Just like most of the hill stations in Maharashtra. This place too had the greenery and the red soil at the floor of the black tar-like walls of the mountains. I was there during April so yes I could not witness the grandeur of the monsoon but I had the pleasure of solace during this season. The crowd was thin and the sun was high up with the dry trees on the edges of the small hills recently cut. The heat did not get to me cause I was traveling in a AC vehicle.
The first on the sights visited was the boating ground where the green waters sparkling in the sun had innumerable motor boats lined up to glaze about in the clear daylight and yes it had water cycling too, well! What a workout? Then was the Mahabaleshwar temple with its black steps cut out from the lava plateau and finally the idol set up in the ambiance of carved walls and pillars symbolizing the great Maharashtrian heritage. There were the remains of the old wars of Shivaji, the tiny pathways which may have been used by the warriors to escape into this holy shrine for self-reflection and need for god’s blessing before they could venture into the perils of life and the innumerable wars with the exhaustive blood shed, gorilla warfare.
Then again we visited the site called table top which was called so because the peak of the mountain was as flat as a table. The view it had was breathtaking. With the immensity of the mountains surrounding it, it made me feel so very tiny. The dense forestation, which lay beneath was a downhill drive to sure death. Then again the sky was clear and it seemed as if each of those mountains had grown out of the sheer desire to touch the clouds. The trees grew tall and sturdy and swayed in the summer wind.
For a girl the thing that interests most is shopping. Well there are these small street shops were you get tiny handcrafted goods and dresses. Then there are also several assortments of jewelry including glass bangles with all the colors of the rainbow. There are jute bags, hats, jelly and jams for the sweet tooth and various other eatables like cheeky and payda and burfi. Then again it is not deprived of Chinese food and Punjabi dishes, well I sure found one that sold tandoori chicken and did I love it? There is also regular bakeries and grocery shops. I found an ice-cream joint at one end of the market that made its own
ice-creams with fruit pieces, it had strawberry, raspberry, glukhand, lichi and many more to relish. Then there were loads of strawberries, which would just melt in your mouth to buy at the roadside peddler and wow would you want to bargain.
The journey back was also great as the downhill drive brought back memories of my childhood where I would just run down a slide without a thought. The scenic beauty of the river in between the huge Sayadhri Mountains seemed like a typical Maharashtrian women clad in green sari holding the edges of the sari in each had forward and water locked in-between the edges.