How can my journey be complete without sacrificing a thing or two? It was the time for my specs to go. They were barely 2 months old and as always I didn’t realize when and where I lost them.
We were still 2 kms away from entering mahabaleshwar when a guy caught us near a checkpoint. He was a hotel owner (Actually, owner of 4 cottages). Although it was a little outside from the main town, we still decided to give it a chance as he was promising everything on earth for a paltry sum of 200 bucks!! The cottage was not bad at all. Everything except a TV was there and we were not bothered by its absence. After all who the hell was there to watch Kyonki saas bhi..!! By this time our asses were crying for mercy. We planned a short nap of 1 hr and fell on the bed in more or less same condition in which we entered the room.
The ‘short nap’ stretched to 1:30 hrs and we came to our senses again by the knock on the door. Mr. X was there (the guy who served us there after) asking whether we want dal-chawal. He came back in 15 min. with what u can call our lunch. Still wondering why he put all the chilly in the world in our dal although we paid him well in advance.
We left the cottage with a big question mark. Where to go? There were hundreds of boards glorifying “12 peaks or points” in Mahabaleshwar but none of them was showing direction. After 2 teas, 1 kurkure and 15 minutes of agony, we managed to find the way. The road was endless but it was truly beautiful. A not-so-wide-road with dense trees all around. Even the rays were finding it difficult to pierce the leaves!
Finally we reached at the first point “The Arthur Seat”. The view from that point was pretty amazing with a tall mountain on the left hand side and greenery all around. We departed from that point, as there were 11 more. Most of the points after this one were sheer disappointment. They were showing the same mountain from different angles! I mean appreciating beauty is OK but how can somebody found the location awesome when we were staring at the solitary mountain from 7 different angles that too differing in just 4 degrees each! Utterly disappointed, we took the back route. Another sign board “Rock View”. Our eyes twinkled! Something interesting, we thought. What was there? The same mountain with a 7 degree twist this time. We had it enough. We decided to come back from that chakravyuh of mountain. While coming back , we moved to “Kate’s point” and this time the road as well as the peak was satisfying. Clicked a few snaps and then headed straight to Vienna lake giving a miss to “Sunset Point”. Spent a quality one hour at the lake, seeing the beauty of setting sun while paddling in the boat. That was the high point of our trip.
It was around 8:00 when we started from the lake and stopped at a restaurant. A light dinner followed the tea. Then it was the time to go back to the den. We were pretty tired by now after the traveling and site seeing. Suddenly two things propped in our mind. One. A hot water bath will freshen us and Two. A little bonfire will make this trip memorable. Asked the hotel owner about the availability of these two and he nodded again charging a measly some for both. Then I took a royal bath (Can’t say the same about Anurag as I was outside bathroom! After the bath we were as fresh as the face of Gayatri Joshi! Mr. X then put up bonfire for us providing us welcome warmth in the cold. The talk session there continued for full one hour talking about everything under the sun and we even started to plan our next trip!
It was 11:30 PM when we decided to ‘die’ for the day. Fell on the bed again and probably went into sleep mode immediately. Next in schedule was departure to Panchgani at 9:00 AM and then the return trip.
Click here to see selected pics!
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