Trip from Hyderabad to Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is a quiet little hill-station 130kms off Pune. Six of us went over a long weekend (12-14 January) to Mahabaleshwar travelling to Pune by an overnight bus and hiring a Tavera therein for the whole three days.

The multiple attractions offered by this hill station are mountains and more mountains of the Western Ghats – some gigantic, some not so much; strawberries and lots of them; various pleasant view points from which thousands of photographs are clicked every day and so on.

After a three hour drive from Pune, we touched base in Mahabaleshwar around 1pm and went off to the MTDC resort where our stay was booked. The resort in itself gives a quaint country-side feeling with big rooms and damp ceilings and cool temperatures. The large area around the resort is full of trees and greenery and some small jungle area in the background with cottages which are inhabited by people like us on the inside and lots of monkeys on the outside who prance about their roofs all through the day.

Mahabaleshwar is placed such that there are multiple scenic points each of which have been given commercial names and there is a thriving industry around most of them. We spent the evening at a few such points each of which was pleasant in its own right.

At one of those points, we saw a lot of monkeys which were aggressively snatching ‘bhutta’ (corn) from various people – adults and kids alike. Somehow, they had developed a taste for the same and even if someone resisted, they would still demand the same and pester and harry the individual until he/she finally relented.

A monkey posing at Arthur point, Mahabaleshwar

There is a lake in Mahabaleshwar too, where we planned to go boating but eventually didn’t. We spent the evening near the lake area and had strawberry and cream which was absolutely delicious even in the cold weather.

The next day we went to Pratapgarh Fort which is 25 or so kms away. It was a nice drive and we finally reached there around 11. We had to climb our way up to the top which was tiring in the powerful heat but we finally made it and view from top was well worth the effort. We had a good Maharashtrian meal for lunch and made our way back to the resort.

Towards the evening, we decided to go to Tapola; another picturesque place around 30 kms from Mahabaleshwar off Koyna river. On reaching there, we found a vast lake (Shivsagar lake) on which boating was possible.

We went on the motor boat for an hour’s boating in between which the boatman also dropped us off on a small island for some time. If serenity ever needed to be defined through a picture, I would use the following to describe the same.

Sunset at Tapola

We got up early the next day to view the sunrise from another of those points (Wilson Point) which was another pleasant and enriching experience.

Sunrise from Wilson Point, Mahabaleshwar

We left back for Pune the next day stopping at Mapro Garden for various purchases like Strawberries etc and also had a good lunch there. We stopped by Table Top mountain in Panchgani briefly and also attempted to find out about Paragliding but it seems it had been stopped there due to some accident.

Thereafter we made our way to Pune and reached there towards the evening; post which we took a bus back to Hyderabad capping off a pleasant trip.