Matheran–Karjat closes out this list as the hill-and-rural combination, and it has one genuinely unusual feature none of the other nine routes share: the destination itself doesn't allow vehicles. Matheran is one of the only vehicle-free hill stations in Asia, which changes what "riding this route" actually means once you're close.
The run from Pune to Karjat is a comfortable rural stretch — smaller roads, farmland, and the kind of unhurried countryside riding that this route's "rural combination" title refers to, well before any hill-station scenery shows up. Karjat itself is a proper base town, worth a stop for food and fuel before the final approach, and it's also where riders doing the full loop by rail rather than road would start their toy-train leg — worth knowing about even if you're riding, since it explains why the area around Karjat station has real infrastructure built up around day-trippers.
The road ends at Dasturi Naka, the vehicle checkpoint just below Matheran proper — this is as far as any motorcycle goes. From there, reaching the town itself means either the narrow-gauge toy train (scenic, slow, and not always running depending on season and maintenance schedules), a hand-pulled or horse-drawn option, or simply walking the roughly 2-3 km up — an option plenty of riders take, treating it as part of the day rather than an inconvenience. This is worth planning for explicitly: budget real time for the up-and-back on foot or by toy train, not just the ride to Dasturi Naka.
Once in Matheran, the reward is quiet in a way none of the drivable routes on this list can match — no engine noise anywhere in the town, red laterite paths instead of paved roads, and a set of viewpoints (Panorama Point and Echo Point among the best-known) looking out over the Ulhas Valley without a single vehicle in the frame. It's a genuinely different kind of destination from the rest of this list precisely because the "riding" part of the day stops at the edge of town.
This route works well across most of the year, though monsoon turns both the approach roads and the walk up from Dasturi Naka into a slippery, low-visibility undertaking — worth avoiding for the on-foot section specifically, even if the ride to Karjat itself is fine in the rain. Winter and post-monsoon give the clearest views from the plateau's viewpoints.
