So, this trip took place when I was working at Cognizant, Bangalore. Vedant, one of my college roommates was recently transferred to Cognizant Bangalore location from Pune. I was at home in Patansaongi when he called me to give the good news. I was excited to see him again.
The motivation behind this trip was completely random. “Independence Day holiday is on Friday!” was enough for both myself and Vedant to plan this trip out. At first, I was skeptical, but he is not the one who backs down easily, and could finally sell “Visiting Pune” idea to me. We had a couple other roommates in Pune, so we did not have any lodging issues!
Now, if you have been in or traveled to India, you know it is very hard to get any last minute tickets just because of the number of people. Obviously, we could not get our tickets in time, and had to settle for a “general compartment” in a very crowded train called Sampark Kranti Express. I am not sure why they named it like that, but it was a *crowded* train!
Well, it was not exactly like this, but you get the idea!
First of all, I don’t like crowded places, period! Second, when you don’t get to sit for a few hours in a 12-15 hour journey, you start doubting yourselves 😤. I was on the verge of loosing it, when the TC (as we call him/her, it stands for Ticket Checker, I guess) showed up, he was “kind” enough to allocate a couple seats for us, and man, we were happy! Who would like to spend 10 hours sitting by the window and looking at the darkness and getting disturbed by travelers constantly running to the washroom?
The rest of the journey to Pune was pretty uneventful. Once we made it safely to our friends’ place, I remember being quizzed by some of our other friends about the trip. When we told that we were visiting just for the weekend, I saw a couple of people raising their eyebrows, and appreciating the hardships we took just for this visit.
Anyway, the adventure started off with riding my roommate’s motorcycle. Gosh, I was riding the motorcycle after many years, so I was a little awkward at the beginning. But, once I got the hold of it, it was a smooth ride!
Look at my face, a 5 year younger me. The wild thing is that in the U.S., it is not very frequent that you see someone riding motorcycle(especially in Michigan), whereas in India, that is the dominant commute mode for almost everyone!
So, the plan was to ride our motorcycles to the beautiful city of Lavasa, witnessing the natural scenery and greenery abundantly available on both the side of the road. This “road trip” was full of scenic places, which was very reliving for both the eyes and body. By now, I was mostly used to the Bangalore traffic and therefore, was blown away when I witnessed how clean those roads were and surprisingly, how good people drove their vehicles. It was something that I observed 5-6 years ago, so I am not sure if things have changed since then!
This was my third time visiting Pune, and the only complaint that I had during my prior visits was experiencing the lack of water. If you take out this one thing, I think, Pune is a really good city to visit or live in Maharashtra, the state that I am from in India. Pune has young crowd with abundance choices for good, tasty, and spicy food. There are countless number of hiking places on the outskirts and a good public transportation system, with rich history and culture. So many things, am I right? Am I in love with Pune? I hope not. I love Nagpur. Haha.
I talked about the scenic places on our way to Lavasa, right? The first one was a dam! It was small. We stopped and clicked a few pictures. Here is one of the many that we took at that spot.
I don’t know what I was pointing at, must be something useless, as I am all about useless stuff, especially when I am around my friends.
After this spot, there was a small lake on our way. Obviously, we stopped there and enjoyed (maybe) and clicked a few more pictures. One of my friends must have clicked this when I was trying to say something. This is my only picture from that spot, so ahead, laugh out loud. 😀
Now, after the lake it was time to see a baby (small?) falls. Back then, I had not seen any falls, therefore, I think, I enjoyed the view there. But, having seen some of the most spectacular natural phenomenon that the world has to offer (Niagara Falls – both US and Canada), it looks kind of small to me NOW. Having said that, the firsts are always special to us, so here’s one for the first falls I ever saw (obviously with my friends).
Unfortunately, I could not click a selfie here, so posted a picture of my then roommates. Vedant is on the left Vedant and the one on the right is Bakul.
Having visited and stopped at many spots, it was time to officially enter Lavasa city. When we saw this gate, we knew we had to click photos here and those turned out to be better than expected, given the foggy conditions that we had. And, yes, do not forget the cold.
This is me, being 23 and trying to show off that I don’t feel any cold, but I think, I was shivering, as Lavasa city is at more than 2,000 feet above the sea level.
The entire drive and our sore bumps felt happy when we witnessed the beautiful scene from the top of Lavasa. It was a breathtaking view, the one that I would not forget for a long time. Here, you also take a look at it.
Isn’t it amazing? If I had to count, we took more than 100 pictures at this place and only a few are decent enough to post here. So, the below collage should do justice.
We laughed, reminisced our college lives, made fun of each other, and made more memories. These were some of the last pictures that we took during our Pune trip.
When it comes to boys, we do not show our emotions like girls do, but, we mean every single bit of the brotherhood that we develop over the special four years of our college lives. These are special people to me and I go out of my way just to stay in touch with them.
The return journey was kind of boring, as it always is. I won’t talk about it and abruptly end this trip here.
In the next travel adventure, I will talk about our Holi celebrations in March of 2015 at my apartment in Bangalore.
stochasticity 