phones but even those were out of order :(. There was unexpectedly very long queue for darshan. We waited in queue till 4.30pm and hardly reached upto chappal stand (I was convinced that we wont get darshan unless 6pm). I convinced Jyotish to start for return journey - we were still unable to find Girish and Suhas.

While coming back - it started raining heavily - somehow the road was very clearly visible (mist was almost completely gone!) and we really felt like Bhole has blessed us. The scenery around was heavenly beautiful, there were high green mountains around. I could see at least 3-4 waterfalls in those mountains. Some mountains were covered by clouds and it was wonderful experience to see this scenery. One could also see one dam in valley. In my opinion this road from Ghodegaon side is easy one it afterwards connects to NH50. I would still say that it is worth riding from Wadi road at-least once.

What happened to Girish and Suhas => Somewhere they took wrong road and went to Bhorgiri instead of Bhimashankar :).

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Here is my report about 2 fellows who missed bhimashankar and landed in bhorgiri. :) (as ashish keeps mentioning names of 2 idiots continuously making readeres curious about what happened to them.)

after we left from my cousin sisters place we were driving slow as she had warned us to go slow to avoid accidents (as roads were slippery).
Ashish was way ahead of us and we couldnt even see him after some time. after "Wada" which is fairly big village there was fork one leading to bhimashankar and other to Bhorgiri.
ACtually we didnt know that bhorgiri is dead end and we would get stuck up there. we passed that fork without even doubting that it would lead to bhimashankar. There is no notice board or even sign board indicating that road to bhimashankar is that way.
SO we kep going. after crossing some distance we felt little doubtful and hence asked one shepherd. He told us that bhimashankar is on other road and we are going by wrong way. we thought that even ashish and jyotish might have gone by same intuition as ours and must be still ahead of us. So we asked whether 2 guys on bullet have passed by this road before us. He said yes he saw one suck bike. and hence we kept going towards bhorgiri expecting to see them. Eventually we reached bhorgiri only to find that ashish and jyotish were not there means they had taken right turn.

We asked villagers if there is anything worth watching here. They told us that there is temple of shiva(goteshwar) on nearby hill. So we went to see that. Its nice temple very similar to that of ganesh temple of lenyadri. we then headed back to home as it was getting late.
we came across one waterfall where we drenched ourselves and took some snaps :) thanks to lord shiva for guiding us (sometimes misguiding us to see his other temple) and protecting us thoughout journey. :)

Unknown said...

Here is my report about 2 fellows who missed bhimashankar and landed in bhorgiri. :) (as ashish keeps mentioning names of 2 idiots continuously making readeres curious about what happened to them.)

after we left from my cousin sisters place we were driving slow as she had warned us to go slow to avoid accidents (as roads were slippery).
Ashish was way ahead of us and we couldnt even see him after some time. after "Wada" which is fairly big village there was fork one leading to bhimashankar and other to Bhorgiri.
ACtually we didnt know that bhorgiri is dead end and we would get stuck up there. we passed that fork without even doubting that it would lead to bhimashankar. There is no notice board or even sign board indicating that road to bhimashankar is that way.
SO we kep going. after crossing some distance we felt little doubtful and hence asked one shepherd. He told us that bhimashankar is on other road and we are going by wrong way. we thought that even ashish and jyotish might have gone by same intuition as ours and must be still ahead of us. So we asked whether 2 guys on bullet have passed by this road before us. He said yes he saw one suck bike. and hence we kept going towards bhorgiri expecting to see them. Eventually we reached bhorgiri only to find that ashish and jyotish were not there means they had taken right turn.

We asked villagers if there is anything worth watching here. They told us that there is temple of shiva(goteshwar) on nearby hill. So we went to see that. Its nice temple very similar to that of ganesh temple of lenyadri. we then headed back to home as it was getting late.
we came across one waterfall where we drenched ourselves and took some snaps :) thanks to lord shiva for guiding us (sometimes misguiding us to see his other temple) and protecting us thoughout journey. :)

Ashish Sarode said...

Hey Giri dude, thanks for comment. I hope I will get to see Bhorgiri some time in future.

Suhas said...

Yeah... the small plateau below Bhimashankar --- Bhorgiri was really awesome !!!

The greenery all around made our 60 km(unstopped) journey on bike enjoyable...
We could doubled our enjoyment if we all were together...

Anyways... good lesson to learn... as u mentioned Ashish.

Ashish Sarode said...

Thanks for comment Suhas, ya it would have been fun if we 4 would have gone together.
Lets take care in further trips - but lets not plan for temple - so that if some problem comes, we can turn back.

Maa Ambe Travels said...

Nice Pics of Bhimashankar thanks for sharing such a nice information.
Regards,
Maa Ambe Travels
www.ambetravels.in
Pune to Bhimashankar Cab