With its verdant hills, soaring peaks, breath-taking valleys, lush flora, acres of evergreen forests, and a pleasant climate, Mahabaleshwar is one of the best hill-stations in Maharashtra. It is a great destination to visit throughout the year, except for the monsoon months. For
us it was a 235 km jolly ride in mid-December. Now, there were many
questions on our mind and must be popping up in yours too, “Which route to
take?”, “Where to stay?” etc. After much thought we were finally ready with the
itinerary of our trip. Our plan was to leave early morning on Saturday
and get back home on Sunday. This time around, we were six comrades on three bikes!
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| The riders and their beasts |
So as planned, Saturday morning, we jumped out of bed, met
at Powai at 6 am sharp and kicked off our trip towards our destination. Reaching
Powai was timeless, however Panvel took longer, due to the never ending bumper-to-bumper city
traffic. From Panvel we traveled through National Highway 17 (NH17) to
the town of pen and then connected to the National Highway 66 (NH66) all the
way to Mahabaleshwar. There is always an intense feeling on the mind while
travelling through NH17 as it is the most accident prone highway in India. Long
rides makes you hungry very fast, thus once we were through with NH17 we halted
at a highway dhaba to have some morning highway delicacies.
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| Having omelette pav and missal pav at NH66 |
The roads
of the NH17 were narrow and kind-of a one way for vehicles to pass, which made
it really hard to overtake vehicles. After NH17 the road turned up to be better right
up to Mahabaleshwar. There were many ghats along the route and the scenic
beauty was just increasing exponential as we went further towards our
destination. It was a great ride through the hills!
After 5 hours of riding with many halts to click-away the
beauty of nature we were finally close to Mahabaleshwar. Close to the city we spotted
a decent looking Hotel thus we thought of inquiring about a one night stay. The
Hotel was pretty decent, the room was comfy for all of us to stay and it was
only 5 km away from the city hence we decided to stay here. The room was huge
and could easily accommodate eight people and the stay for one night was just
one thousand rupees, it was an awesome bargain!!
We rested for some time, freshened up and got out to visit
the sites around Mahabaleshwar. The first place we visited was Pratapgad fort,
for which we had to ride back 20 km in the opposite direction of Mahabaleshwar
city. Tip: You can save a lot of time if you visit the fort on your way to
Mahabaleshwar. The fort was easy to access and the view from above was sensational.
We trekked till the top of the fort, clicked some beautiful images of the view
and then were back on our way to the city.
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| Pratapgad Fort |
It was already dark in the evening as we strolled around in
the market. The market was flooded with tourists from all over the world. We
had the famous Mahabaleshwar strawberry shakes which lived up to the
expectations and without saying, were absolutely delicious. We also picked up
some strawberries for home. After some hours of roaming about in the market it was late so
we decided to have dinner here itself. To get back to our room we had to ride
through the pitch dark roads in the hills which was bit of a scary experience.
The next day according to our itinerary was the day for visiting the various
tourist-points in Mahabaleshwar. We got ready, packed our belongings and
checked-out from the Hotel as we were going to take a different route back
home. Out of all the sites in Mahabaleshwar we chose a few to visit as all of
these sites almost looked alike and also we were limited on time as we had to
visit Venna Lake and Kaas plateau on our way back home. We visited Ludwig point
and Elephant point first. The view of these points was breath-taking with all
the surrounding hills.
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| Ludwig Point |
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| Elephant point |
We had lunch in the city and then set off on our way towards home.
It was afternoon and the sun was burning. After about a 30 min ride, we reached
Venna Lake, which was surrounded by trees and the shade from the trees helped
us escape from the blaze of the sun. Visiting the lake turned out to be a good decision,
it was beautiful, calm and very peaceful. At Venna Lake a local told us about a
strawberry farm nearby where we topped up on our strawberry stock.Tip: It’s better to buy strawberries from the strawberry farms as you can choose the strawberries as well as you get them for a better price. The farm owner even allowed us to pluck some berries right from the farm.
On our way
back we decided to go a bit off route just to get a glimpse of Kaas Plateau,
but it was mostly dry without any flowers. The best and only time to visit it
would be the latter half of the rainy season. Anyway this route took us to
Satara and from there we took NH4 all the way back home to Mumbai. The roads
till Satara were a mix of good and terrible conditions but the ghats were once
again the highlight of this route. There were many long stretches of road where
we couldn’t see a single soul till far but the roads were in the best condition
and the view was exemplary. As we were already late we didn’t halt for pics but
kept on cruising and enjoyed the blissful ride.
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| Venna Lake |
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| Venna Lake: A view from above! |
As always the trip back home was never ending. It was a very
long ride as we had to ride 350 km. We all were at 100 km/hr plus all the way,
but it still did not seem to end. After riding for almost 5 hours we reached
Panvel where we waved goodbye to one of our riders. In another hour the trip
had already ended, we were all at home lying down tired from the outstanding
700 km round trip with a thought in the back of our head, “Where should we go
next?”
