Down the Monsoon Coast: Gujarat to Goa | K2K Part 4

By Udaipur the cold was a distant thing and the heat had us. What we did not yet know was that neither would define this stretch. The next twelve days belonged to the rain. From Udaipur we crossed into Gujarat, dropped down to Daman and Mumbai, fixed a bike that kept falling apart in Pune, and rode into Goa, where the monsoon simply took over.

It was 1,656 km of wet roads, and some of the best of them on the whole trip. Here is how it went.

A day off in Udaipur

Udaipur got a slow day, the kind where I did not wake until noon. The plan was Sajjangarh, the palace on the hill, but first there was breakfast in the nearby market, where we ordered a Rajasthani thali that turned out to be a waste of money and almost flavourless. The only thing on the plate I liked was the sweet.

The palace itself was not really worth the ride up or the ticket, but doing something beat doing nothing. After a bit of work and dinner the day was gone. I did not even drink that night. I just did not feel like it.

Across Gujarat to Daman

We left Udaipur at eleven with sweets and half a shop strapped to the bikes. Aditya needed a service and Pankaj had a relative and a meeting waiting, so the day ran in a hurry from the start. Pankaj took charge of the route and pulled us off the main highway once Rajasthan ended, onto roads that were either the worst kind or torn up for construction. It is easy to blame the government for that, but it was Pankaj who had steered us off the good bypasses.

We stopped for lunch near Gandhinagar and found the menu entirely in Gujarati, which meant a fair bit of guessing before the food arrived. In Ahmedabad, Pankaj peeled off to his relative while Aditya and I went to the Jawa service centre, where I sat in an air-conditioned room and worked through approvals, the most relaxing hour in days. Pankaj rejoined us and booked what became the worst hotel of the trip so far. That evening we met his friend, Pooja, at Dakshinayam, worked through several kinds of dosa, and gave Pankaj plenty of grief before heading back to sleep.

The rain proper began the next morning. We left Ahmedabad at ten for Daman, where Aditya’s friend Imran was expecting us, and somewhere along the way I realised my rain pants were missing from my luggage. I was soaked from top to bottom, navigating in it, eating breakfast in it, with no idea this was only the opening of weeks of the same.

Imran had a hotel sorted by the time we rolled into Daman that evening, so all we had to do was check in. I bathed, hung my clothes to dry, and worked. He came by after ten, fed us well, and took us out to see Daman, which is a genuinely beautiful place I would go back to. We were in by midnight, and I slept on a spare mattress on the floor better than I had in days.

Mumbai in the monsoon

Imran fed us once more before we left, a crunchy plate of vada pav and small samosas and something I never got the name of, then showed us Daman in daylight before we set off for Thane around two, straight back into heavy rain. Two or three hours of it later we reached Thane and Aditya’s friend Prathmesh, who was waiting at a CCD. We met a stream of people there, most of them amazed that we were doing this on bikes, and ended up working out of the cafe before Prathmesh handed us the keys to his 1BHK for the night.

Another of Aditya’s friends, Suhasini, came by for the meetup too, and after a good evening of talk and a ride around town we landed at the flat, ordered food, dried everything out, and slept. The following morning had one real job: rain gear. It was pouring hard enough that nobody wanted to ride, so we booked an Ola to Decathlon and bought what we needed, Pankaj staying back and sending his order along with Aditya. Suhasini then pulled us into a small tour of Thane’s food, brownies first, then vada pav and pav bhaji and samosa pav, and when she had to leave for the hospital where her mother was, she dropped us for panipuri and a daberi we never found, settling for papdi chaat instead. She came back, and we ended up at a place called Ricky’s for a drink, somewhere genuinely good, over cocktails strong enough to leave a mark. She took us home to meet her family and sit for the weekly call, and after the call and a few sweets we left, caught a cab back, and finished the day on a monsoon auto ride I enjoyed more than I expected.

A new month started with the rain still going and me awake only at noon. We dropped Prathmesh’s keys at the CCD and rode for Powai, and Mumbai without a working map turned into a long series of wrong turns before we found a small but decent hotel and ordered food to the room. The plan had been Churchgate by cab in the evening, but we swapped it for the bikes at night, which was easily the better call.

When we tried to leave, the hotel man stopped us, saying nobody was allowed out after 1am, and I told him to open the door, that I was not in a hostel or at home. It was half past one, and it took forty minutes to reach the Gateway of India, which looked exactly as it had five years earlier, and that was enough for me. We rode to Marine Drive, the real one, for a burger and tea, and sat there an hour with the view. By four we left through a sleeping city, its towers all gone quiet, took one more wrong turn, and reached the hotel by half past four.

The Pune chain saga

We woke at ten with the plan already ruined and rode out of Mumbai in the rain, the city’s roads and traffic doing their best to confuse us before the map got us onto the Pune highway. My petrol was nearly gone, and as we pulled away from a pump Pankaj rode into the back of a car, for reasons I still cannot explain. There was no time to sort it out, so we moved on quickly, stopping at a roadside stand for what was the last vada pav of Navi Mumbai. An hour or two on we reached Lonavala with no time to linger, took a few photos, and pushed for Pune.

Entering the city, Pankaj and Aditya took the bypass while I went in looking for a Yamaha service centre, which then refused to do my chain. With no choice but to get it sorted that day, I found a local mechanic, who also turned up a puncture in my front tyre. The MT chain was not available, and a 1,750 chain set I bought did not work either; the old joining link would not hold, so I paid another 1,750 for a new one.

On top of that, the clutch plate swapped back in Leh had been drinking my engine oil, and the level was low. Eventually it was all sorted. I got the hotel location from Aditya and reached it by seven, and since we had promised to, Aditya and I took a cab to Shri Krishna’s house for dinner, a good evening of swapping stories while Pankaj sat it out. It was a peaceful Saturday night.

The road into Goa

The ride to Goa started around nine or ten with some doubt about the route. Pankaj asked someone he knew and came back with unsettling news, that the road we meant to take was not safe and had a reputation for robbery. So we went via Kolhapur instead, had breakfast, and turned for Goa on a road that ran green and smooth. The rain caught us and it got late, and we could not stop near the Mahabaleshwar turn and had to keep going.

Aditya’s bike went down on a sharp V-shaped turn, and the highway turned long and lonely and beautiful, all jungle and trees and rain. Then came the best road I have ever ridden, up in the clouds, small waterfalls on the left and clouds floating off to the right. We reached Goa by seven through a messy, dark, wet night, found a hostel by phone, and settled in. It was pouring, but we went out anyway to a cozy place where a dog and some cats played underfoot, and I tried Feni, the local drink, which is good and does its job.

Goa in the rain

Goa kept us four days, most of them under rain. The first I spent procrastinating, working a little, then sleeping through the downpour until we decided around noon to stay an extra day. In the evening we rode up to Chapora Fort, a good climb up the stairs with a fine view from the top, where I lost my key for a few heart-stopping minutes. We were locked out at six when the gate closed, and waited out the rain over corn and Maggi at a decent little place.

We moved to a new place the next morning, Bon Voyage, a little off the beaten track. After settling in we set out for a couple of beaches and managed one, fuelling at the single petrol pump in all of South Goa and bumping down wet, narrow roads to Morjim. The beach was closed and the rain was heavy and it was wonderful, and we stayed for photos and video, chips and tea and Maggi in a hut. Back at Bon Voyage I had barely started working when a man on the balcony below called me down to join his group. He was the owner, Karan Tanwar, there with his girlfriend Aditi Roy and two others. We drank until four in the morning, about as far as I have ever taken it. I woke at six to find them all still in the same spot. It was the best night of the trip.

The day after we rode out instead to nearby spots. Aguada Fort cost a 25 rupee ticket for what turned out to be old demolished walls and not much else. Candolim Beach nearby was the better of the two, clean and quiet. The last morning in Goa went the way most had, late and raining, with nothing to do but pack and move to a place near Baga Beach. We checked in, rested, picked up a few branded t-shirts over lunch, and went to Baga. I had meant not to drink and ended two bottles in regardless. It was not a Thursday, but a meeting had been set anyway, so I finished that, had dinner, and that was Goa done.

Next: The Deep South, Goa to Kanyakumari (Days 38–43) →

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