[El Rajmachi! Thats the closest I will come to naming something in a way which even remotely sounds spanish!]

Enosh and the Comet on a bed of fresh meadow flowers

After a long break I was finally able to go out and do something I’ve been waiting to do for some time now. Take the Comet out for a spin. The rains have arrived in their full glory and the transformation of the countryside is complete. Green Absolutely rules the season. Everything is so green that we have had to tone it down a bit in some photographs!!

The view from the top of the mountain near 'The Upper Deck' near Lonavla was something to behold. The first eager morning clouds were getting ready to roll over the low lying mountains in their quest for getting higher

Wrap me a blanket of clouds!

One place that i was really looking forward to explore was Rajmachi, beyond Lonavla. As a rookie manager on my first job after MBA we had come here as management trainees and gone through an ‘outbound’ training. Fun times. But i was always mesmerised by the view that lay just beyond Kaptan’s, the resort that we had stayed at. This time we decided to explore. As soon as we had moved about 500 mtrs beyond the place we came across this amazing vista. We knew straight away this ride was going to be interesting. Riding with me on this ride was Enosh, a seasoned wing rider and an ace photographer.

living on the edge of reality [featuring Enosh

Rajmachi made for some really amazing riding conditions. We were literally riding through ankle deep rivulets of fast flowing water and the road (or whatever was left of it) was just to ensure we didnt get lost. The jungle canopy and overcast conditions really made for scary sections at some points.

deep forest. The term took new meaning. (Photo credit: Enosh)

There was this one spot where we were perched on top of a waterfall ( yes, on top) which was particularly scenic and we indulged in a lot of photography there. Some of the underwater videos i made in the stream flowing there will be featuring on these pages in the near future. The pentax was actually coming into its element. I also figured out a way to take better videos with the camera attached to the tripod and dipped way below the surface of the water.

For some reason, I felt this would be a good pose. -Photo credit: Enosh

Field of biker's dreams...

Licensed to Chill... summed it up pretty nicely. thats the valley at least 400 feet deep at my feet!- (Photo credit - Enosh)

The wind and the mist were playing games like it it was nobody else’s business and the kind of photo opportunities it created was something else. The mist caught in the needles of a bare bush or the juxtaposition of a long dead tree braving it alone in the foreground while a clump of trees stood cloaked in a cloud on the next ridge.  Some of these images were just magical and I’m sure even my photographs do no justice to the real beauty and ambience that was there to behold.

needles pushing to puncture the clouds

the old, withering, dies away while the new gets a nurturing blanket

One wrong move or you try going too fast in the mist and it's downhill derby for you!

There was an interesting twist to the whole story. i remember Enosh gasping in awe at the first sight of the valley.  he was sure that we had stumbled on to ‘virgin’ territory. After riding through the streams of ankle deep water, he was absolutely positive the rest of the world was waiting to ‘dicsover’ Rajmachi as explored by us. The first semblance of a doubt crept in when we were just beyond the waterfall. We had just negotiated a very tricky section of the road full of sticky red slush which clogged our tyres and mudguards. We would have patted ourselves on our backs for negotiating such a tricky section but then a TVS victor with a missing front mudguard being ridden by not one or two, but 3 locals simply powered its way through the same slush as if to make a mockery of us. Hmmm, interesting. Not so ‘virgin’ after all.

This was just the beginning. A few minutes later, a Toyota Qualis MUV filled to the seams with the typical lonavla weekend khakhra munching crowd ambled along and passed us as if it was business as usual. and then another Tata Sumo vehicle. We were beginning to wonder whether the mist had cleverly kept hidden from us some secret approach road which these vehicles had taken to reach there so comfortably.

Never mind, we said, these drivers must be pros. What was seemingly the last straw was what we witnessed on our way back. A group of three couples was huffing it up the trail that we had just come from. but wait, thats not all, guess what theyre lugging with them on the trail? two trams with small kids. Enosh and I definitely werent feeling like explorers anymore. Little did we know the last nail in our coffin was yet to come.

Just as we were adjusting to these shocks we ran into,…. wait for it…. Two busloads of the touristy kind of people very highly likely to assault you with ‘paan’ from their high perch in the bus almost side-swiped us in a high altitude traffic jam. Tearing our helmets in disbelief we simply left the scene as fast as we could. When we discussed this episode later, we had sworn never to go back to Rajmachi on a weekend unless we really had no other option.

All said and done , being there early and being the first few people to see the splendour of Rajmachi felt great and we also got some good footage and pics. What more could you ask for! Signing off with this pic of the stream taken with a half submerged camera and Enosh squaring off in front of the Comet’s headlights.

Thanks for stopping by, do let me know what you liked most about El Rajmachi!!!

The lower half of the pic actually shows the bubbles of the stream formed underwater

Headlight headshot

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