Malshej Ghat - Prince of Sahyadri's - Dry during January

Bull 350

My Experiment with Aperture for DOF

I was getting a hang of my camera and I wanted to go click click click. This itch led me to conceptualize a ride to Malshej Ghat. Lonavla was my first option which was eliminated point blank as it was the most common weekend attack site for Mumbaikars and Punekars alike. My head drafted this idea on a Thursday and hence didn't give much time for my mouth to shout and gather a group. My head meanwhile thought and made me arrange a Bullet Classic 350 (Thanks to Willi's friend's work trip to Gujarat, leaving the Bull unattended). Shwetha always pestered me for a ride on a Bullet, so that opened up the gates for my companion and meant an approved seal for the Sunday Ride.

I  knew that the way to Malshej Ghat was via Kalyan and Murbad and that its about 150 kms from Sion. Equipped with this knowledge and CamSin (aka my DSLR...read it like the Hindi word kamsin ;-)) I rushed to pick Shwetha from Aarey, Goregaon. She was on time (one of those days) and off the Bull ran towards the Eastern Express highway. It was cold. The cold air was somehow managing to enter my jacket without permission and piercing my skin like a needle. Did that deter me? - No way!! 

Hold on -Thinking about how Shwetha was managing? - she claims to be cold blooded - so you get the point.

Chai tym

We rode about 90 km's non stop to reach just ahead of Murbad and took our first break for tea and a vadapav. Getting the stuck needles out of my skin under the pretext of this stop felt like 'Raymond's suiting'...wonder why? Remember 'feels like heaven' :-D. - I know, I know, I have a good sense of humor.

After about an hour from here, just when the ghat road was opening up to the Bull, a check post slowed me down and the cop waved at me - not a good morning gesture but a 'let me check you' gesture. Luckily I hadn't left the bike papers at home and there was no drama except that it broke my rhythm. The best part about the ride towards Malshej Ghat are these meandering sloppy roads. May be I am not able to explain this in words. Please see the second pic of the blog to understand this better (One of the clicks I liked in this trip). 

The roads all this while were great, no complaints uttered in my mind until I reached this curve which was riddled with these small stones and pebbles. It was a difficult attempt to control my bike from skidding here. From here for another kilometer, the tar was fresh, probably only laid in the morning and this was confirmed when I saw a couple of bulldozers parked.

We reached the peak at about 11. To my disbelief, all the waterfalls were dried up. As if all of them were on strike against the Congress led Maharashtra Government asking them to save the wild or may be the nation (a bigger objective). The mountains looked dry. No greenery. Very unlike the Malshej ghat I have seen during the monsoon's. The sun was so bright that I wasn't getting good exposure for my shots. 

The Prince of Sahyadri's looked like a poor sheikh with dried oil wells by his side - This is analogy at its best.

View from MTDC

Nevertheless I did try a few shots before we rode to the MTDC resort, may be a kilometer ahead of a small tunnel at the peak of Malshej Ghat. There is a nice view point from here overlooking the mountains amidst which is Harishchandra Gadh. The resort is quite big and a part of it is still under construction. We had our breakfast here. Omlette pav and Missile pav (I mean misal pav) followed by chai. Post the tummy filling session and a few poses as a rich shetkari (farmer), we left towards the lake on the way to Shivneri (we couldn't go to Shivneri this time which is about 40 kms away from Malshej). Our first attempt to get down towards the lake turned adventurous as the path was steep and rock laden. My bull gave up and I had to balance myself to stop it from kissing the rocks. I calculated that its a risk not worth taking and I came back up like a dirt biker - Ahem!. We searched for another way through a village and finally reached the lake. It was so calm and peaceful that Shwetha almost rented a small hut for herself and few goats for company and livelihood. But then, yeah, she came back to reality.

My Assignment - Panning

I rode back to the peak for fulfilling some photography assignments. My friend Biju had asked me to try Panning and play around with histograms for exposure. Panning is a trick of photography which freezes a moving subject while putting the background in motion. After about 10 shots, I got it right.. yippee! I was really excited. And thats what I like about this hobby of Photography - when you click something good, you feel great about yourself.

When it was time to move on, I realized that my SLR's lens cap was missing. One of us dropped it somewhere. So we thought of a novel idea and traced our steps back..I mean traced our wheels back till the lake. For any guesses of the result - NO is your word. We couldn't fathom the fact that we were so careless. Then my classy brain got into act and took Shwetha's hand-kerchief to cover the lens and put her hair band across to hold the hanky - So unique and prompt. Problem solved, off we left.

On the way back, we halted at quite a few places for capturing some shots. I did get some good ones as you can see from the ones I have posted. Of course the pics could have been better if I would have controlled the exposure better. But its a continuous learning and I am glad I am at it.

It was 4 pm when we stopped for lunch at a hotel just at the outskirts of Kalyan. It was a pure veg restaurant if we were to go by the banner outside had to say but the menu inside had a different story to tell. Prawns Biryani and Masala papad made way to pacify our growling stomach followed by malai kulfi. For Kalyan this place seemed to be the Taj ;-). I expected a lot of traffic inside Kalyan city but to our good luck there wasn't any and we rode out quite easily. I wanted to take a shot of the Thane city at sun set, but we couldn't get a good location to stop and explore this.

Our last stop was for chai but this time at CCD, Powai.
340 km's in about 10 hours was our coverage value and I must say it was swift and fun.

Gaonwale Uncle

Helmet me