Day 38/ 365 – Trip to Sula Vineyards

December 2, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ 1 Comment

The next day we decided to visit Sula Vineyards. However, as mentioned in my previous post we were staying in my friend’s empty apartment. Since we arrived late the previous evening, there was no one to clean up the place. So today morning, I called up my friend and asked him if he knew someone who would clean the place. The house cleaning person arrived after one hour and took almost an hour to clean the place up. In the mean time, I went to the local grocery store and got some Maggie for breakfast. We prepared breakfast, waited for the house cleaning person to finish his work, and then got ready to leave. By the time we left, it was almost 2 pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I tried searching the route on the Here Maps of my Nokia Lumia 620, but was not able to find one (There needs to be Google maps app for Windows). So we relied on the old Indian way – which is ask for guidance and route. After asking a couple of people and getting lost once, we finally found our way to the Sula Vineyards. Once we left the main road, the drive to the Vineyards is quite pleasant and you enjoy driving here through a couple of little villages which fall on the route. We reached our destination around 3:00pm and registered for wine tasting and facility tour for 3:30pm. We registered for 6 wine tasting which cost us Rs. 250 per person. The tour of the facility is short and brief. The best part is the wine tasting part. We tried 6 different wines – I don’t remember the names of all – but there was a sparkling wine, three white wines, couple of red ones – Dindori and Rasa. The tour guide taught us in brief as how to recognize an old wine from a younger wine based on its color (tilt the glass against light – lighter the shade younger the wine for white wines – opposite is true for Red wines), how to smell the aroma of the wine (swirl the wine in the glass for a few seconds and then smell) to even how to hold the wine glass (don’t hold the glass by the palm). The entire tour lasted for 45 mins and was quite educational and fun. However, we didn’t get to crush grapes as it isn’t grape season yet. Post our wine tour, we decided to buy wines for family and friends. We also ended up buying Grape seed oil. Apparently it is good for cooking and can be used in salads as well vegetable cooking. We spent around 2 hours at Sula Vineyards, before deciding to head out towards Nasik city. There is also a resort in case people wish to stay over for the night, however, being Friday it was going to cost us Rs. 6500 per couple and hence we decided to skip it.

The drive towards Nasik city in the evening was extremely chaotic. The problem which most car drivers in India would face in any tier 2 cities is the number of the bikes which are on the road. Nasik is no exception to the rule and there are plenty of two wheelers on the city roads and one has to be extremely careful while driving. We were extremely hungry when we reached the main highway and once again decided to halt at Kolhapur Express for an early dinner. After having a sumptuous dinner, we decided to explore the city via car. Big mistake!!! Since we didn’t know where we wanted to go, we just kept driving aimlessly and got stuck in multiple traffic junctions and at one time were thoroughly lost in the Panchvati area. We finally managed to find our way out (thanks to the GPS) and then decided to head back home with plans for next day ready. Next destination – Trimbakeshwar temple, Coin Museum, Panchvati and Deolali. (Pics to follow later)

Day 37/ 365 – Drive to Nasik

December 2, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

Since I have an extended weekend, me and my wife after a lot of deliberations (yes/ no) decided to go to Nasik for the weekend. Nasik is approximately 172 kms from Mumbai. One of the reasons we chose Nasik over other locations was that one of my friends has an empty apartment on the outskirts of the city which we could use and save some money on the stay. Other than that, there are plenty of things Nasik has to offer and we decided to explore it to the fullest. Also it was our (me and wife together) first holiday for this year. We keep traveling with friends, but this time it was just us and we were looking forward to the time together. We left for Nasik around 3:30pm. After finishing some petty work on the way and picking up the house keys from my friend, we were finally on our way to Nasik around 5pm. The drive to Nasik is very nice. The roads are good and the scenery is excellent. There was a lot of traffic near Bhiwandi and Kalyan junction, but post that there was hardly any traffic and it was a pleasure to drive on. We took a break near Asangaon at a rest area – they had Dominos, KFC and other variety of food over there. In between, we came across Kasara Ghat and it was my first ever experience of driving on a proper ghat. The best part of the drive on the ghat was that it was unidirectional – no two way traffic. That really helped in negotiating some of the curves. We reached my friend’s place around 8:20pm and waited for him for 30 mins to give us further directions. Once we got the next set of directions, we reached within 10 mins and unloaded the car and decided to go find dinner. I had visited Nasik earlier (may be around 7 years ago), but a lot of things have changed since then. We wanted to find a local dinner place where we can eat authentic Maharashtrian food. The sad part about travel nowadays is that anywhere you go, all you get pizza, dosa, idli, pav bhaji, Punjabi, and Chinese food. In this rat race to get customers, the local cuisine of the area is lost. I call it the influence of the traveling Gujaratis. I will write a detailed post on that later. We really wanted something local and went about finding it. Luckily, we didn’t have to drive too far and found a local food place called as Kolhapur Express which serves authentic Maharashtrian food. They have thali system (they have 2-3 varieties of dishes, chapatti, sweet, rice and curry (dal for veg) all served in a single plate – picture below)and have a variety of thalis – chicken, mutton, fish, prawn, eggs, and veg. For vegetarians, there isn’t much option to choose from. However, that’s expected. The food was good and after dinner we decided to call it a day. Next stop – Sula Vineyards.

Day 35/ 365 – Just travel

November 27, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

Since change of jobs a couple of months ago, I have been following the US holiday calendar. As many of you would be aware this is the Thanksgiving week and hence I have Thursday and Friday off. Taking advantage of the extra long weekend, I am hoping to go away for the weekend. Earlier in the day, I was discussing with my mom that I wish I could leave everything and just travel the world. That would be such an awesome thing to do. Sure traveling the world requires a lot of money and there are people who save quite a bit of money before they start traveling. Earning money while traveling to different places in the world would be such a thing. I really enjoy traveling, exploring new places, new people, local culture and cuisines (vegetarian – of course). It just thrills me to imagine that one day I would be traveling to the Pyramids, enjoying the boat ride over the Nile river, and the next day exploring the romantic city of Paris. That would be one of the best things in life to do – just travel. There are so many places to explore and so little time. A career in travel industry would have been awesome. While we (me and Saurav) were trekking through the Hampta Pass, the thought did strike us. The valley was so beautiful and everything about nature was just so nice, colorful and open compared to our desk jobs. We wanted to set up shop in Manali and offer trekking tours to people. May be we will do that, maybe we wont. Unfortunately, at this stage of my life, I am not sure if I would be able to switch careers. However, I do want to travel the world. May be after I have earned enough, I would probably call it a day and just set about exploring the world. In the mean time, I guess I will make do with being a project manager and enjoying vacations once in a year.

Image courtesy Saurav Roy

Day 18/ 365 – Drive to Nathdwara (3/3)

November 3, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

We reached Nathdwara after 15 hours of driving. After doing one darshan, the rest of the day was spent taking rest and catching up on some well deserved rest. We decided to leave the next afternoon after visiting all the afternoon darshans. The morning was spent in visiting the temple and doing darshans and at the same time doing shopping. We left for Mumbai at 1pm on Sunday afternoon. I decided to drive during the return trip while brother was sitting next to me. Once again we made the mistake of taking the Udaipur bypass. While the initial road was empty and didnt have any vehicles at all. We once again had to pass through the RIDCO area and this time we got stuck in heavy truck traffic. We drove on the extreme left on the muddy road and started to slowly overtake the trucks. We drove like that for some 30 mins, until we couldn’t go any further. We were simply stuck in extremely slow moving traffic. It was already past 3pm and we were still stuck in slow moving truck traffic.

We finally found an opening in the traffic and drove in the opposite direction overtaking a lot of trucks. Finally we reached a spot were we couldn’t go forward any more. We were stuck behind some cars with trucks to our left and now we had trucks coming from onward direction. We were in a tight spot – on a single lane road and there was no place to go. We couldn’t go forward because of the cars and there was no scope of reversing. The on coming truck then went to the extreme right of the road and started passing us. A first couple of trucks were easily able to do that, but then came an 18 wheeler rig and he simply started driving straight at us. I started yelling at him that he was going to touch the car. He said he couldn’t go any further right and that the rig would topple over. Just at the same time, the vehicles started moving forward and we were able to move the car ahead. We were finally able to leave Udaipur 3 hours after we had started from Nathdwara. A lot of precious time was lost in the traffic.

We then started driving towards Ahmedabad and were cruising along. There was some festival going on the in the local village and at one such junction they had stopped the entire traffic as they were crossing the road. There were people dressed up in a colorful manner but were carrying swords and all. I wanted to take some pictures but since I was driving, there was no scope of doing that. We continued on our way to Ahmedabad. We reached the outskirts of Ahmedabad around 8pm. We werent sure of the directions and hence turned on our GPS on the phone and kept following directions. The GPS took us right through Ahmedabad city and we were surrounded by rash driving bike traffic from all sides. There were atleast 3 people on each bike that we saw and on one instance, we even saw 5 people on a bike. There were no traffic cops and none of the signals were working and traffic was generally a mess. At one such junction, we had a bike to our left who wanted to take a right and we were driving in the middle lane. Instead of waiting for us to go, they tried to overtake us and in the process hit the car. My brother who was driving at that time was damn pissed about this. But we decided to continue forward to our journey. We saw the exit towards Vadodara and took the Ahmedabad Vadodara expressway.

We took a dinner break near Bharuch around 10:30pm. There was still another 5-6 hours of driving ahead of us. The bad road between Bharuch and Surat was in front of us. I was driving in the right most lane, so were all the other vehicles. Apparently the middle lane had way too many potholes and there was no way for us to know when the next pothole would hit. We tried to slow down our speed and adjust the headlights, but it was just not possible to avoid it. We drove like that until we reached Surat. By this time, I was tiring and asked my brother to take over. My brother then drove for the next 4 hours and we reached home around 4:30am on Monday morning. Initially, I thought it would be a good trip, but by the end of the journey we were all extremely tired. The next time, I do such a long distance trip, I am going to take some time and not have to drive 14-15 hours.

Day 17/ 365 – Drive to Nathdwara (2/3)

November 2, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ 3 Comments

We were nearing Vadodara around 3:45 am in the morning. As mentioned in my previous post, my brother had just driven for 7 hours and was still enjoying the drive. The NH-8 bypasses Vadodara and there are series of exits in between if one has to enter the city. The highway forms like a ring outside the city. The road from Bharuch to Vadodara is very good. There are no potholes on the road and the road is just too good. I wonder how come Mumbai roads have so many potholes, while the national highways are so efficiently and well maintained. We were driving easily at an avg. of 100 kmph while bypassing Vadodara. Very soon, we had reached the exit for Vadodara – Ahmedabad express way. If the road on the NH-8 was good, this road was beauty to drive on. We were able to touch the speeds of 150 kmph on this road. The 4 lane express way is just a superb road. The best part is again the road has been very well maintained and the exits are well marked. I wanted to try a different route and there was an option to get off the expressway at Anand and take the interior road bypassing Ahmedabad altogether. But it was 4:30am in the morning and we werent any in mood for any experiments. The entire drive in itself was turning out to be a good experiment and I didn’t want to try anything different.

The distance between Vadodara to Ahmedabad is approx. 90 kms and we were able to cover the entire stretch in less than a hour. We didn’t want to go through the city as I had read about traffic police stopping vehicles which do not have a yellow tape on the right side headlight. It is a rule in Gujarat to have a yellow tape pasted on the right side headlight. This apparently helps cut off the high beam light and allows oncoming drivers better visibility. I say they should simply ban fine people driving with high beams on, just like how it is in Chandigarh. Anyways, that’s a topic for different discussion. We got off the SP road exit. The exit clearly mentions way to Udaipur. We bypassed Ahmedabad and were now again on NH-8. The road between Ahmedabad and HimmatNagar is not a good one and there is one stretch on the road which is really bad with very big potholes. We then stopped a local dhaba to freshen up. It was 5:30 am and we had driven an entire night. My brother was tired now and he asked me to take over.

After our 15-20 minute break, I started driving and almost got involved in an accident. There was bike which was turning and merging with our road and simply didn’t see the car coming. I had to swerve left to avoid colliding with him. That was like a good wake up call and any lingering sleep promptly disappeared after that. It took us about 2 hours to get to Gujarat/ Rajasthan state border. I decided to have a tea break as by that time I had started to feel sleeping and didn’t want to take a chance of falling asleep on the wheel. After another 20 min break, we were well on our way. The road condition had improved significantly and thus we were able to accelerate. However, the road is full of curves and one has to extremely careful while turning at high speeds here. The road also passes through some towns and again caution needs to be exercised. After driving for another 2.5 hours, we saw the exit signs for Nathdwara and took the exit. The road passes through the RIDCO area (Industrial area) and is full of truck traffic at any given time of the day. It is better to the take the Udaipur city exit as it would take the same amount of time. We continued through the Udaipur bypass and finally joined Udaipur. The last 50 kms of the journey were now here. This last part was probably the most trickiest for me as I had never driven on ghats before. One has to cross a small ghat before arriving at Nathdwara. We were able to negotiate the ghats without much of an issue an after 15 hours of driving, we had reach Nathdwara at 11am the next day.

Day 16/ 365 – Drive to Nathdwara (1/3)

November 2, 2013December 26, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to write this post right after I did this trip 6 weeks back, but somehow was too lazy to write the post. Me, along with my family members decided to drive to Nathdwara, Rajasthan on Friday evening and return back by Monday morning. The distance from Mumbai to Nathdwara is approx. 840 kms one way – so more than 1600 kms driving with one day stay at Nathdwara. You got to think, we are crazy. The reason for such a short and crazy trip was that I was joining a new organization and wanted to visit the temple before starting at the new place as I wasn’t sure that I would have leave available to go anywhere in the next couple of months. Also we got a new Maruti Swift and I thought it was a good opportunity to go on a long drive with the family. So with that in mind, I started the process of convincing everyone to join the trip. My wife couldn’t join me to due to work issues, but slowly steadily remaining members got on board with the idea.

We left on Friday evening around 8pm. Initially my brother took the wheels, with me sitting next to him. This was his first long distance trip. I had already done a trip to Pune earlier. He always had issues driving in the night and that day also it was no less. It is difficult to drive when you lights from the oncoming traffic hitting right in your eyes. However, he was able to adjust well after sometime and took to night driving like a fish in the water. In no time he was driving at speeds well over 100kmph and with extremely good control. We halted after crossing Vapi to have dinner. It took us around 3.5 hours to reach Vapi and so far the roads were excellent. Post dinner, also the smooth roads continued until we reach Surat. Post Surat, the roads until Bharuch was very bad. This was also the time when there were extremely heavy rains in Gujarat, esp. in Bharuch and Vadodara. The potholes would appear out of nowhere. We had the car fog lights on, tried the high beam on but nothing would work to allow an early sighting of the pothole. The problem was also that most of the road was very good, and thus we were going really fast. But then a pothole would appear out of nowhere and car would take a hit.

We reached Ankleshwar bridge and found out there was a huge traffic jam and nobody was sure that when the jam would be cleared. Me and my dad stepped out of the car to check out what the situation was. My brother told me to come back quickly in case we needed to turn around. I went and spoke to a couple of nearby truck drivers and they told me that the traffic jam would only be cleared the next morning. I came back and conveyed the news to my brother and asked him to turn around. However, my dad had gone further ahead to ask a few more people, so I called him. Getting no response from him, I decided to go looking for my dad and I asked my brother to stay where he was and not turn around. That was a big mistake. By the time, I found my dad and told him of the development, my brother called frantically to say the turn to the left was blocked by the truck and now we are stuck. We reached where our car was parked and requested the truck driver next to us to reverse a little so that we could take a left turn. The good driver obliged and we were able to take a left turn on to a service lane and drove in the opposite direction. In between our way was blocked by another truck. Again the same request was made and we got lucky this time too and had enough space to wriggle the car out. We drove in the opposite direction and reached a junction and asked a few local rickshaw drivers directions to Bharuch. They asked us to take the Golden Bridge, which is an old bridge and is only used by light vehicles. We duly crossed the bridge and were once again on our way to Nathdwara. When we reached the highway, the road in the opposite direction was full of traffic. Apparently due to heavy rains, the bridge had developed craters and hence traffic was being restricted. We decided to drive safely here as we were faced with oncoming vehicles. After driving for 40 odd kms, the traffic evened out again and we were on our away to cross Vadodara.

It was approx. 3:30am. My brother had driven for almost 7 hours.

Solo car drive to Pune

September 23, 2013September 23, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

Last Thursday I completed my maiden driving visit to Pune. As a new driver, I was really looking forward for a long drive and the drive to Pune was just about the right distance for me. 180 kms from home. Not too short and not too far. I decided to leave early on Thursday morning as I didn’t want to get stuck in the famous Mumbai traffic. I left my house around 7:15am while it was raining cats and dogs outside. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drive in the rains but the challenge seemed too irresistible for me and I decided to get going. Since it was raining very heavily, the traffic was really slow on the highway and it took me almost an hour just to get to the Airoli bridge. Thankfully the rains stopped after reaching Airoli and the conditions got better for driving. Soon I was cruising along the Mumbai – Pune Expressway. After driving for 30 mins on the expressway, I got a feeling that I am going to fall asleep. I guess it was due to the fact that I had gotten up early and also that there was no company other than the music playing. Thankfully I was nearby the rest area and decided to park at the rest area and get some coffee and water before deciding to get going again. Fresh again, I was excited to drive along the Lonavala ghats and was able to drive along the ghats without any issues. The rest of the journey was equally uneventful and I was able to reach Pune around 12pm. Ideally, I should have reached there by 11:30am, but then I took the Dehu Road exit and was looking for a UPS store and hence was going quite slow on the highway.

I left Pune Friday night and realized a problem which I had not faced before. Almost everyone in Pune drives with their headlights on high beam. That means that lights from the vehicle coming from the opposite direction, is right in your eyes and temporarily blinding you. I have seen many drivers in Mumbai also driving on the high beam, but and large, they are a selective few only. Here, the two wheelers and the four wheelers were all driving on high beams and it was really difficult to drive. I wanted to understand the reason as to why they would be driving like this. But then I realized it is the same city which protested against the law for wearing helmets. I guess a lot of it boils down to lack of awareness as far as driving is concerned. I was having trouble reaching the expressway as a lot of oncoming vehicles were driving on high beam. I had to flash my lights quite a few times before they would lower their lights and make driving easier. In this matter, I found the trucks to be most friendly. They usually drive on low beams and if they are driving on high beam and if they see you driving on low beam, they immediately lower their lights and thus allowing easier travel for both the drivers. I guess Pune traffic police really need to crack down on this menace. When I was in Chandigarh last month, driving on high beam was a punishable offence. May be they should do something like this in Pune also.

After reaching the Mumbai – Pune expressway during my return leg of the journey, driving in the night was considerably easy and I was manage to complete the trip quite safely. The only time when I felt a little nervous was while getting down the ghats, there are a couple of blind curves along which I felt driving was a bit difficult. Other than that, I had a good trip and I really enjoyed driving. Hopefully next time, I will have some company while going for a long distance drive.

High Beam light effecting on coming traffic

Low Beam lights– much safer during night drive

Visit to Lalbaugcha Raja 2013

September 16, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

It is September and since last one week, the 10 day Ganesh festival is on in Mumbai and rest of the country. Last week I had the opportunity to visit Lalbaugcha Raja in Parel. Lalbaugcha Raja is one of Mumbai’s most famous Ganapati’s and attracts hordes of people every day while the festival is on. I It is believed that this Idol of Lord Ganesha is Navsacha Ganpati (which means the fulfiller of all wishes) and hence over 1.5 million people visit this Ganesh Pandal daily during the 10 day Ganesh festival. Soon Lalbaugcha Raja may become a place of pilgrimage. My tryst with visiting Lalbaugcha Raja started 3 years back when I decided to go and visit, since I had heard a lot of people visit the pandal and because it is so famous. Since then I have been going there every year. The entire madness around the place attracts me. There are so many people just waiting to get a glimpse of the Lord. There is always a mad rush to visit. For the past years, I used to visit early in the morning in the anticipation of fewer people, but was proven wrong. So this year, I decided to visit around midnight. As soon as I crossed Curry Road bridge, I was amazed to see throngs of people just walking towards Lalbaugcha Raja. I have never seen so many people gathered in this part of the town during this time of the night. It seemed that all the people from Mumbai were there. In this I decided to call up my friend Prakash and asked him to come along with me. Luckily Prakash knew one of the volunteers who manage crowds and we could enter the VIP lane, which was sparsely populated and managed to pray silently for some time. This isn’t the case when you are standing in the other two lines. You get jostled, pushed etc, which hardly allows any chance of a silent, peaceful prayer. The entire experience this year was just too good and couldn’t have been possible if my friend didn’t know a volunteer there.

Trek to Asherigad fort

September 10, 2013September 10, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ 1 Comment

Last Sunday we, me and 5 of my friends, decided to go to trekking to Asherigad fort. The fort is atleast 800 years old and was rebuilt by Portuguese when they had captured the fort. In 1737, Peshwa won this fort during his campaign of the Konkan and in 1818 this fort came under the British rule. We had two places in mind before commencing the trek – Gorakshgard or Asherigad. Since some people had already done Gorakshgard, we decided to go to Asherigad. Asherigad is approx. 80 kms from Mumbai. Since there were 6 of us, we decided to take a car and a bike. Since the monsoons are almost over, I wanted to take the bike out for a long ride and decided to take my bike. We started the journey at around 745am in the morning and reached the base village (Khodkona) at 10:15am after having a healthy breakfast. Since this was our first time trekking here, we decided to hire a local guide who would take us to the top. I read quite a few blogs which mentioned that there are signs showing direction to the top and back all along the route, I was only able to see few very signs.

The trek begins from the village and the first 30-40 mins are relatively easy as the ground is flat and ascend is not steep. But as we started walking deeper and deeper through the forest, we were practically climbing on the rocks and going up. We reached a spot which was the most difficult part of the entire trek as the climb there is nearly 90 degrees. There is a ladder upon which we had to climb. However, we had still had to lift our entire bodies to reach climb the rock as the ladder covered only 80% of the climb for that rock. Post passing the only major hurdle so far, we covered the rest of the climb relatively easily. The entire uphill climb lasted for almost 3 hours and by the time we got there we were dead tired and had exhausted our supplies of drinking water. Luckily, there is a fresh water lake on the top, where the water is very cold and clean. We filled our water bottles there and decided to rest by the lake for a few minutes.

The path downhill was challenging but relatively easy as we knew the route by now. We were able to reach the base village in 2 hours 20 minutes. We were fortunate as it didn’t rain else it would have been a very difficult trek and a lot of broken bones. Overall it was a good trek and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Leh trek update #4

July 25, 2013July 25, 2013 ~ Akshay ~ Leave a comment

As mentioned in my previous post, one of my friends had to leave mid-way through the train journey and tend to his mom who was hospitalized. In the mean time, we decide to continue ahead to Chandigarh. I was alone as the other two friends were traveling in a different compartment. All through the journey my thoughts were with my friend. The train passes through some really beautiful plains. I was able to spot different birds and at one point could see 3 Sambars together in a field. The sad part about the moving train is you cant really take a picture. While nearing Delhi Cantonment station, the train passes very closely near the new Delhi airport. The area after station on one side is occupied by the army and on the other side is full of slums. One side you have neat disciplined life and the other side is full of chaos.

We reached Chandigarh a little after 4:30pm and headed to the bus station in sector 43 to board the bus to Manali. Since we had reached the bus station a little early for a 840pm bus, we decided to spend some time at the Food Plaza attached to the bus station . After whiling away a couple of hours at the Food Plaza, we boarded the bus to Manali. The bus travel was hassle free and without any discomfort. We reached Manali the next day, 20/07, around 7am. We then hiked our way to the hotel, which was approximately a good km away with our heavy back packs. We checked in at the hotel and now only 2 more days remain to start the trek.

The remaining 2 days were spent doing the local sight seeing in Manali.