One passes through Panchgani while travelling to Mahabaleshwar from Wai. The distance between the two is about 11 kilometers.
Panchgani is a small but cute little hill station in Maharashtra.
I have been to Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar a number of times.
The first time was in October 1970 when I was part of a Botanical tour.
In the field on one side shooting of the film Caravan was going on. We met Aruna Irani, Asha Parekh, Junior Mehmood and others and got photographed with them.
Panchgani was not so full of houses then.The crowd was small.
The trees were tall.
It was a place I wanted to stay, but we stayed in Mahabaleshwar then.
Next time we went in September 1995 with a relatives family.
What we liked was the food in a vegetarian Hotel, the huge tableland-a vast almost flat expanse on top of the hill( we wondered as we could never imagine such a flat huge plain land on top of the hill.
Looking down from the edge of the tableland one could get shivers as there was a sheer drop down by the cliff face at the end of the tableland. there were some pools of water left after the monsoon rains and a variety of small annual herbs and small flowers bloomed in patches.
It was nice to see the horses and carriages being used for entertainment. One felt as if one was on top of the world or on the roof of the world( like they call Tibet).
Another time I went alone and watched the rustling of the wind through the very tall silver oak trees, as I sat under the trees in a restaurant and had my lunch which tasted much better in the nice hill environment.
I stayed in Panchgani for the first time a few years back. I got a hotel with vegetarian food only.For lunch we got another vegetarian restaurant next to the town square in a new market(perhaps called Tiwari’s).The food was good.The only drawback being the dust coming with the wind and vehicles and the cluttered smelly rubbish behind the restaurant.Near the city square, we saw a board of a hotel giving Gujarati thali also.
We went to the various points and enjoyed watching the sights of the lake, the river and the Dhom dam in the distance.
There were some monkeys around.
The Mapro farm was nice with its variety of flowers, cactii and strawberry fields next to the fruit products factory owned by the Vohras. We tasted the fresh strawberry icecream and bought the jelly sweets made from fruit jelly.
In the evening I enjoyed walking along the huge trees lined paths.
Panchgani was of course found a place studded with many schools-mainly residential.