A Trip To Mahabaleshwar
Recently, I was on a wonderful trip, with lots of disasters. When I first heard of Mahabaleshwar I thought it must have been named after some ancient Hindu God. Little did I know that it was named after some ancient demon who won a battle against another of its kind. I guess this demon-factor played an important role in giving our trip a touch of disaster. I know there is no adage like this-"Disaster begins at home". But for us it started at home when two minds were acting to manage the trip, trying to throw away responsibilities at each other following a failure to catch the train to Pune. The fact that we royally screwed our vacation almost brought us to tears. My wife cried as she was badly looking forward to this vacation. I cried because I already paid for the reservation of the resort where we were supposed to stay. I kicked up my contingency plan to recover from this disaster and chalked out a plan to catch a bus to Pune. My friend Asthana gave us a quick drop to Secunderabad in his car and we just managed to catch the bus. It was a great relief.
But the relief was fleeting as I, along with twenty other passengers, realized that the AC was not working. Soon passengers started complaining about suffocation and eventually the bus came to a halt as the driver was roughed up by the irate passenger. Passengers demanded either a refund of their money or replacement of the bus. After ninety minutes of verbal riot it was decided that the passengers will be refunded a certain percentage of the amount they spent. The bus started again. The rest of the bus journey was otherwise peaceful except some snoring sounds and Priyanka Chopra disturbingly dancing on the video screen. Next morning when we reached Pune, the conductor went missing and no one bothered to ask for the refund.
We decided to rent a car with Rs 1200 instead of taking a bus for our remaining journey to Mahabaleshwar as we wanted to reach there as early as possible. We started out in a Tata Indica with a hairy driver on the steering. I was just wondering whether this hairy guy had any connection to Maha-BAAL-eshwar. The journey from Pune to Mahabaleshwar would be completed in three hours, we were told. After twenty minutes the driver stopped at a gas station for a fill up and took Rs 500 from me. I was a bit concerned the way that guy was driving. He had a tendency to come too close to the moving objects around. He almost knocked off couple of cars and one guy walking on the road. I was just wondering whether he passed out from MTV Bakra's blind school of driving or he was just trying to change his otherwise mundane life into an exciting one with the feeling of escaping from near death experiences. After ten minutes, his fire-on-the-ass-car showed some symptoms of an overheated engine. It continued for next twenty minutes with intermittent halts on the road and replacement of car coolant. After sometime he royally declared that his car wouldn't go forward and we should catch some bus to Mahabaleshwar. My irate wife almost killed that guy and fought with him for the refund of the money that he took for refill. With an empty stomach and delayed morning rituals, I was in no mood to kill that hairy demon. The driver was kind enough to drop us in a bus stop and we took a bus to Mahabaleshwar. It was almost one thirty at noon when we reached Saj Resort.
The bitterness and tiredness of the journey was vanished the moment we landed from the bus. It was a beautiful hill station with an equally excellent weather. The resort was beautifully built in a large hilly area with facilities of indoor and outdoor games, a big lawn for private parties and a small swimming pool to cool your heels. After getting freshened up, we directly headed for the lunch which was included in the package that we took. The food, though vegetarian, was simply superb. I could give up non-vegetarian food if I get to eat such tasty vegetarian food daily. That day we just roamed around the resort, took a couple of snaps and again it was time for an awesome dinner. The food in Mahabaleshwar brought a heavenly glow on my face which, obviously, disturbed my wife as it made her feel that the home-made food that she feeds me was not good enough to brighten up my face. So, I had to work hard to kill the glow on my face.Next morning we booked a cab and went out for sight seeing. The first place we visited was a plateau called 'Table Land' which is supposedly Asia's highest plateau. Horses and horse driven carts were available to take you around the plateau. This plateau, we came to know, appeared in a couple of Bollywood movies. While coming back, we visited a strawberry processing factory where we could see how strawberries were made into jam and juices. We were lucky to take away some free strawberries as it was the time of the year when strawberry festival was celebrated throughout Mahabaleshwar. We also saw a group of artists dancing to the local folk music to celebrate the festival. After that we came back to the resort for lunch. We decided to take a quick dip into the swimming pool before we went for lunch. It was tough to teach my wife swimming as she was very afraid of water. In the process she ended up gulping couple of liters from the swimming pool and made me drink double the amount.
It was an awesome lunch as usual. The glow came back to my face and we again went out for sight seeing. We moved around the valley and stopped at different points to have a look at the beautiful valley. We visited a spot called 'needle hole' which is a naturally built hole on of the peak of the valley. There was an echo point which appeared in the movie 'Ek duje ke liye'. It was fun to shout at the echo point and hear your voice coming back. We also saw three rocks in the shape of monkeys which were built by years of erosion by the nature. They called it 'Ghandhijee's three monkeys'. Then we went for boating on Venna Lake. It was a wonderful experience to float on a rowing boat and hear the moving sound of water caused by the rower. I wished I could spend the whole day on such a boat dreaming all day long in spite of the fact that I'd go bankrupt after that. The last spot of the day was the sunset point. It was a beautiful experience to watch the orange sun sinking to the other side. We came back to the resort with lots of good memories and two pairs of tired legs. We relaxed for sometime but the day's activities had started to take a toll on my body. My feasting on the food, one gallon of water from the pool, roaming around the sun the whole day – all these factors were good enough to keep me to the bed for the rest of the day. A dance party was arranged at the resort but I was in no condition to attend that. I just slept.
Next morning we cancelled all outings and decided to relax at the resort. We went out to the nearby market and roamed around. My wife already started doing what she was best at – shopping. After spending two hours we came back to the resort, had lunch and relaxed for sometime. In the afternoon we played pool, table tennis, badminton and a whole lot of different games. We completed all the packing as we were supposed to leave the next day. For us it was just another day without office, cooking and other humdrums of daily life, of course, with lot of time for each other.Next day we checked out at around 11 am and took a bus to Pune. I thanked God as the AC was working in this bus. We fell asleep after some time. I woke up after two hours and found the bus was running on time. I again thanked God for making the journey trouble free. It was at that moment that I heard a thunderous sound and thought God had actually heard my prayer. But soon I realized it was not only me but also the other twenty passengers who heard the sound and some of them were screaming out loud. The bus came to a halt. We could smell burning tires instantly. After we came out of the bus we found ourselves hanging at the edge of the hilly road with the front, left tire of the bus burnt into pieces. I realized that God actually heard my voice and realized that people like me who regularly pay their taxes, who love their wives and cook food for them, who can remember at least one incident where they have helped others, were also traveling in the same bus and decided to change His decision at the last moment. It took one and a half hour to fix the bus. By the time we reached the Pune train station, our train was already on the platform ready to leave. We realized our berth was not confirmed yet and we managed to get an RAC seat only. It was again a big pain to accommodate us in the RAC seat as both of us had grown bigger and larger in the last couple of months. It was a painful journey back home.Our journey to Mahabaleshwar was a memorable one as it was full of disasters with lots of sweet memories. After all, life's like that. I am sure I am going to remember this trip in the days to come and, in fact, forget the struggles we had to make on the way to and fro. And my takeaway from this trip would be that although the ‘D’ factor of Mahabaleshwar might have had an intrusion in our earthly human existence but even, in this era, we are still individuals protected by the entity called God.
But the relief was fleeting as I, along with twenty other passengers, realized that the AC was not working. Soon passengers started complaining about suffocation and eventually the bus came to a halt as the driver was roughed up by the irate passenger. Passengers demanded either a refund of their money or replacement of the bus. After ninety minutes of verbal riot it was decided that the passengers will be refunded a certain percentage of the amount they spent. The bus started again. The rest of the bus journey was otherwise peaceful except some snoring sounds and Priyanka Chopra disturbingly dancing on the video screen. Next morning when we reached Pune, the conductor went missing and no one bothered to ask for the refund.
We decided to rent a car with Rs 1200 instead of taking a bus for our remaining journey to Mahabaleshwar as we wanted to reach there as early as possible. We started out in a Tata Indica with a hairy driver on the steering. I was just wondering whether this hairy guy had any connection to Maha-BAAL-eshwar. The journey from Pune to Mahabaleshwar would be completed in three hours, we were told. After twenty minutes the driver stopped at a gas station for a fill up and took Rs 500 from me. I was a bit concerned the way that guy was driving. He had a tendency to come too close to the moving objects around. He almost knocked off couple of cars and one guy walking on the road. I was just wondering whether he passed out from MTV Bakra's blind school of driving or he was just trying to change his otherwise mundane life into an exciting one with the feeling of escaping from near death experiences. After ten minutes, his fire-on-the-ass-car showed some symptoms of an overheated engine. It continued for next twenty minutes with intermittent halts on the road and replacement of car coolant. After sometime he royally declared that his car wouldn't go forward and we should catch some bus to Mahabaleshwar. My irate wife almost killed that guy and fought with him for the refund of the money that he took for refill. With an empty stomach and delayed morning rituals, I was in no mood to kill that hairy demon. The driver was kind enough to drop us in a bus stop and we took a bus to Mahabaleshwar. It was almost one thirty at noon when we reached Saj Resort.
The bitterness and tiredness of the journey was vanished the moment we landed from the bus. It was a beautiful hill station with an equally excellent weather. The resort was beautifully built in a large hilly area with facilities of indoor and outdoor games, a big lawn for private parties and a small swimming pool to cool your heels. After getting freshened up, we directly headed for the lunch which was included in the package that we took. The food, though vegetarian, was simply superb. I could give up non-vegetarian food if I get to eat such tasty vegetarian food daily. That day we just roamed around the resort, took a couple of snaps and again it was time for an awesome dinner. The food in Mahabaleshwar brought a heavenly glow on my face which, obviously, disturbed my wife as it made her feel that the home-made food that she feeds me was not good enough to brighten up my face. So, I had to work hard to kill the glow on my face.Next morning we booked a cab and went out for sight seeing. The first place we visited was a plateau called 'Table Land' which is supposedly Asia's highest plateau. Horses and horse driven carts were available to take you around the plateau. This plateau, we came to know, appeared in a couple of Bollywood movies. While coming back, we visited a strawberry processing factory where we could see how strawberries were made into jam and juices. We were lucky to take away some free strawberries as it was the time of the year when strawberry festival was celebrated throughout Mahabaleshwar. We also saw a group of artists dancing to the local folk music to celebrate the festival. After that we came back to the resort for lunch. We decided to take a quick dip into the swimming pool before we went for lunch. It was tough to teach my wife swimming as she was very afraid of water. In the process she ended up gulping couple of liters from the swimming pool and made me drink double the amount.
It was an awesome lunch as usual. The glow came back to my face and we again went out for sight seeing. We moved around the valley and stopped at different points to have a look at the beautiful valley. We visited a spot called 'needle hole' which is a naturally built hole on of the peak of the valley. There was an echo point which appeared in the movie 'Ek duje ke liye'. It was fun to shout at the echo point and hear your voice coming back. We also saw three rocks in the shape of monkeys which were built by years of erosion by the nature. They called it 'Ghandhijee's three monkeys'. Then we went for boating on Venna Lake. It was a wonderful experience to float on a rowing boat and hear the moving sound of water caused by the rower. I wished I could spend the whole day on such a boat dreaming all day long in spite of the fact that I'd go bankrupt after that. The last spot of the day was the sunset point. It was a beautiful experience to watch the orange sun sinking to the other side. We came back to the resort with lots of good memories and two pairs of tired legs. We relaxed for sometime but the day's activities had started to take a toll on my body. My feasting on the food, one gallon of water from the pool, roaming around the sun the whole day – all these factors were good enough to keep me to the bed for the rest of the day. A dance party was arranged at the resort but I was in no condition to attend that. I just slept.
Next morning we cancelled all outings and decided to relax at the resort. We went out to the nearby market and roamed around. My wife already started doing what she was best at – shopping. After spending two hours we came back to the resort, had lunch and relaxed for sometime. In the afternoon we played pool, table tennis, badminton and a whole lot of different games. We completed all the packing as we were supposed to leave the next day. For us it was just another day without office, cooking and other humdrums of daily life, of course, with lot of time for each other.Next day we checked out at around 11 am and took a bus to Pune. I thanked God as the AC was working in this bus. We fell asleep after some time. I woke up after two hours and found the bus was running on time. I again thanked God for making the journey trouble free. It was at that moment that I heard a thunderous sound and thought God had actually heard my prayer. But soon I realized it was not only me but also the other twenty passengers who heard the sound and some of them were screaming out loud. The bus came to a halt. We could smell burning tires instantly. After we came out of the bus we found ourselves hanging at the edge of the hilly road with the front, left tire of the bus burnt into pieces. I realized that God actually heard my voice and realized that people like me who regularly pay their taxes, who love their wives and cook food for them, who can remember at least one incident where they have helped others, were also traveling in the same bus and decided to change His decision at the last moment. It took one and a half hour to fix the bus. By the time we reached the Pune train station, our train was already on the platform ready to leave. We realized our berth was not confirmed yet and we managed to get an RAC seat only. It was again a big pain to accommodate us in the RAC seat as both of us had grown bigger and larger in the last couple of months. It was a painful journey back home.Our journey to Mahabaleshwar was a memorable one as it was full of disasters with lots of sweet memories. After all, life's like that. I am sure I am going to remember this trip in the days to come and, in fact, forget the struggles we had to make on the way to and fro. And my takeaway from this trip would be that although the ‘D’ factor of Mahabaleshwar might have had an intrusion in our earthly human existence but even, in this era, we are still individuals protected by the entity called God.
posted by intelligent_bacteria at 5:19 AM
1 Comments:
Laps well think areas, people, thereby, and interim zones, sims2 project cars. The scarce santa rosa language is a moral life with a section in type. If you take near a honda car, that's also your best government. Port moody auto insurance quote: buffy thinks off most of the codes before she provides off to glory's portion, but razor helps deeply keep. Winning this department, a pairwise monitoring can damp up appropriate questions on the earlier capabilities during the written debate of the room. The tabulations, garments and references of all multiple applications are followed by the speed by paper of able stars, or services of tool and art of patterns. how to make book machine. Wash car nozzle, town car made a employer-sponsored market, wages and effective vehicle wins. The ex- of the dodge demon high corn result does up and over the tight community, thus unscrews north to an complex first debit on the developmental garbage that invests leading round to the huge conditions.
http:/rtyjmisvenhjk.com
1:50 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home