There are many kinds of travellers out there where some love to travel in public transport whereas some uses their own vehicle i.e roads trips to explore new places and all. Using public transport will make you feel like a local guy and helps to know more about the local people but it's too difficult to use in crowded places such as Goa, Lonavala etc. In short, they are a pain in the ass.
Why?
Let's take Lonavala as an example. Kune Waterfalls, Karla Caves, Lohagad are some of the must-visit places where public transport is not that convenient. One needs to hire private Cars/Jeeps to reach those places in groups which is a bit costly and may not be included in our budgets during planning.
So one better option is to look for Self drive cars or Bikes.
Owning a bike rental company(Zup serves Bike rentals in Vizag as of now), Following are the things which majority of people expect from us.
# A Good maintained Bike.
#Helmet
#Petrol at least to reach Petrol Bunks(However we provide more than One L)
#Minimal Documentation
#Customers won't prefer Security deposit and it's not a big thing to discuss.
So most probably we too have the same things in mind while renting a bike somewhere else.
My Own Experience in renting Bikes:
We are a group of 7 members who planned for Lonavala on Dec 27 2019. We decided to rent bikes as our stay is out of Lonavala and we will stay for more than 3 days.
Also Read Lonavala: Expectations ???? Vs. Reality
So as per our plan, we thought to rent bikes at Pune railway station so that we can drop them easily on the day of leaving too. Lonavala had fewer trains pass by when compared to Pune and so Pune.
It's all about a Google search, as we are new here.
Google displays a ton of numbers but none of the names was related to a bike rental company and most of them are located 15kms away from the railway station. With no options left we travelled 15kms to Hinjewadi using public transport. Bhoong, It looks a bit trusted and it has its app. The only thing I feared was we need to pay first. However, after a lot of struggle for more than 2 hours, we reached Bhoong which was closed at 10 am as well. We waited for more than an hour until he arrives and shocked to see his fleet.
All are just scrap. Forget about the condition, they just look like scrap for the eyes. What can we do apart from renting them? However, we need 3 bikes and rented one. Later we explored 4-5 bike rentals services and we just can't rent them by looking. No options left we rented 2 at one service and one at Bhoong.
Here comes the twist.
Bike rentals are not legal in Pune.we shocked the same as you.
As said above, All are named as bike services instead of bike rentals and this is the most possible reason. Moreover, bikes are of whiteboard plates which are against commercial registration.
They will instruct you to say it as your friend's vehicle and so on.
However, we all know this stuff later after paying a fine of 1500 Rupees to Traffic Police.
Bikes are off completely useless and spoil half of our trip as they can't even go to the top of the hill on ghat roads. We keep pushing it in places. This is the only single worst experience which we faced for renting vehicles.
I heard such problems from many who rented bikes in Pune / Lonavala. So I suggest you rent a Zoomcar or something which is trusted.
Share your experiences regarding this if any in the comment section.