A day’s ride to Shrivardhan.
So this is a small article for those who plan to ride to Shrivardhan from Pune.
The route is 170km long and goes something like this. Pune -> Tamhini -> Mangaon -> Shrivardhan. It takes a good 3–4 hours to ride it up depending on the speed of the riders. A few parts of the road are really bad and did take a toll on my bike(YZF-R15). Fuel costs around 500 bucks for a round trip and I highly recommend fueling up with Shell V-Power petrol. Your engine will run much smoother on it.
We departed at 06:00AM and reached Tamhini fairly quick. At around 7:30AM. Here are a few pictures of the place.
So we headed on and took a stop for breakfast at Orchid resort. We had a buffet for Rs. 150/plate and like true Indians, made the most of it. After a heavy breakfast we departed and without any further stops reached Shrivardhan at around 11:00AM. We had to ride a little on the beach to reach the place where we would spend the next couple of hours and have lunch. Unfortunately I cannot recall the name of the place. So moving on, here are a few pictures of Shrivardhan. The beach isn’t the cleanest nor the most remote, with quite a lot of people playing cricket or enjoying water sports.
So after resting for a couple of hours and having lunch, we moved on to our next destination, Diveagar. This beach was remote and absolutely devoid of people. It was very peaceful and a really good place to just sit and enjoy the breeze.
We headed back soon after clicking a few more pictures and we had a decision to make, we could either take the longer but safer route through Mahabaleshwar or we could stick with the route we came by with a little more risk involved. We had a rider who was on his second ride and wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of riding an extra 50–60 km on the way back. We convinced him and soon were back on the road. After reaching Mangaon things got really bad for my friend. He was absolutely exhausted and it didn’t look like he could ride the extra miles. So we decided to take the Tamhini route again. Before that we all had a can of red bull. Trust me, it really does gives you wings. And we rode back in one stretch without any stops. Reached home at around 8:00PM.
It was a lot of fun and we got to see beautiful scenery. It is worth it as a one day trip. the roads need a lot of improvement though. Tamhini ghats are unpredictable and corners exits end up becoming corner entries. It is huge fun though and an ideal place to visit on a Sunday as a getaway.
