One day trip to Matheran

8th August 2009
I and Maruthu went to Pune to meet our friends and my first manager, under whom I started my career. We all planned for one day trip to Matheran.

On Saturday morning, we packed our food, thanks to Neela for all the preparations, we left kondhwa around 7:45AM in Nanda's WagonR, thanks to Nanda, filled in the petrol, travelled towards chichwad, Prabhu was our navigator. Met my first manager, Rana Chanda, and his family at Wakad junction. As we got delayed, Made him to wait for long time :(. Went on the Pune-Mumbai highway, missed the exit as we were busy taking pictures and videos on the drive, came reverse on the service track, got out of exit. It was tough to maintain the speed with Rana in the highway.It was green all over the place as we crossed the mountains, and dark inside the tunnels. Pavan was happy as we crossed the mountains and tunnels. It was green almost all the road, and it was more lush green as we were close to the matheran. We stopped at the small falls just before the hair pin bends. The view was awesome. We took few snaps, had garam chai.

We headed to the matheran, although the number of hair bin bends are less when compared to ooty, couple of them are very steep and really dangerous cliffs. As we reached the peak, it started raining heavily, but it stopped in few minutes. We parked our cars, bargained for the horse rides. Got a 3 point deal of 600 rs for one cart for Rana's wife, as she had back pain, and 2800 for 7 horses for rest of us. The roads were muddy because of rain. I felt good to sit on the horse after a long time. Few horses were good, and rest of the horses are okay kind. I got a white horse, which responded well for the commands, but could not trot, as I had pavan with me. He was calm and enjoyed the ride. Maruthu was scared a bit about the horse. We stoped at the view point, got down from the horses, walked down a bit, the view point was awesome, tall mountains with a deep valley in between, lush greens all over the place, mist here and there. Check out the video.

We came back from the view point, got on the horses, reached the bazaar point, we all ate the food that we got, too many monkeys were around. It was hard to keep the monkeys away, Maruthu was the guard to keep away the monkeys. Menu was Tamarind rice, curd rice, with pickel. Rana got some lays chips to eat along with the rice.
After lunch, I got another horse to trot for a while. we went to another view point, green everywhere. Spent sometime in the bazaar. We got on the horses, rode them down the hill. On the way back, Prabhu drove the car for few kms, we stopped near a lake.
Reached pune, went to Rana's house in chinchwad. Drank tea, ate Hot Samosaa, and tasty gulaab Jamoons, yeah I ate two :) Spent sometime in Rana's house and reached Kondhwa around 8:30PM. It was a nice day alltogether :)

Where is Matheran: 120Kms from Pune