Mahabaleshwar – Day 1

{I wrote it on Tuesday)

Yipeee! I got a long vacation, after so long, after 7 months. First 2 days went in shopping. Not for me. My shopping longed for half an hour and I bought 2 jeans. That is all about shopping. Rest was too much boring as my extra perfect NRI sister was doing it for herself. :P

Third day Monday I spent the day the way I wanted to. I read “Two States”. This book deserves different blog post.

Today is Tuesday and I’m in Mahabaleshwar now. We came here today early morning. We left yesterday night. We have booked a car. So it is not a tiring trip till now. Ok, I’ll start from the start. We left yesterday night by car. I missed a crazy thing yesterday. Our driver’s some calculations went wrong and the diesel in the car went completely empty. We’d have had to push the car till a petrol pump comes. But diesel finished just in front of the petrol pump. And we didn’t have to push the car at all. Otherwise it’d have been a fun to start the trip with such a crazy thing. ;) So I can say now that our driver’s calculations were too much perfect. ;)

Anyway, after this start I don’t remember when I slept. I got up only when certain chaos was started. 2-3 agents were fighting with each other so that we will go with one of them to get the lodge. It was 5.30 in the morning. Somehow, my dad, our driver and those agents (whom we ditched after some time :D) discussed something and we got some room in some hotel. Now I got up completely. It was so cold here in the morning that the thought of getting ready to go out to see Mahabaleshwar was difficult to swallow. But I got to sleep after that too. Ok, if you (and I myself too) are bored of talks of my sleep then we will start with Mahabaleshwar. :D

Actually whatever the place is, I’m happy with 2 things - I got a break from work and I got to be there with humans for more time than with my office computer.

Anyway, again we’ll try to come to the topic of this post. :D So we started with Pratapgad. It is one of the nicest forts that I have seen so far. Though it is again a historical place, I enjoyed watching it. It has many specialties like its structure (a picture of which is there on 4th standard history book.) It is amazing to watch that. Its minor things like why the structure is made that way, for example why some doors are narrow, why 2 walls are parallel and near to each other etc; reasons behind them are intellectual. Shivaji Maharaj had used his brain nicely when he built these forts.

Next we came to Mahabaleshwar again, took a guide who will show us some good things of Mahabaleshwar and we started. He showed us some small features like a 40 feet tall cactus, a post-office and a club of British’s age. These guides have a nice strategy of telling about each and every minor thing they get to see. Anyway, his continuous talk kept us stirring, that was good. Or if he wouldn’t have talked then there was the nature which would have kept us awake. We were taking frequent halts to take snaps. Then with the help of the guide we visited 3 temples –Mahabaleshwar temple, Atibaleshwar temple and Panchaganga temple. Pachaganga temple has the launch of 5 rivers – Venna, Krushna, Koyna, Savitri, Gayatri. And it is through a Gomukh .

Then we watched hunter point, tiger spring, Malcum point, Arthur Seat point, Monkey point etc.

At tiger spring we drank the pure water which comes from under the ground and it runs for 24 hours, 365 days. It was sweet water. We drank it. My father started making statements like – “oh this pure water cured my stomach”. :P As usual. :D

We saw magic point where according to our guide, in April some pressure gets generated because of different patterns of air flow which make anything get thrown upward in the air even if you throw it in the valley. It is also called Arthur seat point is because some British named Arthur used to sit there. One day he threw a bottle from the top and bottle returned upwards. So he thought if he also jumps he’d come back. And he tried but didn’t come back. Hence it is also called Suicide point. Our guide called the same point as 3 points. Extra-smart!

Anyway, next was monkey point. We saw (could imagine :D) 3 monkey shaped stones which were resembling to Gandhiji’s 3 monkeys. So the name of the point is monkey point. We can believe it or just enjoy and forget.

We also watched Echo point. People were trying making different loud sounds. I didn’t get any echo there. :D

I and my sister also did a bit of horse riding. Not by ourselves. A guy helped us. It was one of the most liked things of the day. I really enjoyed it as I was doing it for the first time. I want to learn it.

Then roaming around the places of those points, taking snaps of monkeys, doing all photo sessions of ourselves with different poses, we returned back to our lodge. We got fresh, had dinner, ate Strawberry with cream twice ;) and then watched all the photography and now I’m here.

I’ll sleep soon. Tomorrow I have to get up to go to see some other points. ;) I’ll blog about them too.