Another month another trip.
Where : Maharashtra
Why:We chose Maharashtra for we wanted to
see Ajanta,Ellora, Mahabaleshwar and visit Prash's friend in Pune + its closer to Karnataka
When : February 14 to 22 (2014)
Blore- Pune, uneventful flight. Loved
the new terminal at KIA. The new resaurant based on Malgudi theme
that served some tasty veg rolls. It was the last day of working at
the previous company and somehow i wasnt as emotional as either of us
expected I would be. I think one hangs on to things badly upto a
point and after that it does not matter as much. Oh well, the
surprising part was the lack of taxis at Pune airport. So much for
ignoring Amod's advise to pre-book online cab.
It was soo late in the night when we
reached Amod+Sayli+Shambhavi's house , i was hardly able to keep my
eyes open and khushi was coughing so badly that i just wanted to come
back. She coughed through the night and none of us slept for half an
hour at a stretch.
Next morning, by the time i woke up, Prash and Khush had visited the doctor and got some codeine based
medicine. I was soo desperate to get her to stop coughing frankly was
ok to give her codeine ( Sometimes i cant believe we dont worry about
such things and assume she is grown up enough to handle all the bad
medicines .it scares me. But i guess there is only much as a choice
in such matters. It is at such times that i wish i were a doctor ...a
paediatrician) Khushi stopped coughing, got some sleep and was back in her elements by noon. She was so happy
to be playing with Shambhavi. Children are soo weird when it comes to
playing with other children.
She is comfortable talking to anyone
and saying lets play. But then they start fighting in no time over a
toy that neither of them really cares of about. At this point its
upto the patience and experience of the adult in charge to shape how
things go.
Option 1: abandon play and take ur child home. This is the
easiest option and i do this when i am tired and have no patience
Option 2: Praise the other child for how wonderfully she/he shares. I
exploit the all prevelant jealousy feature in humans here
Option 3:
Encourage ur child by saying how mature and big girl she is and how
she can understand what others dont. I use the praise before
performance tactic here. Hanumantha behaviour i call ;). the more u
praise, the more/better she does ;)
Anyways after some dosas for children
and poori bhaji for us we left to see Lavasa city. It reminded us soo
much of wellington. The waterfront and houses dotting all over the
hills and people riding cycles. K and Sh played to their heart's
content at the nice play area while we caught a very beautiful sunset
over the lavasa lake. Hated the sub-standard , overly priced lunch at
Indo-american restaurant . In general, the food throughout our trip
was quite disappointing. Normally the local flavour is a highlight in
all our trips but by the end of this trip i could not wait to eat
mosranna with pickle. Steaming rice, cold masru and spicy lemon
pickle. Yummy!
On Sunday we were to leave for
Aurangabad early but in view of K's cough and how little catch up was
actually done, decided to leave after lunch. Met another family prash
knew from before. The marati thali lunch was quite heavy and we all
slept through the way from Pune to Aurangabad.
Roads in all states except Karnataka
seem to be way better. I was for once happy with the taxi and
pleasant driver. Or may be the expectations have stooped down sooo
much that anything better than abysmal makes me happy.really.
Aurangabad is surprisingly a big city.
So much army presence and historically important. Couldn't hav been more different to my imagination of it as a non-descript petty town.
We managed to see bibi-ka-mukabra which
is a mini-taj mahal. Not to mention badly maintained and soo
non-tourist friendly. I have a hard time explaining things to K these
days. She comes up with very basic questions. What is death? When
will mummy die ? Why doesn't Prashanth's mum come down from being a
star. Did she go in a rocket to the sky. Soemtimes i crack up and
laugh , sometimes i struggle. The other day she asked us what is radio and how
does it play songs. Prash and I struggled for half an hour and I
think we failed in the end and gave up ;) after going over frequency
, radio jockey, channels, broadcasting, antenna blah blah. I said
songs are in the air. She looked surprised and said silly mummy she
says songs go to my nose.Anyway at bibi-ka-mukbara she was worried
that Aurangazeb's mother's body is still below the green blanket; which was quite creepy when she told me. I just changed the topic to the more easy flowers, gardens and fountains. I remember the chinese bhel we ate at dinner. Was the first
time we had it and we both liked it.
We checked out and drove to Ellora. On
the way was the Daulatabad fort. Muhamad bin tuglaq was oscillating
between this fort and delhi. It is for real. All of history feels
relevant and i can place things and finish parts of the puzzle. I am
glad to have seen this fort and wish I had seen it while i mugged up
for exams... who was alaudin khilji... how tuglaq shifted capital from
delhi to daulatabad and back with all his subjects in tow. The
highlight was the bhulbhulaiya/ serpentine dark maze. Such a
brilliant piece of construction/architecture. K recognised the smell
of bats and we only ventured for a minute into it and got out.
Ellora: all excavated caves. 3 eras and
3 religions, hinduism,jainism and buddhism. Caves had a number each.
We were most impressed by cave no.16. Climbed up to get a
better/different view. I was done seeing the cave temples and
sculptures after 4 of them ;) they looked the same.
By night we reached Ajanta. The hotel
or rather the shack we stayed that night has got to be the worst
place we have stayed in anywhere so far. Trust me, in the last 8 years
we have stayed in countless hotels, B&Bs, tents , motels and even
caravans. But the worst one has to be the one at Ajanta. What was
baffling was its a UNESCO recognised heritage site and there is no
decent hotel to camp anywhere near by. Aurangabad is ur best bet. The
dinner is best forgotten. We had to drink a bottle of soda each and
keep K on fruit diet. Oh how could i forget the
fried parantha for breakfast next morning. The cook at the dhaba
poured out 1 litre of oil into a pan. I had no idea he would without
a second thought drop the parantha into it. The look of horror on my
face mus have been obvious because he started to explain that it
tastes best if deep fried. What? Ya? Ok whatever... get me more
bananas and soda please;) The drive to Ajanta caves is by a
maharashtra state transport bus only. I dint understand why but Prash
reasoned that there might not be enough space to park all pvt
vehicles near the caves. Again ya? Whatever... somethings are best
not rationalised. The caves at Ajanta were striking . Horse shoe
shaped 32 caves . We bought a book and read through instead of
getting a guide like we normally do. Ask y.. coz they charge a
whopping 1000 Rs. And yes we are like that only.penny wise pound foolish. but 1000 rs for a guide felt exhorbitant. Oh and the security guards at the
entrance of each cave offered to explain and show the highlights for
30 Rs each. This is what i dislike about India. The fact that u can
always get a sub-standard one for much cheaper quick fix, adjust
maadi and cheat maadi. Anyway, it was hot and triring to walk up and
down sometimes carrying K. She walked quite a distance . Throughout
the trip, we trekked and walked up and down everyday and she has
easily walked upto 2 Kms without complaining after which Prash
carried her while i morally supported them both. ;)
That night we had booked to stay at a
hotel in Ahmednagar , half way between Ajanta and lonavla.
Not finding the hotel at Ahmednagar is
also going down as one of the firsts. There has never been a case,
even in the remotest parts of where we have been to that we couldn't
trace a hotel. What that meant for us is travel back to Pune another
2 hours of journey. We reached Amod and Sayli's place close to
midnight and K was fast asleep.
The next morning we drove to Lonavla.
My idea of lonavla was that it was hill station and though the city
is at an elevation, it hardly felt like a hill station. The drive,
hotel, pool and lunch were all nice. I slept like a log all afternoon
while the other 2 played to their heart's content in the pool.
Finally it felt like a holiday. After all the RnR went to see the
highlights of lonavla nad khandala. The monkey point and sunset at
lion's point. Yet another beautiful sunset. There is something soo
calming about sunsets, always try and catch one evry time we are out
of the city. The chocolate fudge at lonavla was yummy. We left to
Murud the next day morning. The drive was what I was looking for all
the while. Away from the highways, through the several villages ,
rivers , schools and shops. There is something exciting about
watching life go by. I enjoy imagining how their lives would be.
Always feel they have fewer things to worry/think about.The whole
route was along the coast and reminded us a lot of Goa. The coconut
trees and small serpentine roads. After stopping at a few view points
we finally reached Murud. From the hill to the sea. The beach facing
room was comforting. I have developed a new sense of liking towards
jeera rice and dal tadka (all meals in
Murud were the same:)). The evening trip to Janjira and the police
station was something i had not even remotely anticipated.
Ok the story: Went to the jetty to catch a ferry to the Janjira fort
. A guy asks us to pay 400 bucks saying its going to be a shared
boat. I am surprised at the cost and ask him where is the Govt
operated ferry. He laughs off and says this is the one and I could go
if i wanted. We did agree to pay him 400 after mr wordly wise prash
reminded me how much i have spent on flights, hotels and taxi to get
to this point and how silly it would be not to see the fort now for 400 Rs. There was a rope from the boat that got entangled
with the anchor and a subedar after struggling for half an hour,
freed it. Now when we were about to get into the boat, it takes off
and pff goes away. We fight with the ticket guy and argue and call
names but it does not affect hgim. I am literally fuming and ready to
slap anyone who comes my way. We decide to go to the police station
and ask the driver to take us there. He laughs and says it makes no
difference but I dont care, i want to file a complaint. So we barge
into the police station and the officer is quite surprised to have
visitors. For a change, he patiently listens to the whole story while
prash and I narrate in agony and at the end , he asks which jetty did
we go to? What?? which jetty u ask, u mean there is more than 1 ?
duh! Blame the driver and the locals for guiding us to a private
jetty. We went to the right one where a govt trust operated jetty was
functional. OF course he asked us to pay 600 Rs is another story. But
a big gang of tourists came in and off we went from Murud to Janjira
fort . We hired an unofficial guide who told us fascinating stories
about the place. The fort is incredible actually. With a fresh water
lake inside a sea fort . Imagine that. The sun setting over the sea,
coloring the waves golden orange was magnifique. A dolphin chose to
show us its fins a couple of times and in the end the hassle of going
to police station was all worth it. As we called it a day, we talked
about how small a town this was and yet so beautiful and fascinating.
How many such places remain to see and how many we will see :)
Mahabaleshwar was a long drive from
Murud and thanks to GPS since i trusted the locals so well now;) we
reached by 3 PM. The last stretch of the drive that actually took us
up to the hill station was stunning to say the least. The driver went
crazy and rode up in speed and scared us. The hills mountains leading up to Mahabaleshwar were huge and changing landscape at every turn.
The hotel had an amazing view and a private strawberry garden. In the
evening we went to Elephant point and the famous weekend market where I
bought 6 pairs of shoes for 1000Rs. I have recovered the ROI on these
over the last 1.5 months ;) K loves shoes too.Its in the genes Prash
thinks. We shopped like tourists for strawberries, shoes, souvenirs
and came back dead tired. The next day we went to lingmala falls
which despite the sidey name turned out to be spectacular. Falling in
3 long steps at the head of a valley. Mahabaleshwar was the best part
of the entire trip. So natural, so green and so majestic. Saw a few
more view points and took off to Pune. Stopped at Mapro (short for
mahabaleshwar produce we thought) and gorged on strawberry desserts.
The view point at panchgani was soo NZ-ique. We met Lucky Ali at a dhaba eating sabudana vada and he is quite a charming humble guy. Finally
made it to Pune airport intime to be back at home by midnight to strike off another state from the see-India list.
