Mumbai Goa Cycling Tour

We wait for you at the airport to take you to your hotel. It will take about an hour to reach the hotel and check you in. You will be free for the rest of the day. You can use the time to relax and get over your jetlag or begin preparing for the cycling trip.

Hotel: The Gordon House Hotel / or similar

A sightseeing tour of Delhi is the perfect primer to our Mumbai Goa Cycling TOur. A purposeful rest day before the riding begins. We start with Dharavi - one of Asia's largest informal settlements, and one of the most misrepresented places in the world. Up close, it functions like a city within the city: tanneries, recycling plants, bakeries, pottery workshops. More industry than poverty, more ingenuity than hardship. From there, the Gateway of India and the Prince of Wales Museum - art, archaeology, natural history. Walk as much as you can. Your legs will carry you, and the passive movement is good prep for what comes next.

Hotel: The Gordon House Hotel or similar

The ferry from Gateway of India to Mandwa Jetty is the ceremonial first crossing - about 45 minutes on the water, and one of the better ways to leave a city. You're already looking south. From Mandwa, the riding is coastal and relatively forgiving in the first half. The road surface alternates between decent tarmac and patchy village lanes, so a MTB with 32–38mm tyres earns its keep from the very first day.

We take backroads wherever possible - arterial roads that thread through cashew orchards and fishing hamlets, with the sea appearing and disappearing on your right like something intermittently reminding you where you are. Along the way we ride through the Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary, a coastal woodland where the tree canopy closes over the road and you're suddenly pedalling somewhere that feels nothing like Maharashtra's coastline - cooler, quieter, and dense with birdcall.

The terrain builds through the day. You'll encounter short punchy climbs of 60–100 metres — enough to spike the heart rate, recover on the descent, and repeat. Nothing technical, but the cumulative gain starts to register by afternoon.

The day ends at a beach resort in Murud. After dinner, you'll want to walk to the waterfront and look out at Murud-Janjira Fort sitting on its island in the middle of the creek. The only fort in India never conquered by the Marathas, Mughals, British, or Portuguese. It is worth standing still in front of for a few minutes before you go to sleep.

Hotel: Golden Swan Beach Resort or similar

The first real ferry of the tour and the first real lesson in Konkan time management. We cross the astonishingly wide Rajapuri Creek from Agardanda to Dighi. The Agardanda–Dighi ferry runs hourly from 8 AM to 9:30 PM, takes 15 minutes, and sets the rhythm for the whole week: know your crossing times before you leave the guesthouse, because missing the last one in the dark is not a fun problem to solve.

From Dighi, the terrain picks up noticeably. The road rises and falls over a series of coastal headlands - short climbs of 80–150 metres each, with fast descents that reward you with sea views if you have the nerve to look up. We ride through fishing villages where the boats are painted in colours that have no English names, and where the smell of drying fish hits you from 300 metres out.

Mid-afternoon, we reach the banks of the Savitri River for our second ferry crossing. This one feels quieter — a flat-bottomed boat, your bicycle leaning against the rail, the river wide and calm. Chat with whoever's on it. The people of the Konkan are among the most genuinely hospitable you'll meet anywhere in India.

We finish the day in Dapoli, a hill station used by the British troops in the colonial era, sitting above the coast at around 400 metres. Our stay is at Lotus Eco Beach Resort in Karde. You've earned the beach.

Hotel: Lotus Eco Beach Resort or similar

This is the queen stage. The longest day, the most climbing, and the one most riders will talk about for years. Set your alarm early. We leave Karde and hug the shoreline through a series of fishing villages, the road constantly negotiating with the headlands - up 120 metres, down to sea level, up again. The rhythm becomes almost meditative once you stop fighting it and start reading it. After crossing the Vashishti River, we continue south for roughly 75 km with a picnic lunch at Velneshwar Beach - a wide, empty stretch of sand where you can eat, stretch, and let your legs decide if they still work. If the timing and tide allow, get in the water. Cold salt water on your legs after 65 km is not nothing. The second half of the day is the most dramatic on the tour. We cross the Shastri River and approach Jaigad - where the fort stands on the headland above the river mouth and the sea, visible from several kilometres out. The ferry crossing here is one of the great moments of the whole route: a small wooden boat carrying you and your loaded bike across the wide mouth of the river, with the Jaigad Fort on its cliff above. We then enter the erstwhile province of Marathwada, historically under Maratha rule before the Mughals, and finish in Ganpatipule at a beach resort. Legs will be worked. Sleep will come easily.

Hotel: Blue Ocean Resort or similar

After breakfast, we walk to Shree Ganpatipule Temple - a Swayambhu Ganesh shrine built into a hillside, with white-and-brick-red walls that look as though they grew out of the rock. The temple faces the sea. Dress modestly, leave your shoes at the entrance, and give yourself time to simply be there. The rest of the day is yours. The beach at Ganpatipule is clean, relatively uncrowded, and perfect for the kind of doing-nothing that only makes sense after five hard days of riding. Most riders spend some time doing a passive bike check - wiping down the drivetrain, re-lubing the chain if it's been dry, checking tyre sidewalls for wear or embedded glass.

Hotel: Blue Ocean Resort or similar

Back on the bike, but the legs have memory now - the Konkan rhythm is in them. We head south toward Ratnagiri on undulating coast backroads, riding past fish markets where the morning catch is already being sorted, small temples with bells that ring on the wind, and the shallow mangrove basin formed by the Kajali River - a stretch of riding where the road cuts through a flat green world on both sides.

Through Ratnagiri town and past Ratnadurg Fort, Mandavi Beach, and crop fields, before crossing the Purnagad Creek formed by the Muchkundi River. The road varies between surfaced tarmac and uneven village lanes - nothing that requires a mountain bike, but enough that you stay alert and don't bury your face in your Garmin. The day ends at Ambolgad Beach Village, at a beach house with the ocean directly in front of it. There's no better way to end a riding day than with the sea a few metres from where you'll sleep.

Hotel: Samindar Beach House or similar

An early start and a mixed-surface day - coastal tarmac giving way to sections of dirt road as we ride south through Vaghotan, Devgad, Naingre, Achara Gad, and Karli. The route passes Bhagawatgad and Devgad - Maratha coastal forts that don't get the tourist traffic they deserve, sitting quiet on headlands above the sea. The vegetation gets denser down here. The roads get quieter.

Post-lunch, the surface changes again - some dirt, some stone, some beautifully smooth coast road. We cross the Kolamb Creek to arrive at Malvan Beach, where the overnight beach resort faces directly onto the Sindhudurg island fort in the distance. On a clear evening the fort's silhouette is sharp against the sky - built by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 1664 entirely on a sea island, with foundations reportedly reinforced with molten lead poured into the seabed rocks. It has stood for 360 years.

Hotel: The Windmill Resort or similar

The final cross-border day. We leave Maharashtra and enter Goa.

The route uses a mix of tarmac and non-tarmac coastal roads to reach the Terekhol River crossing - the last ferry of the tour, and one of the most quietly significant. One side is Maharashtra. The other is Goa. The road surface improves perceptibly on the Goa side, and the signage shifts to Konkani and Portuguese-influenced English. The rhythm of the place changes.

We pass Arambol - the hippie beach at the northern tip of Goa, which has somehow held onto its character through decades of being discovered and re-discovered. Then Morjim Beach, a protected nesting ground for Olive Ridley sea turtles. Then Chapora Fort above the Mandovi River mouth, the whole of north Goa's coastline visible from the battlements.

We finish at Anjuna Beach. The final kilometres are flat, the tailwind cooperates if you've been good, and there's a particular sensation of arriving somewhere by bicycle that no other mode of travel replicates. You notice when the journey ends. We spend the night at Casa Anjuna, a boutique hotel that takes its cues from traditional Goan architecture — tiled floors, carved wood, and a courtyard that makes you want to stay put.

Hotel: Casa Anjuna or similar

Full rest day. Anjuna Beach, the famous Wednesday flea market if the timing works, and the pleasant business of deciding you've earned this. Your legs will still be riding in your sleep - that's normal after a week of this kind of cumulative climbing. Let them.

Hotel: Casa Anjuna or similar

The last riding day, and a good one. We leave North Goa's bustle and ride south - along Baga and Calangute, across the Mandovi River into Old Goa, past the Basilica of Bom Jesus where St. Francis Xavier has rested since 1553. The roads here are village-width with Portuguese-era homes set back behind cashew and coconut trees, their laterite walls orange in the afternoon light.

The terrain is gentle by now - rolling, not grinding. We pass Varca and Cavelossim beaches before dropping into Agonda, one of the last genuinely quiet beaches in South Goa. Palm-grove resort, wooden cottages, beach directly in front. Put your bike away. You're done.

Hotel: Dwarka Beach Resorty or similar

Breakfast, beach, market. Goan nightlife if you have the energy for it, which after 11 days of this you might surprisingly find you do. The body adapts.

Hotel: Dwarka Beach Resort or similar

Breakfast, transfer, departure. The tour ends here on paper. In practice, it ends somewhere around Day 5, Karde Beach, when you first realise that you're going to make it and that the making of it is going to be the best part.