…::::The Vada Pav Chronicle::::::……

Posting it late had been to Phansad wildlife sanctuary two weekends ago.

Phansad lies between Alibaug and Murud.

To visit you need to register with the forest conservation office in Thane.

Since we were traveling for the first time we took ST buses and had to hire a 6 seater rickshaw. Ideally driving down would had been the better option.

If traveling by bus from Mumbai , then take the ST bus to Murud and get down at Ursauli naka, from there take a six seater or take Manmad bus which goes thru Roha route, it would drop you at the sanctuary’s entrance.

There are two guest houses there with basic amenities and you can get food from the nearby village.
The forest guards took us thru one of the many trails in the forest, unfortunately for us the regular forest guard was on leave and two other guards from a nearby forest escorted us.

The forest was very dense, I really dunno how our government can take care of such beautiful forests with hardly any manpower. These forest guards don’t even have walkie talkies !!!

The trail which we took was called the Chikalgaan trail, it lead us to a watering hole . The trail was very good untouched by any human presence, no water bottles or gutka packets lying around. It was a very refreshing walk in the jungle.

Since we were visiting during the monsoons we couldn’t see any wildlife other than one monkey.  Saw a good number of insects which the sanctuary is also known for.

The guards told us that the best time to visit is during the summers and if you are patient enough you can see a lot of wild animals including leopards.

They took us to one of their watch towers; the view from the watch tower was amazing. On one side you had the Arabian Sea and on the other the dense jungle

When it rained in there it was simply magic, you need to experience it.

On the way back we visited Murud Janjira would post about that trip later.

I forgot to charge my camera so couldn’t take any snaps, here are some taken by my friend’s camera. Click on them for a better view.

This is the Arabian Sea from the tower

The dense jungle as far as the eyes can see

This is the Chikalgaan trail, it looks straight out of some creepy Hollywood movie set.

This is the watering hole at the end of the trail.

I somehow liked this dude, posing for a photograph. Look at his camouflage.

My bro clicked this dude during our recent visit to Kerala.

Look at those eyes !!! 

Its a rat snake called ‘Chera’ in Malayalam.

For more photos check out this album:

Kerala Trip _20070623-20070629

All shot from a Kodak V610 

Was pretty much excited yesterday with the rappelling plans woke up at 4:30 so that I don’t miss the 7:03 train from Dadar.

The rappelling was organized by a group called Nisarg Brahman, and the place was Kondane caves.

Its a 45 minutes trek thru some jungles from Karjat (lots of nostalgia associated with Karjat).

The base village is called Kondivade. To reach there you need to reach Karjat and from Karjat station walk to Sri Ram ‘pul’ (bridge) where you get 6 seaters which would take you to the base village. The trek from the base village to Kondane caves is a very simple 45 mins walk. Only problem we faced was that while coming back it was raining and the dangers of getting lost was always there.

The caves were beautifully carved out in 5th century BC by some Buddhist monks.

As usual here too the structures were vandalized by what I call the White Paint Can Jokers. Lots of places had Bunty love Bubbly type messages written on it also We Were The First Idiots To reach here type ones.

Some jokers had also drawn mustaches on the sculptures. I really fail to understand what these freaks get by spoiling sculptures which I’m sure would have taken months for some poor monk in the 5th century to carve out of rock.

There were 90 folks out there and we reached there by 11 AM, but the rappelling had to start late because one of the participants went loitering around and fell on some rocks breaking his wrists, the organizers had to rush that dude to the hospital thus delaying our rappelling. It finally started at  2 PM, in the end only 30 odd folks were fortunate enough to rappel.

A lil bit disappointed about not been able to rappel but I met couple of interesting folks out there.

Couldn’t get a camera to click snaps, but you can visit this site for some pictures of this amazing place.

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Folks use words like ‘Excuse me’ before pushing you and going ahead.

Laptops are a big status symbol, have seen fights erupting on laptops.”Boss sambhal ke laptop hai” on hearing this the other guy would grin his teeth and say “To kya mere bag me bi do hai”

People dont remove the flight tags from their laptops, obviously laptops plus flight travel are great status symbols. It doesnt matter that you must have travelled with the cheapest airline last year that too on you compnay money.

People fight in English. Many people use words like ‘Stupid’ ‘Idiot’  even kindergarten kids dont use them. You can hear better cuss words in the ladies compartment when a fight erupts.In the last 3 months I have heard only one fight where good ol ‘MC’ ‘BC’ was used, just once !!!

People need their personal space, very unlikely for a bloke in the first class compartment to stand in the gap between two seats, its insulting. He would do it under very extreme circumstances like at least 10 other dudes shoving him. I think thats the reason theres no fourth seat too.

You push someone and they give you such a stare, which implies “Thats my personal space dude, you wanna cramp up then go to the second class”

You can hear really wild stories, obviously since all the I class travelers are ‘EDUCATED’ and have traveled a lot, some of them give jet packs to their imagination.

Most of the people have their own rules obviously since everyone’s  ‘EDUCATED’. The other day one guy got in from Wadala and he actually went and stood between the seats without people shoving. A seated guy got up to leave, so this guy sat down. Suddenly some cranky fellow standing in the aisle started shouting “I’m standing here from VT and you took the seat?” WOW as if he had his boarding destination tattooed on his forehead.

That finishes off my ranting, did I mention about the laptop ?

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A warning sticker pasted in the train by the authorities.

It was a warning to the junta who travel on top of the train/stand between couplers/in the high tension room attached to the compartment in the local trains; basically all the dumb guys who don’t have a life.

It said that if you are caught doing this act then its punishable etc.

It was printed in Hindi, Marathi and English.

The funny part was the placement; it was stuck inside the compartment on the ceiling.

The person who stuck them might have thought that the fool sitting on top of the train can see through the roof and read the warning.

I dozed off while going home yesterday and had to miss a station. This isn’t the first time I’m doing it.

The last time I dozed off was hmmm well on Monday this week .

If I were a superhero I would have been called The Sleep Master.

Sleeping in trains and buses is nothing new to me like they say…mere liye to bayeh haath ka khel hai.

I remember once I dozed off in a harbour line train and I reached Khargar. The first thing you do after waking up from a deep slumber and realizing that you have missed your station is to get down and that’s what I did.

After getting down somehow I managed to drag myself to the other platform, a train was just about to leave but I didn’t bother to run and catch it coz Aamir Khan had once said that "Zindagi mein teen chezoon ke pechey kabhi nahin bhagna chahiye: bus, train or chokri."

Then I realized that it was past midnight and that was the last local.

Salher fort is the highest fort in Maharashtra located near a village called Waghamba in Nashik. Its near the Gujarat border you can see Gujarat from the top of the fort.This was the first time we were visiting this fort, so we just had a fair idea about the travelling details from the Internet.We started off on Friday night from Shivajinagar, Pune, we caught a bus at 11:30 Pm for Nashik. Reached Nashik by 3:30 early morning, the bus left us at the new ST stand we had to catch a bus to Satana from Nashik, the bus for Satana was from the old ST stand which is 5 mins walk from the new one. The bus for Satana was from 5 in the morning. We thought we would hang around there till then but we met a paper delivery guy who had a van and was on his way to Satana at the same rate and we decided to hitchhike with him. We were waiting in the van and the paper delivery dude had gone somewhere for a couple of mins a police jeep pulled next to us.
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Nagpur this time and hopefully Goa in September. Since donning this HR role been traveling lot, to places where I would have never visited. I’m enjoying it

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Had been to Kolhapur for a one day trip. It was quite an hectic day reached Pune at 4 in the morning. To start with the road began to get better after we crossed Pune, it actually got better. The NH-4 which we took is part of the Golden Quadrilateral, and it was very well maintained. For once I’m happy that the taxpayers money is actually been used , as for Kolhapur roads well the roads are pretty decent for that small city.
Why am I infatuated with roads? Try Pune roads for once.
The colleges we went to were huge, we got a royal treatment out there with bouquets and all, doing a campus placement drive was good. It was damn hectic though there were 100 plus students and only two of us.It went on till 9:30 and after a quick dinner we had missed lunch, couldn’t taste any of the Kolhapuri dishes we rushed back to Pune with a driver who was fighting to keep himself awake, he succeeded we reached Pune safe and sound in one piece.

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Went on a whirlwind trip to Matheran with office folks. The place where we were put up was called Evergreen Woods and it was amazing, tents not exactly tents it was semi concrete structures with canvas wrapped around set up in between tall trees. The place was awesome so was the food. Had never visited Matheran during the rains and now feel that it should be visited only during monsoon. Its beautiful with greenery and streams all around sans the horse dung but the water tasted like it. We discovered a waterfall and spent a good amount of time in there better than visiting the grossly commercialized points. Best part of the trip was the travelling, we reached at 4 in the morning after a good midnight trek, never got up before 11 didnt make a difference it seemed like 6 am in Pune. Playing cricket in the rain was also awesome only the thumb hurts due to spinning. The road leading to Matheran from Pune was so good, well actually after experiencing Pune roads any type of road is good, also got to know that the Matheran railway was built by an Indian with 16 lakh rupees from his personal fortune way back in 1907 amazing.