Tour de Purandar

We reached home at 9 pm. “I was exhausted”, yep, but it’s an understatement in case of Saurabh. In spite of his novice driving skills and a sour ankle, he has brought us back home in one piece. Thanks buddy. 

We started our journey by getting up at 6am (not me..). A hot refreshing watery chai was indeed refreshing. The biggest surprise was from the girls. They were ready well before expected. And so, we started our journey on time at 8am.  The first stint was excellent, everyone was in a superb mood, singing Marathi, Hindi and Telugu songs, throwing punches at each other.. The kanda pohe and misal pav for breakfast, and a decent wait for strong chai delayed the second stint for a while..

 

At 11am we reached the divine shrine of Prati Balaji of Narayanpur, the temple was nice, impressive with the cleanliness and the food and water. Then something happened what happens in every Balaji temple. An hour long wait for the darshan and a 2 second view of the idol. And the funny thing is there is not much crowd to experience such hospitality..! 

Then begun the real driving test for Saurabh, climbing a 4km stretch on Purandar Ghat (Some of us were mastering bladder control at that moment..). The picturesque was amazing with Hills and Hills around till the eye can see, small check dams and villages here and there, fully grown and half burnt plantations, and surprisingly, rain clouds..! The fort looks destroyed and is not maintained. But I liked the abandoned and destroyed homes with fully grown weed inside them. I liked the fallen, immovable, huge trees.. I liked some youth who volunteered to clean the fort premises.. And I liked the company of my wonderful FRIENDS at that moment.. 

We sat and drank at the highest point when the wind was blowing hard at us, we sang and danced(what looked like dance), and then, there was a slow-mo run..As always Rahul tried to be a Hero(well, everyone tried at some point) and gave us a scare for a moment, Shital worked on her profile(photos look amazingly deceptive..), Shilpa did the impossible by trekking with ease.. And me…?!  I have tried everything especially dance..!

After having a splendid homemade (dhaba owner’s home) lunch and a bunch of Kismi toffees at 4pm, we arrived at the Bhatghar dam.. We couldn’t go over the dam, so played in the water on the other side  for a while.. I faced one of my worst fears by sitting down on a low bridge where water was rushing at high speeds from the dam gate. I haven’t felt that since the Godavari floods in my SSC (tenth grade).

We started back at dusk and reached pune city in an hour, and it took another hour and half to fight the traffic to reach home.. Overall, the trip was fantastic and my biggest since I fell ill last year.. It was kind of refreshing and I fell in love with the nature yet again..

But one thing was sure… we missed you Madhu.. You would have doubled the fun we had yesterday..