If you are living in or around Mumbai, Khandala is a nice getaway! You could drive up from Mumbai...supposed to be a fantastic drive by car! Never tried that though!
As others have mentioned, Khandala is at its best in the rains! The green hills around are quite a sight. I was there for a week of meditation. We stayed in a nice quiet place--can’t remember the name, but it was far and away from the maddening crowd! I spent a lot of time just sitting and looking around at the hills and the valleys and drinking in their serenity and calmness.
One thing we tried was a trek to DUKE’s NOSE! This is a real good one! Read on...! Four of us decided to climb up to Duke’s Nose...and we let our instincts lead us...that means we headed straight, as the crow flies, to it. Across several hills, skirting some of them...we kept walking keeping the tip of the Nose in front of us (obviously!). At one stage the climb was very very steep, and there was nothing to cling on to! Nothing!! We climbed...we were used to doing this in Shillong! After several such steep climbs, we came up to a place where I distinctly smelled the wet fur of an animal...and it wasn’t a cow or a dog!! Cautiously we looked around...it was so damn quiet, I was wondering if a person’s last moments feel dramatic like this!! Then we spotted claw marks high on the bark of a tree...and these were on several of the nearby trees. One of the more experienced among us told us that they were probably bear pug marks. After that discovery we moved fast from there. There were several places where the path was very narrow, and a slip would land you up way down below!!
After more steep slopes and narrow paths, we reached the top of Duke’s Nose. What a view it was...! You could look down and see all the other hills below it. Far off in the distance, several different shades of purple marked the distant hills. The highway was like a thread with tiny beads of traffic running through it!
The breeze blew gently and then strongly, perhaps to make its presence felt! While we were busy enjoying this feeling of achievement, we heard a little noise behind us, as though someone was creeping up on us. The first reaction was...’Bear??’ And then, even as we let out the breath that we had been holding, we saw a family...2 kids, father, mother, grandfather and grandmother ambling up to the tip of Duke’s Nose. For a moment we just stared, and then far behind them we saw their car!!! There had been a way up...and we had taken a non-existent route and thought that we were one of the very few to get up there!!!!
MORAL OF THE STORY: If you go to Khandala, find out how they got up there...and get up there. The view and the serenity is worth it!