C.O.P.S ride to Lavasa

Lavasa, a very known destination for many riders. It is a planned city built 55kms away from Pune. It is inspired by an Italian town called Portofino with a street and several buildings bearing the name of the town. Some streets are also named after ornament plants like Thicket and Celosia. 

This was our selected location for this Sunday. This is also our location when we need to ride short distance but ride through great patches and corners. Another such location is Ambey Valley.  Last two weekend, we rode on two highways, so this sunday we planned to go to a location where we could enjoy the mountains. Our meeting point was Chandini chowk at 6:15 am. Chandini Chowk is situated in Pune on the Mumbai-Bangalore highway. Usually when we ride, we refuel our bikes on the way but on this ride, because there are only two petrol stations on our way, we tank up the night before. We did meet up at the scheduled time but we had to start at 7am as some of our riders came a bit late. The entire journey, from the start point all the way to Lavasa, is mountainous with all sorts of corners like tight corners, left handers and right handers etc. Monsoon makes it even more enjoyable.

The traffic was quite low as it was early. We ride frequently on this road hence all the corners, roads and even the pot holes are engraved in our minds. This makes it easier to ride. The only obstacle on this road was the larger than usual speed breakers. They are not even speed breakers but massive bumps on the road! It's ludicrous. Because of this, we have to keep fluctuating our speed. 

After around 40 kms, we come across Temghar Dam. We reach Lavarde village. After passing the village there is an immediate turn to the left and we are welcomed by the stunning view of the dam. The sun was rising and that made the view even more brilliant. Approximately 15 kms away is Lavasa City. 

    Courtesy: Google Images 

There is a retreat at the location called Ekant. It is owned by Lavasa. Ekant is strategically placed on the cliff from where we could see the Warasgaon water body and the whole of Lavasa city. The breakfast there starts at 8am so we had to wait because we reached a bit early. They serve a 3 star menu buffet with veg and non veg food items and a range of salads all in Rs.600/-. We served ourselves a good portion, and sat at the table with a scenic view discussing about the ride and about rappelling which we will be doing after two weekends. Quite excited for that.

    COPS Team Members

We took some pictures, enjoyed the scenery a bit more and left for Pune. We rode through the beautiful road and reached Chandini chowk and rode our separate ways to go home. Everyone loved the ride as it was more relaxed than our usual ones and also, all the riders love their corners.

This coming weekend, we are riding to Goa! We start on friday and return on Sunday. It is one of the most anticipated ride so stay tuned for all the pictures and details.

C.O.P.S ride this weekend

Another great Sunday ride. And like promised, we explored a few other places that you must visit whether you're a rider or just a traveller. We Pune folks are quite blessed as our city is strategically placed in the Western Ghats amongst some popular green locations and mountains. We often have a lot of options available to us for a day out with family or friends especially during monsoon. If you haven't explored the ghats yet, this blog will help you know more about it. 

The route

We met at Ambegoan, which happens to be our frequent meeting point, at 6:15 am. We decided our route a day in advance. We left from Ambegoan and started on NH4 which is a straight patch of really good roads. We halted for a fuel stop on this highway before resuming our ride. This road is also very familiar to us since we ride on this highway very often. The monsoon, cloudy sky and cool breeze made this highway even more enjoyable. We rode on it upto 80 kms until we reached Wai Phata (diversion) like planned. From the diversion, we took a right turn towards Mahabaleshwar.

 After riding 7 kms further on the road, we took another right turn towards Mandhar Devi. If we had not taken that turn, we would have reached Mahabaleshwar which was not our destination for this weekend. We covered a distance of 20 kms on the ghats to reach the Mandhar devi Plateau. Mandhardevi is located on the hill 4,650 feet above sea level. The title of the land is in the name of Lord Mandeshwar and Kaleshwari Devi. This plateau is absolutely breathtaking. From  the plateau, we could see Mahabaleshwar rest on top of the mountain and beneath was the vast Lake Dhom. It was a picturesque view. From the other side of the Plateau one can see Bhatghar Dam. We could also see the entire road of 20kms that we had covered to reach this spot. It is quite unusual as on most ghats, we cannot see the entire way. We sat there and discussed of every corner and moment by recreating the ride in our mind. It was quite surreal. 

    On our way to Mandhar Devi

    The view of the road that we rode on to get on the plateau

    Lake Dhom

We left Mandhar devi Plateau after clicking some memories to share with you all. We started our journey from the other side of the Plateau which was 30kms until we reached the main road again. We rode upto and past Bhor city and reached Kapurhol. The roads from Bhor city to kapurhol was parallel to the river Yelwandi that we could see from the plateau. We also rode past the Bhatgar dam which was mammoth.   

The weather made the entire journey  enjoyable. We road on the Kapurhol road until we reached the junction where this road joined the NH4. We got back on the highway and started our return journey towards Pune. It was one big loop that we had covered. We reached our decided spot in Pune, briefly discussed our experience and went home.

 It was a great ride. And for most of our riders, some of the destinations were new as they had never ridden there. We all loved it and can't wait for the next Sunday.

To view the route,  click here