A wet Saturday in July and an itch to roam around the Vaitarna, picking small water bodies and navigating through slushy dirt roads on foot and car both. Me and my old riding partner Manas trudged.
Offroading near Lahope
First up was Lohape Talao / lake close to the Vajereshwari town, we had made a similar trip exactly a year back. This time we thought we’ll check smaller lakes and dams around that area.
Next up was a lake / dam called “Shelte Water Lake” as labelled by Google maps, this one was right below Kohoj fort. We stopped our car next to the highway and continued our offroading on the foot, through muck, slush, water, you name it. The rain came in hard, our foot got stuck in the soil, T-shirts sprayed and splashed with dirt. Almost 15-20 mins into the trail, but we couldn’t find it. All that we could see was lush green earth and farmers toiling on the paddy fields below a towering mountain behind half hidden above the low rain clouds. We decided to head back without having a peek of the Lake.
Amidst discussions of post-retirement life, bikes and cars we head home. The whole trip without even a single song played on the stereo!
I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down
This world cup took me back to the memory lane, 20 years. Feels like just yesterday, my mom had to hide my CD of Fifa World Cup 98 video game, I was so addicted to the awesome game and the energetic intro featuring the song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba and the rooster flying through the stadiums
This melody sung by Ronkini Gupta is an absolute gem. Entire song is just a single guitar and vocals. And Ronkini’s classical stance adds magic.
Its in the key of B major, Add a capo on 4th fret to sound close to the original.
Intro
e|---2--3-----|
b|---------3--|
OR
e|------3-----|
B|---------3--|
G|---0--------|
repeat...
[CHORUS]
Kaise kaise dhaagon se buni hai yeh duniya
G Em C
Haan…
kaise kaise dhaagon se buni hai yeh duniya
G Em C
Kabhi dhoop kabhi baadalon ki yeh ladiyaan
G Em C
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D Bm
Ye doriyaan
Em
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D Bm
Ye doriyaan
G
[CHORUS] repeat
Haan…
teri bani raahein meri thi deewaarein
G C Am G
Teri bani raahein meri thi deewaarein
G C Am G
Unn deewaaron pe hi maine likh li bahaarein
G C Am G
Shaam hui tu jo aaya so gayi thi kaliyan
G Em C
Phir shaam hui tu jo aaya so gayi thi kaliyaan
G Em C
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D Bm
Ye doriyaan (x2)
Em
Kuch tune si hai maine ki hain rafu
D Bm
Ye doriyaan (x2)
G
(sargam)
G Em Bm D
C D G
Yun seete seete meelon ki ban gayi kahaani
G C Am G
Yun seete seete meelon ki ban gayi kahaani
G C Am G
Kuch tere haathon se kuch meri zubaani
G C Am G
Ab jo bhi hai ye aadha pauna
G Em
Hai toh rangraliyaan
C
(x2)
[CHORUS]
I was waiting for a few years to upgrade my 16.04LTS and finally when time came I didn’t hesitate. However it created a huge problem! I wasn’t able to sync my mouse and keyboard with synergy (free).
I wondered debugged a lot, first thing I found the synergy version on Fedora was 2.x while that on Ubuntu was 1.8.8. So I downloaded same version of synergy 1.8.8 from my favorite switch mirror.
Yet the problem never got over, I tried to swap the server – client but to no avail. Almost a week got over and I was still haggling with multiple keyboards and mouse combinations. I also read posts about Scroll locks, etc… but that didn’t help either.
But today while browsing on Fedora 28, I found that Mouse movements over Firefox were very laggy (something like dropped frames while painting the mouse), I wondered why. It struck me, these days the default server is wayland server. Lemme try disabling it. Edited /etc/gdm/custom.conf, where I had to just comment-out the line WaylandEnable=false. Ensure the line stays WaylandEnable=false. Edited the Ubuntu config /etc/gdm3/custom.conf (Oh by the way I had installed the vanilla-gnome-desktop package.
Today I came across a hacker news post – winamp2-js
It has taken me back to my early years of computers, music and start of programming. It was 1998, when Winamp came up and was instantly viral. I had endless songs churned through that software and was in first-sight love with it for its ease of use, features, simplicity and its light weight nature. Back then there used to be heavy-weight player called Windows Media Player which on 3rd world country desktops was too much to ask. Winamp had answered all the questions, ticked all the boxes.
A few years on … It was Winamp that had urged me to make my first contribution to the open web (github and opensource perhaps wasn’t as popular then). I had taken up a task to design a Winamp skin. I think I decided it had to be my then heart-throb Elizabeth Hurley. It turned out to be a big effort initially but post its approval on Winamp’s website and seeing the usage counters grow up by the day, I got that high that the new-age developers get looking at the green boxes glow up on github’s profile page.
This awesome find of nodejs based winamp player gave another time-travel. फुक्टे / फुकरे as we were, I had learnt HTML, some JS (which now is my bread-winner). I needed a site to display my skills, I took up to the best available then (free that is) – geocities. New age guys reading this post wouldn’t smile reading that name, however for some… “Aaah good ol’ days of geocities.com”. I had created a website on geocities with a page dedicated to all the winamp skins I manged to craft. The list had grown to 5. You’ll find them available for download at the bottom.
Sometime back I tried to find my geocities website in hope of some crawler had crawled it and hosted, and I hit oocities.org. Today I manged to find the page dedicated to Winamp, download the skins and even see them working here.
A big thanks to https://github.com/captbaritone for his project and hacker news!
One of the many songs that I kept humming inside my balaclava. Wondering what its chords could be, as they turned out to be F# Major, B Major, E Major. Or crooning to the base guitar in the song “Dil Se Re”… The song reminds me of the storm that we faced riding to Kankavali –
A road winding through the woods, the white borders defining a strong ardent character. As we raced ahead, the storm clouds hovered in, turning the bright sky into a obnoxious dark gray shadow. The trees rustled and the leaves fell apart, straight down the road we could see the rain closing in turning the clear sight into a hazy might. Lightning struck places a many followed by the thunder cutting through the forest. We decided not to ride our luck and rather wait it out…
Another one of my Unicorn’s 1000km+ bike rides. This one was originally spanning through Dudhsagar waterfalls, but as always rains played spoil-sport and had to resort to Maharashtra’s tallest waterfall – Thoseghar.
Facts
~ 40 hours on the saddle
~ 1700 km
~ 45 litres of fuel / petrol
Hash tag – #reachedhomewithoutbruises – ? ? ? Thanks to Kandya
On a sleepy Sunday, I and Manas decided to go enjoy a bike ride in receding rains of Mumbai. The destination was close-by – Vajreshwari, near Virar.
The idea was to enjoy hot water springs in Vajreshwari. The Tansa river passes through the hamlet. However after observing the hot-water springs area, we decided its better to enjoy on a secluded bridge on Tansa close by.
Fridays are good, even better is the Easter one. Gives us an opportunity for a long weekend. This one we had Tarkarli on mind.
Route
We decided to take the AH-47 / Old NH-4 / New NH-48 as it was faster (supposedly) and Google Maps showed around 10+ hrs of traveling time. Old NH-17 / NH-66 Mumbai Goa highway was sure slower for its single lane. As we neared Kolhapur we called up the Tarkarli resort owner for a suggestion between two routes
Via Gaganbawda-Vaibhavwadi
Via Radhanagari-Phondaghat
The Radhanagari route was suggested, This one seemed to have longer ghats also some forest section which was enticing. But the longer ghats meant slower speeds. We opposed Google’s suggestion of via-Gaganbawda route.
Radhanagari route wasn’t great random potholes and patched roads. Only a section near the Phondaghat was smooth, well paved and marked. Rest of the section till Mumbai-Goa highway was strictly ~50-60 kmph. Once on NH-66 road was smoother but the undivided stretch meant slower movement and not to mention the difficult and far and few overtake maneuvers. At the Kasal fork, we moved towards Malvan on the SH-182 Kasal-Malvan Road almost 40km in length. This one without the heavy vehicles was better to drive.
We had left the JVLR junction in Mumbai around 6am and reached Devbag, Tarkarli only around 7.30pm !!! Were quite unsure if the Radhanagari was the best option.
April 16, 2017
Thats what a Road trip is all about
Back to Mumbai. We didn’t want the same patchy Radhanagari route. This time we decided to stick with Google’s senses, via-Gaganbawda. This route took us on NH-66 upto Talere around 10km north of Kankavali town where it took right towards Gaganbawda ghat. The initial section till Vaibhavwadi was super smooth and was new, laced with trees on either side of the road.
There was a small bad patch before it lead into the ghats, the Ghat section was looong… BUT S-M-O-O-T-H nowhere to be compared with the phonda-ghat route. Post that route flattened but had a nice smooth 60+kmph ride till we were 15km radius of Kolhapur where things slowed cause of two wheeler traffic, but nowhere as painful as patchy-potholed-road section.
From Kolhapur – AH-47. As we crossed Katraj, south of Pune, we moved into the Pune traffic which took almost an hour to cross ~40km,
We reached our homes around 1.30am, We had left Malvan around 12.30 Noon. This too had taken us 13hrs, but this also included heavy Pune traffic, and an hour+ lunch break and another 45min break for late-night snacks around 11.30pm at the new Food mall near Lonavala.
Preferred Route
Numbers
Distance Traveled: 1180km
Tiago XZ Petrol mileage: 18.2 kmpl (as shown by MID, with all-time AC in City Mode)
Car Time: 26 hours
1/3 rd of our 72 hours / 3day vacation was on the road. But who cares! It was a road trip !
An onset of an early winter calls for some adventure – 140km bicycle ride to Vandari lake and back. Surya, me and a pro-adventurer – Aman decide to take the jump into the ride.
Travelling Directions
We left around 7am from JVLR junction on Western Express Highway and reached home around 6pm just in time for the Manchester United v Arsenal match which ended in a disappointing draw for me, Arsenal scoring a late equalizer.
