Weekend Trip

After a long while I went for a weekend trip. It was with family so I couldn’t get much reading done which was a pity. I also forgot my journal back home so I couldn’t note down much at all however I did take quite a number of photos so maybe you guys can enjoy that.

I left on Friday in the evening to get to my cousin’s place, had dinner and we went to sleep. Saturday morning, we left for the destination. Mahabaleshwar. It’s a hill station with one of the most gorgeous green forests I have seen, it helped that it’s the monsoon season here and the rain made it all so foggy and cool and just plain gorgeous.

Of course, I have to admit that most of the weekend was basically spent in a car but hey, that’s what you sacrifice when you wanna have fun and only have the weekend for this. Oh well.

On the way to Mahabaleshwar, we went to Vai, a place famous for its Ganapati temple. It was a sunny afternoon there and a part of me was worried that we wouldn’t have rain at our destination. We still enjoyed the stop, of course.

(This is a Deepstambh, basically, it’s light stand? See the flat surfaces on the each of the outcroppings? That’s where tiny diyas are lit during festivals and such.)

(This was a little sitting/ resting area, a sort of courtyard made entirely of stone so it was cool to sit under.)

After this little stop, we finally reached the destination and the road going towards the hotel wasn’t ideal. It’s the monsoon and the rains had made their presence known, there were so many potholes that it wasn’t even a road anymore. Just a little pathway on which we drove. Of course, when we finally reached the hotel, everything kinda fell away. The stress, the fatigue of travelling and we were blessed with a wonderful view. Even though we were at a hill station, our hotel was a bit out of the way of the main town so it was a bit isolated and that made it all the more beautiful if you ask me.

We had a bit of late lunch and had a resting nap. When I woke up to have some much needed coffee, it had already rained and the clouds had come down and everything was almost fairy tale-like. I am a sucker for those places.

The hotel isn’t the correct term, I guess. The rooms we were in were basically cottages with a long row of rooms. Everything was contained with the glass doors and inside, it was pretty!

The following are just snaps of flowers, the lighting was tricky and so they look overly bright which wasn’t my intention at all. They are still pretty enough, I suppose.

This place was so pretty and they kept it pretty. It wasn’t too extravagant and it might even seem that the rooms were fairly simple but frankly, we weren’t in the rooms long enough for us to complain about them. The beds were cozy, the same view we got from the doorway was there from the window and the amenities were good enough for me.

We saw so many dogs there! There were four dogs on the property itself, one Lab, two German Shepherds and one I can’t quite place the breed of. All of them were so gorgeous!!! Only one of them let us take a photo though, he was feeling lazy, the others were too busy exploring their home.

We drove to the local market in the evening and shopping was done by most of the people in our group. We bought some key-chains as souvenirs but that’s about it. We met a darling little puppy, a stray who was starving so much she tried to eat paper. We bought some biscuits and she was so good at being patient while we doled out her food.

It was hard to leave her but the locals assured us that she would be taken care of despite being a stray. There is no animal shelter or anything but mostly local businesses feed the strays and to a certain degree, they are healthy. She was so polite and patient and I almost cried just by looking into her eyes. She just needed love.

The next morning, I got to see take some good photos of the well in front of our cottage. It looked something out of a fairy tale, I could almost see some folk-lore behind the place. I don’t think my photo does it justice, you just had to be there, I think. Still, here’s an attempt to capture the feel of the place.

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and went sightseeing. Mahabaleshwar has many, many places where one could go but we had half a day if that. We were there for leisure this time and not really touring. So, we only visited a select few. Some of them being Echo Point where monkeys graced us with their presence. Elephant’s Head which is frankly too majestic.

After that we went to market area to have some lunch, then it was the journey back to my cousin’s place. I almost didn’t want to go back to real life, everything looked so freaking fantastic in Mahabaleshwar that I wasn’t ready to get back to my normal life with my utterly normal city flat. Oh well. It was a lovely experience and I shall remember it with fondness.

Here are some more snaps on the journey home.

We reached my cousin’s home by nightfall and then in the morning we left his home to return home.

And thus ended our weekend trip. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I can’t wait to do it again. It’s very unlikely that I would get to do so soon but one can hope.

(A side note: I would have posted photos with my face in it but the traveling made my hair so icky that I didn’t really feel like sharing them with anyone other than family. Sorry, you guys!)

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