28th Friday Mumbai 11am morning: The weekend plan seemed to work out and i finally succeeded in grabbing a few guys in for our unplanned trip for the weekend. Had been a lot of time since I had hanged out with my friends and actually, visited a cool place.
Friday night....one by one, all my friends came at our get-together spot, my home and all of us started pressurizing our brains for any unique destination. The plan was initially to have a biking trip to Lonavla.....considering we were all biking fans ;)
Next, it was Friday late night 3am and we 4 guys started to freeze a spot for Sat trip. We were in a hell of a confusion.When we stopped thinking about the spot, we started thinking whether or not to have a bike trip or take a cab. Huh....in came suggestions for Malshej, Divyanagar, Lonavla, Bhimshankar and lots more. We seem to have filtered all Mumbai :)
After 3 hours of brain crushing planning and several arguments, bypass ideas....(urghh dnt mind my grammar)finally the lucky spot chosen by us was Malshej (that's what we call it when we select a place randomly ;) )
So satisfied with Malshej, we slept off....n woke up @ 8:30am when i heard Anupam shout......should i call the cab ??????
I guess he yelled twice or thrice on us when we finally confirmed to call the cab @ 11:30am. Had to wake up and had to freshen up. All excited we all got ready in time.....joking n discussing something or other. Had bread omelet for breakfast or brunch u can say.
11:30am Saturday - we 6 guys were ready to start our trip. But in came the first headache.The innova could take only 6 while we were 7. We had to pickup Sumit on our way :P oh shit!!! anyways again our active brains started thinking and we planned to have our pillows and newspapers to prepare a makeshift seat !!! It was really amazing what we did and yipppee we had 7 in a six seater. What fun before the trip could actually start.
We started off from powai, towards nashik road.
The Route: Powai --> Nashik Road --> Thane - bhiwandi bypass --> vadpe --> shahapur
--> kalyan road --> dombivali --> durgamaata circle --> anupam nagar --> bhawani chowk --> Malshej ghats.
We were having lighter moments.......time was passing like years as the winds blew against my face.Felt as if time should freeze right-away....felt great...such times take you away to some other world.
Anyways back to our trip.....we were having a bumpy ride through Anupam nagar.....as we searched for an atm.....The cab driver was zooming through the humid air and crowded streets. It was a long time after which we were off for a trip and we missed our bikes. We were in the cab with the ac on,
while we wanted to go out and feel the wind.
Once we were out of the crowds, Mother nature greeted us with the
serene, calm and greeenery. The cab took pace.....and we all were loving
it. We all started singing old songs "bahaaron phool barsao mera
mehboob aaya hai" . We were half n hour away from Malshej and we were
already loving it. To those new to Malshej, Malshej Ghat is a mountain
pass in the Western Ghats range in Pune, Maharashtra, India. Its all
surrounded by hills and greenery.
Back to our trip, the super smooth curvy lanes were awesome, We watched and were all lost in the hills, trying to capture anything and everything we can with our Canon SLR.
It was almost 3pm and the air was all cool. We got off at a curve trying
to take snaps of the silver lining of clouds. There were some distant
waterfalls which looked like white threads from the distance.
Finally making our way through curves and hilly roads, we reached a tunnel with a lovely spot on the other end. This spot almost at the center spot of Malshej had a thumb like stone in the middle and hills all around.As we stopped, we were surrounded by monkeys. A few other groups were busy with their poses and snaps. The place was beautiful as if it was in the lap of the Malshej ghats.
The next hour was one of the awesome moments of the day.
We enjoyed taking snaps, while other time I watched the flowers , hills , the sunset and was mesmerized. Anyways it was already around 4:30pm , so we headed to the other spot which seemed to be the apex and best of the best spot.
Reaching there in about 15mins or so, we enquired the other visitors if there were any other spots ahead just to cover up all the spots before sunset and we were happy to know that this spot was the only one left.Happily, we got off the cab and walked towards the large stretch of grassland
from where all of Malshej was visible.
The clouds seemed to be at their best making different structures while on the other end the hills looked like portrait. We continued our photo sessions while we had coca cola. Some cool snaps with the moon as well. At one point we could see the setting sun on our left while on the other end we could see the moon as well.Sounds amazing isnt it?
Trust me, its more amazing when you view it live !!
Malshej was now added to my "to bike list" of places. We had some unforgettable moments and some never before views. All in all it was a great trip. Finally the day came to an end with the sunset and we walked our way to the cab.
We drove our way back to pune in around 3 to 4hrs with the memories fresh in our minds and hearts forever.
Thanks to some of my friends Sumit , Vivek , Anupam , Sunil , Debasree, Neha. Specially to the guys for their excellent camera work without which this article wouldn't have been possible.
Guys do visit Malshej and get a chance to come closer to nature.Meet you soon with next trip.
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