Matheran Trippp.. :-)

I always heard about Matheran in Magazines, TV Shows but never got a chance to visit it... Finally we made plan to visit this clean hill station. This time we office buddies planned to visit Matheran which includes Me, Mahendra, Dada (Yes same dada from last post :-)) and Sumit. Since Me and Dada are travel freak we made the plan, we were suppose to board express train from Chinchwad Railway Station (Pune-Mumbai Track) early morning saturday, we will go till Neral nearest rail head to Matheran. From Neral we planned either to go by Toy Train if available else by four wheeler. I got up early morning, dada and sumit also reached to my place in time.. then we called mahendra again and again but Mr. Mahedra was sleeping with his mobile on silent. We went to Mahendra house and get him ready by then we missed our train.

We changed the plan and rush towards Akurdi railway station, got local train till lonavla. We had tea/snacks at lonavla and got a passenger train from lonavla till karjat had breakfast at karjat and then finally got local from karjat and we reached Neral. By the time we reached Neral Mahendra was almost killed, because of him we missed the direct train and had to break the journey. Since no Toy train was available at that time we went for an Auto, Auto wala said he will take 30 Rs till waterfall which is midway to Matheran and some 60 Rs till the Matheran. We thought we are travellers yaar we will drop at Waterfall and walk till Matheran from train route. He dropped us near waterfall, we found the railway route and started moving on it after a while some 10-15 dogs came and started barking on us.. we just ran away to road.. ha ha. We move ahead on the road for a while and the saw village from which rail route was going.. we changed plan again to move on rail route from that village, but as we reached in the village same dogs came in and started on us again.. Now we gave up and walked by road only.

Scenic was awesome around, lots of waterfalls, we took lot of snaps and walked around some 1KM, we asked one person how much far is matheran now he said 4 KM, we started walking again and moved around 1KM ahead and then asked some person again... he said Matheran is 4KM from here... ha ha we then forgot our traveller thing and searched for some shared auto finally got one and reached matheran. Matheran is special because this is the only Hill Station where vehicles are not allowed either you have to walk or hire an horse.  Main Matheran city was still 4KM (:D) inside from the point where auto wala dropped us. We searched for some hotel and found one for 800 bucks for 24 hrs. By the time we took some rest in the hotel rain started, we waited for the rain to stop and moved out to roam around in matheran. Around 5PM we moved out we decided to walk, we saw some 4-5 points at the end we reached echo point.

That point was scary full of fog, no one was there except four of us.. we shouted our names and heard the echoes from every direction for a while. By the time we started towards hotel it was dark, we started sharing stories of ghost and all. It was fun sharing all those stories because atmospehere was already there, it was dark, fog was there and old bunglows which we use to see in ghost movies. We reached back to the hotel at around 9 PM had dinner and ended our day with some more interesting ghost stories. Next day Me and Dada wakeup early and moved to see some of the points leaving sumit and mahendra in the hotel. We saw some points.. lot monkeys were providing there company to us everywhere.. we came back to the hotel after 2 hrs, mahendra and sumit were ready by then. We had breakfast first and hired four horses, me and mahendra specially went for the black horses and i give 50 bucks extra to get some tips of horse riding.

Horse riding was fun that too on a Hilly area, our guide showed us lot of points and we covered most of matheran. After having Lunch it was time to move back to Pune, we decided to go back by toy train so we reached the railway station. Dada took 100 Bucks and went to the ticket window to get the ticket, but ticket was some 250 bucks per person. Dada came and we counted the money remaning with us which was some 800 bucks and no ATM was there... so we dropped our plan and came back by Auto to Neral. From Neral we got a direct train to Akurdi and we reached home at around 6 PM.. Matheran Trip was fun..

You should go Matheran Post-Monsoon, Natural beauty is best at that Time..