Elephanta Caves, Mumbai

Almost all the MTs of my Department decided to visit the famous Elephanta Caves, it’s located on an island 10kms from the mainland Mumbai. These caves house rock cut temples dating back to the 5th century CE. These temples were created by carving out rock, and creating the chambers. There are multiple chambers all cut out in a single rock.
The best part of the trip was the jetty ride to and fro. The climate was nice. The ticket costs around 100 bucks and 10 extra for an open sky seat. There are few great snaps to be clicked with the Taj and GOI in the background. Jetties are decent; they also serve snacks on board. It took us around 70 minutes to reach the island. A toy train will make your journey a bit less hectic by taking you to the foot hills of the mountain. One has to climb few steps to reach the caves. Those were monstrous. They still persist even after centuries. There are huge sculptures of few Hindu gods. You also have the company of monkeys who are always looking out for opportunities to snap out any food items from your hands. One can also trek up to the top point, not advisable though on summer afternoons. The view from the top of the island is great. It’s peaceful out there as it’s far from the Mumbai metropolis vicinity – not even visible from here.
We returned around 3PM. You get snacks, cold drinks and collectables along the way to the caves. But food is not good. We took the next available ferry and came back by 4.30. All in all, it was a nice weekend getaway from pollution and crowd. Not to forget, you get a close look at the Trombay reactor, Naval base and Petroleum refinery on your way to the caves.

Sriwardhan and Harihareswar, Maharastra

It all started when I was going through the TOI Mumbai travel , 5th Nov 2008 edition. So the plan was all set on Wednesday for a trip to Shriwardhan on that weekend. Saturday. we have 5 n 1/2 working days a week. We rapped up our work on Saturday around 3PM. There were 6 of us.

• Shailesh akka Sallu bhai
• Prateek aka 56
• Manoj Kumar - the playboy
• Tamal - the rockstar
• Shaswat - the citi banker
• Navkant, thts me

We had rented an Innova for the trip. Two of our other friend Alok and Sumit also left office along with us. The original plan was to drop them in hte midway at Oberai mall and proceed to Mumbai – Goa highway. We started with full of excitement and booze. These activities induced the other two to proceed ahead with us although they were not carrying any extra clothes or other neccesities. So, the final men count was 8.

• Alok the silent killer and
• Sumit the psychizo guy

Manuevering Mumbai Traffic, we got on to the Mumbai Goa highway at around 5.45PM. There was this show running on weekly top 100 on some FM station. We kept on driving for the next 2 hours listening and corus-ing to that very count down. I had googled enough to find out best places to crash at Sreewardhan. Well I came accross the Shubham beach resort. Its a rocking place. 200 per head can get you everything as per your choice. The old style khatia/ a tree house or a dormi - sea face. Food is also decent at 100/ meal and 20/ breakfast. Contact @9822789258. We had made a reservation for 8. We reached the place around 9PM. The owner of the place, Nadim is a really nice guy who came upto the main city to receive us. We arranged for a camp fire after dinner. Lotsa booze n night stroll followed afterwards.. 4 of us preferred to sleep in the dormi. The other 4 including me chose to climb up to the tree house. It was too cold, middle of night I slipped into the dormi and had a nice sleep.

We all woke up at aroud 9. After having a light breakfast. We all hit the beach with few play tools. Its one of the cleanest beaches. Flat and safe...We really enjoyed it. Afterwards, we decided to also checkout the nearby Harihareswar.

To our utter surprise, Harihareswar was a fundoo place. There is a temple and a small trek uphill will take you to a poit where a set of steps take you to a rocky sea shore. Nice scenic place. We clicked some good pics and heade for Mumbai. On our way back, we stopped midway to trek up to Western ghats...Few more stops and we were back to our huts by nigh 11PM.

Alibaug and Kashid, Raigad, Maharastra

On 20th December, three of us left our respective work places to get away from the daily monotony.Dr Praveen, the Ranbaxy Manager, Anshumaan and myself. As, ususal one of us got stuck in the traffic. Our googling led us to believe that the last jetty for Alibaug leaves at 5.30PM, which we later realized is only applicable to government operated ones. However, the private/ luxury jettys were leaving till 6.45 PM.

We boarded the 6 PM MALDAR jetty. Ticket was 100 bucks. Nice transport, air conditioned with a snacks shop. It took us around 1 hour to reach Mandwa. Soon we realized that our ticket also includes fare for the bus journey till Alibaug. Another 1 hr. We took an Auto till the beach. There is a nice low budget hotel named Dwarka. The tariff for a 3 bed room would vary between 450-800 depending on the tourist traffic. A restaurent with the same name on the ground floor serves decent veg food. After having a light dinner we headed towards the beach. Liquir here is moderately expensive. A Beer can should cost you around 75 bucks and rest are priced proportionately. The latest you can get alcohol near the beach is 11.30PM. We packed our bags with some of the good stuff and headed towards the beach. There was a high tide which was slowly but surely heading backwards. With in half an hour, we had access to clean sand banks and peace. We walked to the point till it was walkable. We saw few dogs and jackels and lotsa crabs . We boozed till we realized we would be needing more. We came back to the main road and got some more drinks for us. We lied on the beach and recalled our good old days spent at VKRV hostel, Delhi University. As the night went along, we also decide to share some real life ghost stories. I dont remember much of that....

We had to change our plans as we could not manage to get up early on that Sunday. We strolled till the beach and realized that the water level hasnot preceded any further and the Alibaug fort is still some 2 kms inside the sea. Tanga riders were setting up to start the day. We inquired and realized that around 10.30AM, the fort gets accessible. We planned to walk till the fort. We came back to our hotel to change into shorts and when we reached the beach, the water had preceded up to a wopping 0.5 km in a duration of 15 minutes. We started walking towards the fort. The tangas were runnign at a fast speed. The water was only knee deep at all times.

The fort was good. We clicked some really kool pics. After exploring every last corner of the fort, we decided to head towards Kashid, the mini Goa. Time was a constraint, we hired an auto to Kashid and back to Alibaug. 600 bucks in total. There is a birla temple on the way for temple lovers. Kashid was good. Its one of the few beaches in Maharastra with white sand. Crowd was good. We spent an hour there and got back to Alibaug around 6.30. The last luxury jetty was at 7.30 which was already overbooked. We somehow managed to convince teh clerk at the counter and the bus driver and could manage to get on the jetty finally. We reached Gateway at 8.30. It was the day when Taj was reopened after 26/11 incident. Aparently no tourists are allowed to visit Gateway after 7 PM. So, we had a nice view at Taj which stood strong amist all the fireworks. It felt good to be an Indian standing at Gateway facing the Taj Mahal Hotel........