Trip to Lonavala

26/7/2006, a date which no Mumbaikar will ever forget. It was a day when it rained, rained, rained and then rained much much more. It kept on raining, and it just didn't stop. For some it proved fatal, for others fateful, but it proved to be something significant for everyone.

Do events repeat themselves? I read in "The Alchemist" that if a thing happens just once, it will never happen again. But if anything happens twice, it will happen for the third time. The catch here is, we never know if an event is going to occur the second time or not.

And then 26/7 became a thing of past, something which every Mumbaikar has a story about, something to remember every monsoon, something to relive every time Dadar stn and Sion circle floods.

Well anyways:

This Sunday our class decided to go on a trip to Lonavala. Nothing novel in that you might say, after all half of Mumbai and Pune bathes in Bushi dam every Sunday. We were all gonna go on two wheelers, using the old Mumbai-Pune highway, the NH-4. I was gonna meet up the gang at Lonavala since I was reaching there from Mumbai while the others were coming from Pune. This is a trip which has been undertaken by people umpteen number of times, there are two wheeler groups like us every Sunday reaching for Lonavala.

So in such a mundane trip, to such a popular and heavily visited location, using time tested modes of transport, what can possibly go wrong????

Everything under the sun and beyond, as it turned out in our case.

Since I was traveling to Lonavala alone for the first time, I had instructions to report my coordinates every hour, only thing my cellphone was stone dead. Battery completely discharged. None the less I reached Khopoli without anything particular happening. Here I called up home, said I was starting the ghats now. Then I called up the folks at Pune (Ashwin). Apparently one of the girls (Pradnya) scooty had a punctured tire. So that's it, I thought, they are easily gonna be late by an hour. I started the climb and reached Lonavala in 40 minutes. I called up home, then I again called up the Pune folks (Anil this time), puncture repaired, well on the way. Good, seemed as if they would make it pretty soon I thought. Little did I know that two of the other girls (Sonal and Satpreet) had got loose motions (though Satpreet claims to have controlled the urge, which according to me is not the smartest thing to do!!). So I entered a restaurant, did my chai-nashta. Talked to a few trekkers, got to know from the paan wala that all networks except of idea were down in Lonavala. Now what, so I called up Pune folks again (Anil), where are u guys (rkdkbkj,pcr,acp and other nonprintables!!). Well we are still on the road will reach in half an hour guarantee. OK I thought. So I went into A1 chikki. Took out my wallet. Tasted choclate fudge, coconut fudge, different types of chikki till the guy came to know I wasn't gonna buy anything. So I had to leave. Now what, they should be here any minute now, I thought. So I called them up again (Ashwin), now I was seriously running short of chillar to call these people up from the PCO. Well they had been caught by the police without licenses and some (Nilesh) had turned back to get the licenses. DAMN. I decided to go towards Pune and meet them half way. Luckily for me these people were only about 5-10 minutes from where I was waiting. And FINALLY I met these people. Here I came to know that one of the bikes had run out of petrol (Nilesh), one of the other bikes would stall if it went slower than 30kmph (Suraj+Anil), and these people had stopped in between for samosa and drinks and what not. We asked Suraj and Anil to proceed to Bushi dam since their bike was stalling.

We proceeded towards Bushi dam after having tea only to encounter traffic, people and drunk people. Progress was excruciatingly slow. What would have been 5 min drive took half an hour, that too on 2 wheelers. There were just too many people. And all of a sudden every one stopped. Dead stop, not a single vehicle was moving, something had happened ahead. And soon it became apparent as we saw a Skoda stuck into a truck. A fight was going on. Out of nowhere a group of drunks turned up, started shouting and the crowd started beating the driver of the Skoda. He is not going to visit Lonavala ever again that much I am sure of. Soon enough the Skoda moved, we decided to park nearby and just head into the nearest waterfall.

And while we were climbing Pradnya had a great fall, so great in fact that she chipped her front tooth. And two of her upper front teeth came loose. One down. More will go down, don't worry!! Guess who was next?? None other than yours truly, and how!! I went down in style, a drop of 15 feet almost. I was doing hero giri up a water fall and the rock surface was slippery due to all the algae, and all of a sudden I lost grip and I knew then I was going down. And I slid down onto a few rocks, luckily I could break my fall with my legs which in turn got badly bruised. For the rest of the trip I was pretty docile!!

Next to go down was Dhiraj, and if it was possible in more style than me!. His record was a straight 25 feet down another waterfall higher up, his antics were in fact so bad that if he had not broken his fall by grabbing a rock we would have found his half dead body in the parking lot below. So much for stunts!!

Enough accidents we decided. And it was getting late. So we decided to turn back considering Pradnya's now drastically changed oral topology and the rain which was by now pouring. We all were totally soaked, chilled to the bone and facing a ride back to Pune in wet underwears.

However all of us were scattered here and there. When we finally regrouped we saw that one of the bikes was missing (Umakant's)!! OH damn. But then Umakant was also nowhere to be seen. Where the hell did he go?? He was definitely up there on the waterfalls with us. And that's when it struck us that Suraj and Anil had gone to Bushi dam where we never reached. We called up Umakant, he would not pick up the calls, we called up Anil, he would not pick up his calls either (Later we came to know Anil's cell was with Umakant, and as i write this Anil's cell is still with Umakant only). And Suraj's cell was with Pranav (Who was with us and who also had Praveen's cell, point to remember at a later point in the day, not much of which was left btw). So Suraj and Anil did not have their wallets, did not have their cellphones and had a bike which was faulty. Bad.

Anyways we decided to start our return journey then without Umakant, Suraj and Anil. Because of the traffic Nilesh's, Pranav's and Praveen's bikes got separated from the rest of the group. When we finally regrouped where we had tea in the morning (afternoon actually), Praveen and Rajnish were missing. And Praveen's cell and wallet were with Pranav. And Rajnish's cell was also with Ashwin. So these two were totally non-communicable (is that a word?). Well so we had 5 missing!!

Man this trip was turning out to be eventful. Somehow, as if by providential intervention, nothing happened on the highway and we reached Akurdi, still no sign of the missing 5. Here some decided it was better to eat cause we were famished by this time, it was night and drizzling. While we were going to the restaraunt, Modak took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere else altogether. We had to wait till he turned up, after we finally called him up and gave the right directions. Here I ran out of petrol. But thankfully my reserve tank was full, so no worries for at least 30 more kms. When we eventually reached the restaurant, it was getting really late and Pradnya wanted to get home fast (obviously her new smile being the reason). Some people did not want to eat, others just wanted to get home. So we left for university. On the way, as if my antics in the day were not enough, I hit a cycle wala who was attempting to cross the road in the dead of the night in front of the car ahead of me, which is why of course I did not see him, well he didn't get hurt, nor did it leave so much as a scratch on my scooter, though I am sure he will have to replace his rear rim and serves him right.

We reached university in another twenty minutes or so. The one restaurant where we went was full so we had to wait, in the meantime me and Ashwin had 3 dabelis each since we were hungry.

Still no sign of the missing 5. When we finally got a table and ordered, out of nowhere Rajnish and Praveen turn up. Apparently they were in front of our whole group and in fact had reached before us. Next the dinner came and so did Suraj and Anil!! They had reached Bushi dam before the Skoda accident and had fun there. And had come back. And just as we were thinking that at least we did not have any really bad accident they told us that they had skid at a speed of 50kmph. It is really a miracle how neither Suraj nor Anil was injured and the bike which was already faulty still worked after the fall, especially when we consider that neither of them had their cellphones or wallets with them!! We now called up Umakant and he finally answered, he had to reach Pune by 7 so he had left us at 5 itself without telling anyone, the bloody dunderhead that he is. And so the missing 5 were accounted for.

While eating we were just recalling all the things that had happened, we had punctured tires, people having loose motions, people falling from waterfalls, breaking their teeth in the process, people vanishing, going missing, going out of contact, accidents, bikes running out of petrol, licenses being misplaced, being caught by police, plus all the riding in the cold, wet conditions that too on empty stomachs, and we all were in a pretty pensive mood thinking that such a hell lot had happened when Pranav said the one thing that shocked me to the core.

Today's date was 26/7/2009.