Day 8 - 10: Crossing cities and mountains

Day 8 greeted us with a pretty cloudy sky but nevertheless we were quite motivated to go on the road again. The night before we had decided that we wanted to turn east in order to see a bit more from the mountains and the countryside instead of heading straight south. First we drove through a wildlife sanctuary. While we didn’t see any wild animals the route was interesting and offered us a few beautiful vistas. Then we drove past lush mountains and endless rice fields. We were pretty sure that rain would hit us sooner or later because the environment had turned into a rich palette of green. And it was indeed the first day with some real rain on our adventure.

While we tried to make as many kilometers as possible on our daily trip we also decided to take some smaller roads since they were much better suited for making awesome photos. We even used Rob’s drone for aerial coverage of our ride and the surrounding rice fields. And luckily, we were able to make some awesome photos and videos. For the night we stayed in a Mumbai suburb called Virar. The hotel was ok after we changed the rooms due to a broken AC.

For the next day we had initially planned to go for the mountains again. But soon we found ourselves in the crazy traffic of Mumbai and its suburbs and we got just stuck there. On top of that, the roads of the suburbs we tried to cross were really, really bad with tons of huge holes. So riding through the city with insane traffic, eventually heavy rain and shitty roads was quite an adventure, sometimes a worrysome one. But Rob did a good job getting us through there in one piece – only one scratch at the side should stay with us for the rest of the trip.

Sadly, crossing the suburbs of Mumbai costed us a lot more time than inititally expected (several hours) so we changed our plans and headed directly towards Goa instead. Driving on the so-called „Mumbai-Goa highway“ wasn’t a very fast or unproblematic experience either though. The highway was in a pretty sad state most of the time. Finding the best way around the worst road holes while also trying not to hit other vehicles turned out to be the most challenging job for the driver. For the night we stayed at a place called „The Dolphin Farm“, a resort right at the highway. It was a nice place run by some Catholic Indians, mainly used by people using the rafting offerings. We ate omlettes and bread for supper and we even managed to get a (pretty bad) whiskey with coke.

The next day started early, with omlettes (again) and really heavy monsoon rain. Our main goal for the day was reaching Goa. Well, this was rather an idealistic goal since we still had about 420 kms to go until Anjuna but we tried to get as far as possible. It turned out that we wouldn’t get that far since the roads even seemed to be a bit worse than the day before with really deep holes, a lot of traffic and mostly bad weather. Our route led us into the mountains south of Mumbai which further slowed our progression towards Goa since our rickshaw – as brave, solid and reliable as it still was – had a pretty hard time climbing all those mountains. At least we were rewarded with some breathtaking views of the countryside, both from below in the valley and above from the mountains. The cloudy sky, the green, lush nature and the wet roads offered interesting sceneries for photos and videos as well.

We continued travelling through the mountains on the Route 66 (not to be mistaken with the other one in the US) until we finally reached the ocean with the city of Ratnagiri after sundown. We stayed there for the night in a nice bed&breakfast called „The Mango Villa“. After getting a whiskey the day before we were lucky again to convince the hotel guys to fetch us three bottles of beer. Due to the strict alcohol laws in this state we had to drink our beers on the room but that didn't diminish our delight to have a cold beer even one bit. So a long day on the road ended with beer – and of course some omlettes.