After going thru quiet a few reviews on Mouthshut I finally planned and went on a trip to mahabaleshwar last weekend(March 2nd Week). I needed the trip badly since I was literally running on empty at work and the wife was getting more than a little mad about my work hours. I basically booked the hotel rooms from Pune itself (pune is my hometown and unfortunately my work town too!!) thru a tour operator. The charges for a Standard Non AC room were 1100/- per couple for 1 day. The hotel was Ishwar Inn.
Hotel Review:
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Ishwar Inn as I found out from its website and latter in person is nicely located 2 kms away from the chaotic market area of mblshwar. Its set in serene woodlands with a very pretty and big garden area complete with a lawn, numerous swing sets and facilities to play TT, Badminton and carrom. The garden full of multi colored roses is especially nice. I selected the APAI plan for our stay which included Brkfast, Lunch and Dinner. The lunch was always typical gujrati veg fair - very well prepared and the dinner used to be a mix of western and chinese. The rooms were a little old fashioned but well maintained. They have nice options for Deluxe and Cottage style rooms too - a bit pricey.
Travel from Pune
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After intially planning on driving our own car to mblshwr we choose to go by the good old Asiad Bus from Swargate. Its a good thing we did that since I got to enjoy the whole journey in those new comfy chairs and I didn’t have to face hair raising stunts from some of the carzy drivers in those ghats. The Asiad buses start every 30 mins from swargate and cost 86/- per head. The return journey for some reason costs 91/-. There is usually no need to reserve seats.
Place Review
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I was actaully a bit surprised when we landed there - I had been to mblshwr in 2000 and it was complete disorganized chaos at that time...now it was organized chaos. The Taxi wallahs have come out with fixed rate cards so decision making is very simple. I selected a tour of Pratapgarh for 560/- and a Mahabaleshwar tour for 355/- which included Kates point, Sunset point, vena lake, elphinston point, lodwick point and Bagicha garden and sales shop where u can buy all the fresh produce available there. At pratapgarh we hired a govt. recognized guide for 80/- who was very informative and helpful for taking our snaps :-)
The points were good and the horse riding at vena lake was fun. Don’t miss the strawberry and mulberry shakes at bagicha. We bought a lot of honey at a co-op outlet (Madhusagar) near the hotel.