Planning the trip

It was around 2 AM when suddenly I got a message from my friend to come online. We decided to go for a short road trip… thanks to Facebook updates on mobile which woke me up ;). With only 3 hours of sleep, we were supposed to start early at around 6:30 AM towards Durshet. Where is it? What are the things to see? I was not at all sure about that… the only thing I knew was that I have not been on a trip for quite some time now and I was bored with my daily routine.

As usual, the excitement of a trip woke me up before time and I was ready by 6:30 AM. Now the only thing was whether I would feel sleepy or not. I and my friends met at my place Sanpada, Navi Mumbai and we started our journey – “Destination Durshet”.

The journey

The journey from Sanpada to Panvel was quite normal. We stopped at one petrol pump for the regular tire pressure check up and fuel top up. I guess when you are making plans at around 2 AM, this is the only time when you can do a final check on your bike’s condition and decide whether all is well.

We stopped at the Panvel junction for our breakfast – missal paw and tea. The food was tasty and we were hungry. After the refreshment, the real journey started. There are two routes to Durshet, one via the NH17 which goes to Goa. And the other one via NH4. We took the NH4 route because it has dividers and overtaking is not a problem, unlike NH17 where you are always facing traffic from the front.

Cruising at around 80, it took us not more than 20 to minutes to reach Khopoli from where we took a right turn towards Pen. Overall the road condition was good except for few places where we came across big potholes. The road is beautiful with trees and farms on both sides of the road. We could see the sun rays falling on the road when it could find a path between the dense trees and those sights were awesome.

Our first stop

Our first stop was a small little village before Durshet. We asked a few people about the things which we can see there. But, we didn’t get any convincing answers. So what, we decided to explore the place on our own. And with time we have realized that there are a lot of unexplored places at very well known spots. It’s just that you need to take the pain and chance of going to a place and explore it.

The road to the village was a real challenge. The so-called road was nothing but red coloured sand. But, it didn’t stop us. For about 10 minutes we had a real battle with the road. But when the smooth road came, we were all coated with dust.

After crossing the point, what we saw was the best spot of the whole tour. It was a small little pond and we were able to spot a lot of migratory birds and that forced us to stop and take a few snaps. We explored them from every angle and I guess even the birds didn’t mind us taking pictures. After exploring the whole places and spending around half an hour shooting birds we moved ahead. We asked a few local people about things that might interest us, but I guess there was not much to see and so after about 10 km we decided to go back.

Plan for lunch

We had ample of time and crave to travel more, so we started towards Alibagh. It took us about an hour to get there. Our only reason to go to Alibagh was to have a nice lunch at “Samadhan” restaurant which serves amazing “bhakri ki roti” and “malvani chicken”. The place was full as usual and we had to wait for some time to get our seats. Finally, we got the reward for our waiting… and we all enjoyed it.

After the lunch, we were packed and so decided it was the right time to set off on our journey back home. This time, we took the NH4. Nothing interesting happened on our way back except for two little breaks for water and those comedy monkeys near Karnala bird sanctuary who always find new ways to entertain visitors.

We had a touch down well before the sunset and after a small break near my home, rest of my friends started their journey home through the busy traffic of Mumbai.