Sunday, June 26, 2005
Mathera trip & Journey to Visakhapatnam
Student life is very different from professional life and just like everyone else, I learnt it the hard way. To say that I missed the cool monsoon months of Madras, cycling in the rain, and the chilly snow filled winter of Kaiserslautern would be an understatement. Of course the winter months of Pune did fill some gap and as the monsoon starts, I am already witness to some pleasant evenings and wonderful climate. Yet some part of me is was yearning for a solace in the lap of Mother Nature.
The chance came in the form of an offsite with colleagues to the hill resort of Matheran. After much deliberation about the dates and venue, we locked in on Matheran and the timing was perfect. We traveled by bus up to Neral, proceeded from there to Dasturi by Maruti vans. An hours brisk walk along the train tracks through the picturesque hills took us to our destination. We had booked our stay at the Usha Ascort perhaps the best Matheran had to offer. It was noon by the time we settled in our rooms.
Wasting no time, we bought swimming costumes and jumped into the cool water of the pool. We came out refreshed after 45 minutes in the pool. The climate was cool and pleasant. A quick bath, heavy lunch, lazy stroll in the resort (it was drizzling by then) and two hours of sleep, it was already evening. After tea and an hour at the pool table, we freshened up and went to the banquet hall in party mood. A game of tambola just got over as I occupied my table. The heavy Gujrati thali lunch combined with the slumber had taken its toll and I had to settle for a couple of sodas instead of the dinner. A singer took up the mike and killed about a dozen songs. A section of the crowd that probably was desperate to escape form the city life seemed to enjoy the show but I am sure that many in our group were bored. Earlier in the day we had played antakshari and we had thoroughly enjoyed it. So only the best could have satisfied us in the evening. The only song I remember enjoying was sung by a lady guest.
Post dinner, some retired and the rest hit the discotheque. Two hours of dance drained out the energy. We sat for some time beside the swimming pool in the moonlight and then retired. My room was not ready to call it a day. We had made big plans to learn bridge, but as the guy who was supposed to be the expert had either had one too many beers or was tired after the exercise in the discotheque, we settled for another hearts which we played till 3:00 AM. As we were about to retire, Kaustubh announced that he would take a morning walk at 6. I didn’t even dare to think about it! Being a light sleeper I woke up as he started his chores. I decided to postpone my sleep to noon and have a walk with him, probably just for the heck of it or because I was aware of the excellent climate outside. I had rained in the night and clouds had settled over the hills.
Matheran being a pollution free zone, there were no automobiles and hence no cement/tar roads. The red path, the occasional puddles of rainwater, the tracks left by the previous nights rainwater, chirping and singing birds, misty forest, wind kept jolting the trees and dropped rain drops on us. Not a soul in sight, we had the entire forest for ourselves. We wandered into the woods, sat on the edge in a dried waterfall, walked to end of the path we had picked and sat on the steep slope. The hills as I mentioned before we coved in thick cloud and we couldn’t see beyond a few meters into the valley in front of us. I enjoyed the walk very much and captured some great shots. I was tired of the previous days walk, energy sapping dance in the discotheque and lack of sleep. But it was surely more that worth what I had given. I was not in my shoes and had lazily left the resort with my roomies sandals. Probably we would have walked deeper into the forest if I had had my Woodlands on!
We retuned to resort, had a heavy breakfast, quick nap, freshened up and left by walk as the rest of our troupe chose to do sigh seeing on horses. The #11 bus (two feet!) had enough fuel left in it to take us to each place our group was visiting by horses. We decided to enjoy more mundane things like “time pass” boiled peanuts and “garam chai” and wait at the exit points.
Back in the resort, an hour at the pool table, lunch, a brisk walk down the hills, bus ride and a dinner at Loonawala on the way, we were back in Pune. The mind refused to come back to reality as I got down in front of my office.
I write this perched on the upper berth in A1 coach of Konark express. In a couple of hours I will be at home in Visakhapatnam. Its been 6 months since I left home and moved to Pune. Perhaps I will write about the nostalgic moments as the train passed Vijayawada and Rajahmundry. Childhood summers with grand parent, I can fill pages with. I was surprised to see that the coach was equipped with 110V power supply just for mobile charger and laptops. Thanks to railways my 26 hours journey was evenly split between sleeping, games, songs, magazines and blog writing. When I board the train to Chennai, I should make sure that I have a movie to watch on my laptop and head phones.
