Mahabaleshwar is the largest hill station in Maharashtra. However, there is nothing much to see within Mahabaleshwar. The places around the hill station are more enticing. As is the case with most hill stations, Mahabaleshwar too was discovered by the British in the late 1700's, to escape the heat of Mumbai in summer. Other hill stations discovered and established by the British include Darjeeling, Dalhousie, Munnar, Mussoorie and so on. Though the first Briton to set foot here was Sir Charles Malet, the hill station was built under the supervision of General Peter Lodwick and Sir John Malcolm (Governor of Bombay). Other British officials to visit this place regularly were Elphistone, Carnac and Arthur. Most of the points in Mahabaleswar are named after these British generals. For example, Malcolm point, Arthur's seat, Elphistone point and Kate's point. (Kate was Sir Malcolm's daughter.)
Back to our trip. We started off the day by visiting old Mahabaleshwar. There are two temples that one can visit. The first temple was an old Shiva temple. The second and the more interesting one was the Panchganga temple. It is called so as the temple was built on the congregation of five rivers: Gayatri, Savitri, Krishna, Koyna, Venna and Saraswati. Hey wait, now that's six and not five, right? We too fell into a predicament when we entered the temple. There were six outlets from which the rivers flowed and the names of each were written above the outlet. Then, we observed something unique. There was no water flowing from the Saraswati outlet. My husband explained that it is so because Saraswati is a mythical river and no one knows whether it actually existed. Sheesh! That solved the mystery of the five rivers.
A Nandi bull outside the Shiva temple
Panchganga temple from a distance
View from Malcolm Point
Random view of the Koyna Valley
Another view of the Koyna valley - Now, I did warn you that they all look the same :PAfter the disappointing view points in Mahabaleshwar, we proceeded to Panchgani. Panchgani was truly amazing. The plateau is lined with strawberry farms everywhere. We visited Mala's jam factory where we could sample any fruit crush. We tried out the rare variety such as kiwi fruit (according to me, it tasted yuck and looked like pista-flavored falooda), black current, blueberry and raspberry. We bought a bottle of black current crush to take back home. We also bought a kilo of yummy chocolate fudge. Then, we had some fresh strawberry ice-cream.
We then headed to the famous table-land in Panchgani. We hired a buggy (horse-cart) to take us around the table-land. We were also promised that we would be shown some 6-8 points. Now wait till you hear this. The points were places that were some kilometers away where shooting of famous bollywood movies were made. There was the bunglow from Raja Hindustani's Palankhet, where Aamir and Karisma Kapoor stayed. The hill-top where Rishi Kapoor and Jaya Prada danced to the beats of Dafli-wale. The scene from the movie Mela (I do not blame you if you don't remember this movie), where the good triumphs over the evil in the climax scene.
View from Table-land
These are the foot imprints of the five pandavas - koi shaq? ...On second thoughts, I am wondering what happened to the foot imprints of Kunti and Draupadi? :|
