Tata motors loooong weekend was from 14th to 15th august(Thursday – Friday) . Since our weekly off in tata motors pune is Thursday not unlike the lucky souls in other companies getting Saturday-Sunday off every week. In tata motors, the joke is that unlike other normal mortals who say TGIF( thank god its Friday ) we say OMGIF( Oh my god its Friday ) .
Anyways, my old department colleagues invited me to join them for a trip to Mahabaleshwar. I instantly agreed as I had no plans for this looong weekend. I also wanted to get out somewhere since it was months since I had gone for a trekking or a vacation .
Well, the people who were part of this vacation were anubhav,bhushan & chaitanya from NPI(new product introduction dept) .
12th Aug evening : I received a call from anubhav just as I was leaving office at my normal time of 7:15 instead of the official 5:15 pm . He asked me they were planning to go to Mahabaleshwar for this looooong weekend , and wanted me to join them . I agreed and started making mental thoughts about the pleasant weather there and how badly I needed this outing and a smile instantly came on my face.
The plan was to leave office by 5:15 on 13th and start from pune in chaitanya’s indigo by 6:30 pm for Mahabaleshwar. Reach Mahabaleshwar by 10 pm . The hotel booking was done by bhushan for a cheap 700 rupees for a night.Chaitanya will pick me up and anubhav since we stay near his house and bhushan will be picked up on the way.
So much for plans, lets see what happened !!!!
13th Aug morning : I reached office at the normal time of 8:25 , wished good morning to all and immediately announced to my boss that I need to leave at 5:15 today since I was going to Mahabaleshwar. He looked at me with angled eyes and with a grin on his face said “ We will see about it later” ……
We will see, what does it means ? I knew for sure this was a diplomatic answer.
13th aug evening : In the evening, at 4:50 pm I announced to my boss that I was leaving for Mahabaleshwar . he said again with a wide smile on his face : OK,Enjoy your time . Then he gave me gyan for the next 13 minutes and told me this is not the correct season to go to Mahabaleshwar as it would be raining very heavily & you wont even find any strawberries ….. I nodded and just said that I wanted to get out of pune for some time and be with myself. Finally, I said goodbye and left office with a big smile and anxiety to what lay ahead of me .
I took the long walk of 7-8 mins till the bus stop and talked to bhushan who confirmed the plan was still on track if anubhav and chaitanya can get out of their project’s review meeting before 5:30. Finally they did so by 6:00 .
I reached my guest house by 6:10 and packed my stuff in another 15 minutes . I called bhushan once again to know bout the stauts , he told me that chaitanya’s father did not agree to give the car since it was raining cats and dogs everywhere in maharashtra and driving in the ghats of Mahabaleshwar was dangerous in the night.
Somehow chaitanya convinced his father and we were rolling finally. Chaitanya picked me up from the guest house and then because of some miscommunication , anubhav was reached the wrong pickup point and we were delayed by another 15 minutes .
Well, it was an hour late as per our plan and now we had to pick up bhushan from a place near to his new house. Our navigation expert, anubhav confidently told us that he knew the way and guided us for the same. Then we tanked up the indigo and we were on our way.
8:15 pm : Well well well , anubhav made a small miscalculation and because of that we had gone 10 kms ahead of bhushan’s pickup point . once we had figured it out it was too late . We had to go 4 kms still ahead since there was no u-turn on this smooth 4 lane pune-satara highway.
9:10 pm , finally we picked up bhushan and even after 1.5 hours since we started from pune , we were still in pune. Anywayz, we grabbed a few sandwiches and burgers that anubhav had bought along with him. Chaitanya was driving till the ghats, all I can say is that he is an extra careful driver.
We all admired the engineering capabilities of Indian engineers who had made this awesome tunnel possible in between these ghats. Those who are interested , here’s a video on this tunnel .
Also looking at the same tunnel while coming back , the phrase light at the end of tunnel seemed apt. this picture tells it all ….
Also linkin park, godsmack , Jal , main hun don , limp bizkit etc etc all played on chaitanya’s pioneer audio system . It was fun playing all these songs at almost full volume.
Well , all this while it was raining in tits and bits. After driving for 70kms on this highway, we had to take a right for Mahabaleshwar which was another 50 kms . This was the toughest drive since it was in the ghats and it was a two lane highway. As soon as we entered this ghat. It started raining very heavily and our speed had definetly slowed down. Well , before Mahabaleshwar panchgani & wai hill stations also come on our way to Mahabaleshwar. It was 11 pm and we had about 20 kms left for Mahabaleshwar. We stopped at a roadside joint and got biryanis packed as all were starving by that time.
My god , now it was raining really heavily and the visibility had dropped to less than 5-6 meters . We didn’t know when the road was turning so this patch was a slow drive till the destination .
Finally, we reached Mahabaleshwar with three guides greeting us at 12:05 am and asking us if we wanted hotel room. My god, the guides here are very organized . There were probably at business for 24 hours.
Well, we moved to sudha sadan hotel bang in the middle of Mahabaleshwar market. Since we had reached post 12 in the night and it was raining very heavily , there was barely a soul anywhere to be seen.
This hotel is pretty cheap and is good enough for a night’s stay . Nothing luxurious about it. It costed us Rs 700 only for a night stay . This was cheap considering four people slept in this single room .
It was raining even harder while we ate the biryani and after watching a little tv , dozed off to wake up at 9 am .
It was still raining very hard . WE had our tea and parle-g and got ready by 10 am to explore Mahabaleshwar. Mahabaleshwar is a true tourist destination with a lot of points to visit. As soon as we got out, we were told that 7-8 points were closed down due to heavy rains . Kates point which is about 6-7 kms from Mahabaleshwar towards panchgani was amongst the few points which were accessible to public.
So we had our breakfast and headed for kates point.After having breakfast , anubhav and bhushan clicked some pictures with a horse only on its two legs…. Pretty amazing but I backed out since this was amounting to causing harm to the pretty horse.
Thereafter, on our way to kates point , we found a small waterfall and stopped at this spot for a photo shoot.
We clicked pics with the waterfall, on the stray bench and with the car. The weather was awesome and I have always loved to be around with nature. This was a perfect combination , amazing weather with a huge expanse of nature all around us.
We moved on from there to kates point. On our way to kates point we stopped at venna lake where locals told me that boating happens here but it has been stopped now owing to the heavy rains. We had bhuttas there and moved on … One unique characteristic of Mahabaleshwar is that there are many crossroads some with signboards and some without. Again on the advice of our ace navigator anubhav we took a wrong road and went on it for 4-5 kms .
This road was so narrow that taking a u-turn was not possible. So , with a lot of effort we finally took the u-turn at one point and then headed for kate’s point.
Kates point is at a height of 4235 feet, it gives a view of Krishna valley and is also an echo point.
But on this day, because of the fog and heavy rains , neither there was any echo nor any view of Krishna valley. Anyways, we also found a jyothish there . anubhav and me tried to have a peek into our future. Though I don’t believe in it, but still I thought lets give it a shot. He told me a lot of crap which I was not going to believe in .
Later on , we trekked downstream to needle hole point.
Amazing point and a great place for some more pictures. The four of us clicked pics in front of the needle hole. I guess it has been named so because the a small hole waterstream gives rise to a mid size waterfall …… the water flow was strong at this point.
Harami Bandar (Mischievous monkey) :
After this I changed into some dry clothes in the car. Chaitanya was taking some stuff out from the dicky when suddenly the harami Bandar plucked out a brown packet from the dickey which belonged to chaitanya’s dad.
He took out x-ray small prints from the box and was unwilling to hand it back to us . I opened my umbrella near to him and he got scared because of that .He then fled away.
After this, on our way back we stopped at archies strawberry farm , had the fream strawberry … apparently it’s a mixture of ice cream-cream and strawberry extracts. This thing was not worth 50 rupees atleast. They don’t even sell frozen strawberries considering they need it for fream shakes for the rest of the year. The farm in the background of this fream picture is a strawberry farm. The strawberry season is from October to may every year with 60 days for every crop cycle.
Thereafter we moved back Mahabaleshwar. We had to pay the toll for entry into Mahabaleshwar . this was not the case the day before since we had crossed this point at 12am and hardly anyone was present at that time. The fees is 15 bucks per person and 30 bucks for a car. Strange how can they charge on both accounts. Anyways, we reached the hotel …. We changed, relaxed a while and then checked out. I made the accounts till now and we paid each other the arrears.
4 pm : now our next destination was the MAPRO sales counter and food court in wai . this fell on our way back to pune.
A stop at the food counter of mapro was definetly a must do activity. We had a full grilled sandwich (Rs 80) and an Italian delight 12” pizza ( Rs 234) … I would say worth every penny. The ambience in the food court is amazing , lots of different types of flowers and comfortable seating infrastructure.
After this , we purchased some strawberry candies,chews and jam from the sales counter there.
5:30 pm : we hit the road once again with linkin park being played loudly. Bhushan was on the wheel now and he definetly drove welll ….. safely but fast.
We were on the satara-pune highway once again . we were easily cruising at 130 + speeds and the diesel engine of indigo was craving for more …. I bet it would have effortlessly put on another 20-30 kms/hr . A race ensued , with an opel astra overtaking us in a bizarre fashion . After chasing it for about 20 kms finally we came neck to neck . we had planned to play full on music while we crossed it but it turned out that the driver was a thin 65+ old man. What the hell !!! how can he drive so fast and skillfully …… well .. experience ..experience ..and only experience counts I guess.
Anywayz, because of this small race , we reached pune by 7:30 easily an hour before than the normal driving time. We checked on the newspapers and found that singh is king is playing in a nearby hall …. We rushed to the multiplex , ate & drank some samosas, dhokla , appy and minute maid .
The movie was good in between and we could bear it and laugh heartily a lot of times only because of akshay kumar. Of course it goes without saying, that Katrina looked gorgeous.
We ended the looooon day and I reached the guest house at 11:30 ..slept off the next day and kept remembering the good times that I have spent in Mahabaleshwar.
Thanks to you dudes for inviting me for this trip and looking forward to more such escapades.
