I saw stars.

In a ditch, roughly 25 kilometers before Mahabaleshwar. It was early morning; the sun wasn’t out fully yet. Fourth day of a trip on bicycles that had long been in the making. The route was the idea of my friend Prashant Venugopal. After short trips, some repeated; to Khopoli, Lonavala and Matheran, cycling from Mumbai to Goa and a circular trip – Navi Mumbai to Navi Mumbai via Malshej Ghat and Bhor Ghat – we had been looking for more, short to medium distance multi-day trips in Maharashtra. That was when Prashant came up with the suggestion that we try going to Mahabaleshwar, not via the regular route touching Panchgani and Wai but through a couple of ascents and descents connecting Konkan and the Deccan Plateau.

For me, the time when we first discussed this trip and the period after that were neither pleasant nor suited for multi-day trips. After a brief illness, my mother passed away and during that phase and the months which followed, my life had become a case of frequent shuttling between Mumbai and Kerala. One was never long enough anywhere to settle into a pattern of doing something regularly, consistently. There was no running or hiking. On top of this, life as freelance journalist had become biting hard and I was not at all happy with what the politics prevailing all around had done to my relationships, friendships and sense of India as extended playground. I was sad. Also precisely why, one needed to get dunked in some activity.

As 2024 drew to a close and the phase of Prashant’s annual leave kicked in, we spoke of Mahabaleshwar again and decided to try it once I got back from my latest visit to Kerala. While I was in the southern state, my friend B was diagnosed with an illness. She embarked on therapy set to last a few months. B liked to hike. She has also been a supporter of this blog, even written for it. I wanted to do something that would keep her motivated through her treatment period. Suddenly Mahabaleshwar seemed perfect. I could dispatch photos of the ride everyday to B and her father, who was my classmate from college. Immediately after I got back from Kerala, I travelled to Bengaluru with Latha Venkatraman, to write about the 2024 IAU 100 KM World Championship. There, at the Brigade Road outlet of Decathlon, I bought two blue T-shirts and had them printed with the slogan: Allez B. Allez, which is the French equivalent for saying Come on, had been a frequently heard term during my days in climbing. I kept one T-shirt to wear on select days of the proposed Mahabaleshwar trip; the other, I couriered to B.

Every bicycle trip for me, starts with a visit to Inderjit Singh Khamba (Inder). Known well to cyclists in Navi Mumbai as both a passionate cyclist and one of the best mechanics around, Inder, after several years of operating a bicycle maintenance shop had shut down the business and accepted employment at an automobile company manufacturing electric vehicles. This happened, I think, sometime past mid-2024. Luckily for the local community of cyclists, the new job wasn’t to Inder’s liking and he returned to restart his shop. Anticipating Mahabaleshwar, I had parked my cycle with Inder before the Bengaluru trip. Once back from my assignment, I went to pick it up. Thanks to the bike having idled at home during those months of my relative inactivity, we knew even after its servicing that the rear wheel needed to vindicate itself as problem free. It was losing air and although we changed both the tyre and the tube, within a couple of days after servicing the bicycle, I had a set of punctures. Given the tyre was new and seemingly free of external damage, Inder deduced that the trouble was happening from inside the rim. The puncture marks on the tube were also on the side facing the spokes. So as a final measure, we changed the rim tape. The patient vindication of the rear wheel as problem-free ahead of attempting any long trip, which Inder recommended, couldn’t be had because between work in Bengaluru and the Mahabaleshwar trip, I was pressed for time.

Around 11 AM on December 13, 2024, Prashant and I set off for Lonavala from Navi Mumbai; the first day of our journey to Mahabaleshwar. He rode a Giant hybrid bicycle with 700c wheels; I had my longstanding mountain bike, a Trek 4500D with 26-inch wheels. Both cycles had loaded pannier bags. I had my Allez B T-shirt on. Truth be told, the worst part of any bicycle trip from the Mumbai-Navi Mumbai region is getting out of town. The appetite people have for whizzing around on ever increasing numbers of automobiles, despite the dust and congestion they cause, amazes. Not to mention – accidents. Overrun by vehicles, our cities no longer feel like liveable spaces. Their roads and roadsides betray a Mad Max-touch of speeding steel, noise, aggression, motor oil and careless parking. Somehow, a majority of us appear to find this great aesthetics and motivation for life. Not me. I was glad to sense this snapshot of the city, fade as Khopoli approached. But then something happened for which I must thank Inder, the automobile industry and a wonderful Muslim gentleman whose name, sadly, remains an approximation in my brain.

Between Chowk and Khopoli, my rear wheel got punctured. Yet again. We took off the wheel, got the tyre and tube out, inflated the tube and despite the faintly audible sound of air escaping couldn’t locate the puncture. We required a bucket of water to dip the tube in. Luckily, we had stopped very close to a petrol pump and this pump had an old man who repaired tyres. The other stroke of luck was that Inder, realizing over time that I wasn’t the performance type of cyclist and more the lazy wanderer sort, had changed my cycle’s tube from one having the less popular Presta valve to the Schrader valve. The latter meant, I could fill air at any petrol pump or bicycle shop on the way. It added versatility in repair and maintenance particularly when traveling long distances, self-supported. It worked at the petrol pump near Khopoli. Armed with a bucket of water, the elderly Muslim gentleman quickly located the punctures – there were two and they were tiny. He patched the tube up and filled air. It held. I paid him well and asked what he felt about my situation – with two punctures repaired in the rear wheel and no spare tube yet (I had foolishly overlooked acquiring a spare tube with Schrader valve), would he recommend that I continue to Mahabaleshwar? “ Don’t worry. It will hold,’’ he said, pointing out alongside that the puncture most likely happened because I hadn’t calibrated the air pressure to the additional weight of the pannier bags. I believe he was right. I had plonked the pannier bags on the rack and simply rode on without checking the air pressure afresh. I asked the old man for his name, which he told me. Notwithstanding the fact that his name slipped from my memory amid the worries of those hours and became an approximation, he is, in my eyes, the person who made this journey possible. The faith he had in his work and the assurance he gave, meant a lot. It helped me continue towards Lonavala instead of backtracking to Navi Mumbai. I overlooked keeping a picture of him for this travel account. My apologies sir.

Cycling on to Khopoli, we promptly picked up spare tubes for both the bicycles. By now, it was getting late. Darkness had descended and we were cycling with our headlights on. Bhor Ghat was crazy and annoying. There was heavy weekend traffic. Indian roads have unguarded edges that dip sharply into ditches and drains. We found ourselves pressed that side by the unforgiving flow of vehicles. At the top of Bhor Ghat, we paused for rest at a small shop selling candies and soft drinks. We were now on the Deccan Plateau. The lights of Khopoli in Konkan, were visible in the distance, below. By the time we got to Lonavala, there was a traffic jam in town. We wove in and out of it and finally located a restaurant to have dinner. The town was overflowing with people come for the weekend and Lonavala’s relatively cool weather. As we sat down for dinner, Prashant discovered that he had lost his phone. Now, that is a major problem. To begin with, he was a senior corporate executive and I knew that the phones of such people lost, could be a genuine worry for them. Second, although touring casts cyclists into private spaces and cocoons of solitude, there is definite use in being able to stay connected. We were down to one phone between the two of us. Third, on our trips, Prashant is typically the navigator and a mobile phone is useful for navigation. I tried Prashant’s number. Somebody picked up and then switched off the device. It hinted of lost and found graduated to theft. Thankfully, the late hour notwithstanding, the local office of Vi, the service provider, responded when we called. With their assistance, we dialled the number concerned and had the SIM blocked.

The question now was what to do with our journey. I was ready to turn back for I knew that losing a phone could be significant for Prashant. What I didn’t know was that he had bought into Allez B. He said, let’s proceed. And so, post dinner, we found ourselves parked for the night at an old hotel called Woodland. They had a wedding due on the premises the next day and we promised we would be out in the morning. Early next morning, Prashant made a quick trip to the shop at the top of Bhor Ghat where we had stopped to rest; just in case the phone was lost somewhere there. There was no sign of the phone anywhere. After a cup of coffee in Lonavala, we cycled on to Amby Valley. Soon after passing the Indian Navy’s training establishment in Lonavala, one of the tell-tale signs of being in the hills started manifesting. Its something you find in hilly terrain in the peninsula and up north in the Himalaya. People are sure of things in their vicinity but not places a bit further away. So, directions to Amby Valley and details about it could be easily had but not anything much about the road to Nizampur, which was down in Konkan on the other side. Nizampur was our destination for the day. A good amount of cycling done, we stopped for early lunch at a café, next to a school, close to Amby Valley. The travellers quickly became an item of interest as school kids flocked to see the geared cycles fitted with pannier bags. The school was having its sports day and every now and then cheering was heard. Our fan following was therefore fleeting; we were in constant competition with budding athletes next door. The café had a poster of attractions in the area – among them, the rock face bearing the harder route on Tel Baila, a rock pinnacle which had been part of our goals in rock climbing, years ago. I sent a photo of the poster to our friend Sunny Jamshedji in the US asking if he remembered it. Got a reply: yes, he did. Then, we cycled on towards Tel Baila and at the fork ahead of the village named after the pinnacle (or the other way around) took the road leading towards Tamini Ghat.

After a stretch of unnervingly firm concrete road, we hit 20-25 kilometers of road so bad that it was butt-hurting and spine-squashing. Even when one got off the cycle to stretch one’s limbs, them joints in the body, they jingled and jangled. A break availed at a small teashop in the heat of afternoon, we extended that a bit, to escape the worst of the sun. Then several kilometers ahead and more rural dwellings later, exactly where a grand resort stood, the road miraculously transformed to smooth tarmac. From there on, through that locality featuring posh resorts and yoga retreats and the big luxury vehicles their customers travelled in, cyclist’s butt was as though on a feather pillow. The road was smooth. A little after Garudmachi and perhaps an equal little bit before Tamini Ghat, we stopped for tea at a lonely café run by a young woman who delighted us by the interest she took in our journey. She had questions about cycling, about the journey – it made us happy. Tea had, we bid her goodbye and sailed down the long Tamini Ghat road, still on feather pillows, till we were rudely jolted back to reality by the dusty environs, truck traffic and rudely firm concrete roads near Posco’s steel plant in the Konkan plains. Around 7-7.30 PM, we drew into Nizampur. Joshi’s restaurant, which served us a fine Konkan thali, also fixed us accommodation; we found it in a nearby apartment, rented out to travellers.

December 15 morning, having downed plates of superb poha at a nearby cafe, we left Nizampur for Poladpur. Our original plan had been to take a forest road from Nizampur. While that may have kept us off heavy traffic, we discovered that it added considerable distance and that could be a problem when the time available overall for the Mahabaleshwar trip, was limited. So, we chose the straightforward, conventional route. The road from Nizampur to Mangaon was pleasant. But getting on to the Mumbai-Goa highway at Mangaon was a lot like the trip’s first day; traffic whizzing by and speeding vehicles driven dangerously. It was flat road (inclines were mild) and totally open to the sun. The industrial feel and abject monotony of the highway, coupled with the sensation of motorized metal carriages driven nonchalantly so fast nearby, made cycling here quite boring. Suddenly the butt shaking progress of the previous day across rural roads in the Deccan, quite free of traffic, didn’t seem bad at all. Rather get myself shaken and stirred than endure this unending tongue of concrete, marching relentlessly on to me like one of those invading hordes from Lord of the Rings. If these hot, dusty rivers of concrete with motorized projectiles hurtling around at high speed be the stuff of future by GDP, then God help human imagination. One felt jealous that in some other countries, dedicated long distance cycling routes existed.

We hunkered down and laboured. Two cyclists moving steadily in the hot sun. Our consistent cycling – that hunkering down – appeared to work. We reached Poladpur in good time, earlier than we expected. Knowing that we were slowly getting tired, had a long climb back to the Deccan Plateau ahead of us and had to be back in Mumbai for Prashant to address his lost phone and also receive his son arriving from overseas, we decided to head up the ghat road to Mahabaleshwar without delay. Like in a long multi-pitch climb, a bivouac seemed better option than a hotel room. But first, I contacted Ravi, a travel agent in Chembur, who had promised to get us and our cycles safe passage on a bus from Mahabaleshwar to Mumbai. He needed advance notice to get things done. Following that conversation and a visit to the ATM, we settled into a steady grind, cycling up the ghat road from Poladpur. We took stops to hydrate, liberally. At one place where we sat down to rest, we watched several people on expensive motorcycles go by. A couple of them waved at us. I must say – the non-motorized felt nice, at being acknowledged. Woohoo – we exist!

Late in the evening, we stopped for tea at a small teashop, approximately 20 kilometres uphill. As we sipped tea, a group of men assembled there enquired where we were headed and what our plan was. We asked if there were teashops further ahead. For some reason, they said no and advised us to push on as Mahabaleshwar was no more than 25 kilometres away and in their estimation, we would be there in no time. I heard my soul of mid-fifties age, laugh. Either they didn’t know what cycling with load felt like or in that inevitable, unsaid competition among men to be manlier than others around, the next 25 kilometres had to be nothing less than easy. Our butts were actually sore from long hours on the saddle and our legs were aching. I had no difficulty being less manly. And it was clearly late evening. It seemed a wise decision to find a place to camp. There was some open space a little away from the teashop. We asked if we may spend the night there and avail the services of the teashop for dinner and breakfast. However, by now the menfolk were gone and the lady who managed the shop seemed a bit uncomfortable with the suggestion. So, cups of tea had and our bottles refilled with water, we cycled on hoping that we might find a clearing ahead.

Not long after we left the teashop and somewhere past the milestone formally indicating 25 kilometres left for Mahabaleshwar, at a sharp turning on the road, we encountered the small shack run by Rahul Dhovale and his wife. As I drew close to the shack, Rahul immediately invited us to sit down for tea. I asked him if it would be a bother if the two of us slept in the shack. Early next morning we would be off. Without fail. Not only did Rahul say yes to our staying there but he and his wife also gave us two rounds of lime juice and a pot full of poha for dinner and breakfast. We paid him for everything in advance. The shack was on the edge of a precipice falling off into a valley. At the broad end of the valley, the sky turned scarlet over the Konkan plains as the sun slowly set. With darkness setting in, Rahul and his wife cleaned up the small shack, packed their belongings and left for their house in a nearby village. We had the shack to ourselves. There was no electricity. It was now pitch dark. We used headlamps minimally to avoid drawing attention.

The shack was an interesting experience. Located as it was on a turning, on the busy ghat road to Mahabaleshwar, the headlights of vehicles plying up and down shone through the frail green fabric serving as the shack’s walls. The headlights barrelled towards us at eye level as we were lying on the floor, before veering off. The road was intimately near; one sensed what roadside actually meant. I thought of the many people living so. To save weight in the pannier bags, I had traded my sleeping mat for a thin plastic sheet. It clung to the cold floor like a passionate lover and in the process, let every inch of the terribly uneven surface poke my back. Somehow, none of that mattered. I was tired and the shack felt notoriously secretive as nobody passing by would guess that there were two cyclists within. Rahul had told us to keep the cycles inside the shack and should anyone nosey come around, tell them that we had Rahul’s permission to stay there. What impressed me particularly was Rahul’s description of the weather. “ It will be comfortable for some time even after the sun goes down. Then a wind will start blowing and step by step, it will get chilly,’’ he had said. He was spot on. That wind woke me up a few times in the night. It was chilly but not terribly cold. Enough though to make me toss and turn in the light sleeping bag. Meanwhile my relation with vehicular traffic had touched a new dimension. On the narrow and busy ghat road, one side a precipice and the other carved into the rock face, we soon discovered, it was near impossible to even take a leak without being caught by a passing headlight. In age of social media and photos thoughtlessly uploaded, that’s the last thing one wants.

Late in the night, a vehicle full of noisy people parked close to the shack. One or two of them, seemed drunk. We stayed quiet. But somebody saw the cycles kept within and stumbled towards the shack. The light from his mobile phone outed the two cyclists. We thought we would have to reproduce the quotes Rahul had told us to – that we had permission. But it turned out to be one of the men from the teashop we had stopped at before reaching the shack. “ Hey, it is our cyclists,” he said to the others, laughing. He asked if we had eaten, were feeling alright and wished us a good night’s sleep, for we were guests in the area. Then he stumbled back to the car. The engine fired up and the vehicle’s lights disappeared down the road in a fading riot of inebriated chatter.    

Early next morning, I stirred out of my sleeping bag and wishing to take a leak, headed to the rock face-side of the road where a ditch existed that may shield me from the lights of oncoming traffic. I didn’t have my specs on and it was only after my right foot was suspended above the ditch and going in that I realized it was deeper than I estimated. What should have been a simple case of stepping down, quickly evolved into an angular fall and as I dropped, my head was whacked by a jutting overhang on the adjacent rock face. I saw stars. There was burning pain and I knew in an instant that I had cut myself and was bleeding. I landed on my feet and saw dark droplets from my head, stain the soil. Miraculously our fortunes held. I had a pretty comprehensive first aid kit. We quickly cleaned up the wound with water and antiseptic, applied an antibiotic cream and bandaged it. With helmet on, the bandages seemed held in place. We cycled the remaining 25 kilometres to Mahabaleshwar, pausing for well earned cups of tea at a hotel near the entrance to Pratapgad fort.

The high points of this final leg of the journey were two. First there was a place, another turning on the road with a seemingly abandoned teashop planted right there, where the early morning view of the Maharashtra Sahyadri was absolutely lovely. It was fantastic, taking a break here in that mix of chilly ambiance and the sun’s first rays. A distant ridge or two glowed like McKenna’s gold while a December blue graced the hill geography overall. The second high point was just outside Mahabaleshwar town when very close to where we elected to rest for a few minutes, a pair of giant squirrels appeared and spent time clambering up and down trees. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. What a way to be welcomed to Mahabaleshwar!

By around noon on December 16, we were in Mahabaleshwar proper and cups of tea had, cleaning our bicycles just outside a spacious hotel room we had checked into. I dispatched my final set of pictures to B and her father. I generally avoid measurement and Prashant who likes math and does measure, had lost his phone. So, we estimate, roughly, that the total distance covered was around 300 kilometres. Later that afternoon, I headed to the local government hospital to get a tetanus injection and have my wound inspected. When I showed the wound to the nurse and told her that I wanted a tetanus shot, she scolded me for not having come earlier. I felt impressed – she scolded me because I hadn’t shown a head injury promptly, I thought. Wow! Turned out, she wanted me to go and come back later. I then made my way to a medical store in the market place where the elderly owner directed me to Dr Jangam, whose practice was just down the road. “ He is my doctor too,’’ the gentleman said. The good doctor gave me a tetanus shot and an antibiotic ointment, different from the one I had in my first aid kit. Later that day, we treated ourselves to strawberry and cream and visits to the Mapro (food products) showroom and Elsie’s Dairy & Bakery, close to 175 years old.

Back in Mumbai, Ravi kept his word. Next morning we had seats on a bus from Mahabaleshwar to Mumbai. It was the conventional Indian tourist experience, people with several pieces of luggage per head. And more in tune with character – talking loudly, singing and eating. And they were adults, of my age and older. Maybe travel makes children of us all. As we departed Mahabaleshwar, our thoughts were with the bicycles in the boot. They are sturdy and fragile at once. Few realize this apart from cyclists. At Panchgani, I gazed out of the bus window and dutifully remembered Freddie Mercury, who went to school there. Somewhere near Wai, I slept off and when I woke up, I was startled to see, backlit by the sun, the profile of the man seated across the aisle – the profile looked so much like Alfred Hitchcock’s; eyes closed, contemplating the next scene to shoot. I looked around to see if there was a Cary Grant, Grace Kelly or a James Stewart also in the bus. Nope. It was director minus his favourite actors.

The bus made good time, rationed stops along the way and by around 4 PM was in Navi Mumbai. Despite Ravi’s request and our own for safe transport of the cycles, we found in Navi Mumbai that people had not only dumped luggage on top of them but someone had also tried to remove the rear wheel of my bike possibly in an effort to move things around. I guess that’s the price we will keep paying as long as existence in India is imagined by those with no empathy for the physically active lifestyle. And yet, there are glorious exceptions – I won’t forget the old Muslim gentleman at the petrol pump near Khopoli who gave me confidence when I faltered, the young woman near Tamini Ghat who asked us about our journey, Joshi and his friends who helped us in Nizampur, Rahul from a village near Mahabaleshwar, who said yes without hesitation to two travellers staying in his shack and even the motorcyclists who waved at us. Bless them all.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)