Vastavika has a Bangalore-Mumbai-Bangalore Service on India`s First Facelifted 9400XL and it has quite good feedback from pax on this sector. Sikandar Bhai and Kshirsagar were on this and i was keen to try this service owing to their presence on this bus. This bus, was with Konduskar on lease earlier and had done same route earlier as well.
So, i was at mumbai and was scouting for return journey options, Rahul and me got into option search mode and it suddenly flashed that 0870 was going to do the trip. Wasting no time, decided to take a ride after weeks of 0870 going out of target!
The bus departed Borivali Gokul Hotel at exactly 05:30pm and proceeded to exit the city. Reached Kamothe at 8 pm and had to wait for 15-20 min for a pax. Sikandar bhai was on wheel and wasted no time in covering up the delay. He was ripping along the Expressway, touching 102 kph marks with ease and taking down National, Sharma and other guys who overtook us as we waited at Kamothe.
Sikandar bhai has quite impressive skills and his manuvers were quite classy. Added to that was the Manual Gearing... which made this a quite a memorable ride and one to cherish for long time to come.
We Exited Expressway around 9:35pm and proceeded to pickup passengers from Pune. This was a bit irritating as the bus entered the city and exited towards katraj ghat, instead of picking up from the highway side to the city exit at katraj. Only if Vastavika could arrange a pickup van and load pax directly to the bus at, say, Katraj, it`ll really help a long way and improve the timing of the bus to Bangalore.
All said and done, we took the exit and stopped at Neelkamal where we had a couple of SRS Buses proceeding to Bangalore and A National Scania Sleeper, Lamhe to Bangalore. Quickly finished dinner, and Mr Kshirsagar took over the controls from here.
Kshirsagar bhai has really neat control over the beast, and i couldnt but help staying up in the cabin to watch him drive. Neat, Smooth Glider that he is, he was keeping the bus with constant speeds and made sure no jerks/sudden braking was brought in and made sure pax slept peacefully.
We reached Kolhapur at 2:35 am and Entered Konduskar`s Petrol Pump outside the city and filled up. the beast averaged an exact 2.85kpl to a litre, which is an impressive figure considering the constant high speeds by the crew. Hats off. We again resumed our journey at 3 am.
I decided to catch a few winks and left the cabin. Woke up in the morning directly at Ranibennur at 7 am and had a nice breakfast. We Left at 7:30am and again resumed our journey to bangalore. Kshirsagar bhai was again at the wheel and was keeping good speeds.
I was finally dropped off at Yeshwantpur at 11:25 am. I Must say, it was an really good journey on this sector i`ve had in a long time. Hats off to Sikandar and Kshirsagar bhai for the superb driving and perfect timing control. Guys, Please do try this service, and you shall not be disappointed.
Wishing Vastavika Travels a great deal of success and we wish to see them expand soon!
