Pune to Bhimashankar Ride

Bhimashankar is the forest route on this list, and the forest is doing a lot of the work — dense, old-growth Sahyadri canopy for a genuinely long stretch of the ride, rather than the open ghat views most of these routes are built around. Getting there from Pune via Rajgurunagar and Ghodegaon starts unremarkably enough, but the final approach through the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary is unlike anything else on this list: narrow, twisting, and thickly wooded enough that daylight dims noticeably even at midday.

The sanctuary itself is protected specifically for the Malabar giant squirrel — the state animal of Maharashtra — alongside leopards and a wide range of birdlife, and riders occasionally do spot wildlife crossing the road, which is exactly why this stretch demands a slower, more attentive pace than the distance alone would suggest. This is not a route to ride at speed even where the road briefly straightens; the combination of blind curves, forest cover, and the real possibility of an animal on the road makes caution the whole point, not an inconvenience.

At the top sits Bhimashankar Temple, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas, tucked into a valley setting that feels more remote than its distance from Pune suggests — the temple's location, deep in the sanctuary rather than at the top of an open viewpoint, is part of what makes this route feel distinct from the others on this list. It draws a genuine pilgrim crowd, and the narrow approach roads mean traffic can bottleneck badly during festival periods — worth checking the calendar before a weekend trip.

This route asks more of both rider and machine than most of the others here. The Ghodegaon-to-Bhimashankar stretch is narrow enough that oncoming traffic (including buses on pilgrimage routes) requires real attention, the road surface is more variable than the highway-heavy routes on this list, and the combination of forest shade and altitude means temperatures swing more than the modest distance would suggest. Riders should treat this as a technical route, not a leisurely forest cruise, despite its comparatively short 110 km distance.

Monsoon brings the forest fully alive — mist through the canopy, waterfalls appearing on the hillsides — but also brings the worst of the road's surface issues and the tightest margins on visibility. A clear post-monsoon or winter day is the more forgiving version of this ride; if you're set on the monsoon version specifically for the atmosphere, ride it slow and give the wildlife-crossing stretches your full attention.