We woke up this morning ready for another day of exploring beautiful Mahabaleshwar. Although we were a bit tired after having slept with one eye open, we carefully got out of our cocoon so as to not step on any cockroaches, quickly got ready and headed out the door. Trying to figure out what to eat for breakfast, we headed to a general store, bought a bottle of water and a bag of cookies…yup, breakfast of champions!!
We decided to walk to Old Mahabaleshwar to visit a couple of old temples, catch some good views of the mountains and to get some fresh air and exercise…little did we know, we would have to walk for about 1.5 hours before even getting there!! As we walked (before even getting to our destination), we decided that we would need to pay up and hire a taxi in order for us to be able to see all that Mahabaleshwar has to offer!!
The village of Old Mahabaleshwar has two ancient temples: the Panchganga Mandir which is said to contain the springs of five rivers including the sacred Krishna River and the Mahabaleshwar Mandir which has naturally formed lingam. Once we were done touring the temples and the rest of this little town, we found a taxi offering to take us to all the major points for Rs 400, only thing is that we would share this taxi with an Indian couple. Turns out they were from Pune as well and we got along great!! We got in the taxi, happy that we were going to be able to see all the major points.
We started off by stopping at a site with three different points that were within walking distance of each other and which included Kate’s point and Niddal Hole (Needle hole) Point. The views here were absolutely stunning. You could see all the way down the valley where the river flowed between both mountains…spectacular! When we got to the last point called echo point, there was a bunch of monkeys standing around grooming each other. One of the smaller ones kept getting closer and closer to us so we took pictures of it and it seemed to pose for us!! We moved on a bit further and he followed us. I was sad that we didn’t have any food to give it but then Yan reminded me that we may still have crumbs from our cookies! I looked in my coat pocket and as soon as he heard the bag crinkling, he moved closer with his hand outstretched to me so I finally got the crumbs out in my palm and handed them to him!! He gently and carefully took every last crumb and just as I was about to give him more, Yan told me that he wanted to feed him too. So I handed the crumbs over to Yan and just as the monkey started eating out of his hand, these two HUGE monkeys run towards Yan to get some crumbs!!! Naturally, Yan freaks out, throws the bag in the air and runs away from the monkeys!!
I wish I could twist this around somehow but really that is pretty much exactly what happened… Those things were big, mean, hungry looking and aiming to pounce!
They seemed pretty vicious and looked hungry!! Close call :) (I am purposely suppressing the other monkey story we have…if you really want to know, ask me and I will try my best to recall the memory!)
Wow, I totally would have talked about this horrifying life-altering event if I was writing today’s entry into our travel blog… oh well! :) Let’s just say Emilie and I were traumatized and we’ll never look at a monkey the same way again!
After seeing these beautiful views, we headed back to the car and stopped to see some strawberry fields (empty because they weren’t in season yet). Mahabaleshwar is known for its strawberry fields but as we learned, the strawberry plants are actually imported from California!!! We never actually knew why they began importing the plants here, but it is now the biggest tourist attraction in Mahabaleshwar! Then we made our way to Lingmala Waterfall which was pretty impressive!!! The guide then took us to another little waterfall where we got to take off our shoes and play in the water for a bit!! He even became our own little photographer! Such wonderful people!!
These guides are some of the best photographers I’ve seen on this trip :) They’ll set you up in poses and everything, really great people! And to think they just standing around at the beginning of these paths, waiting on the off-chance that some driver will bring him tourists to this point! And all they expect for taking you around and showing you the site for at least a half-hour is a Rs 30 tip.
Our third stop was a small temple called Shri Ganesh Manir, where we saw our travelling companions perform the appropriate ritual: ringing the bell, praying at the shrine and then circling it before making your way out. From there we climbed up the mountain to Plato Point and King Chair, with beautiful views of green belts and forests where tigers reside!! Not the type of place where you would want to accidently fall over the edge! Our last stop was Wilson Point, the highest point in Mahabaleshwar. You could even feel the difference in temperature here! Much colder and cloudier! We then all made our way back to the market of Mahabaleshwar and thus ended our tour!
We decided to have snacks for supper so we went to a cart selling grilled corn and masala corn. We had one of each (Yan had never had grilled corn and I had never had masala corn…turns out both are delicious!) and then went to a fast food joint for a strawberry milkshake…soooo good!! When we made our way back to the hotel, our first reflex was, of course, to look for cockroaches…bad idea!! Yan had seen one go behind the corner cabinet and he had tried to kill it with no success…so we decided to move the cabinet!! Behind it, we saw about 10 more cockroaches!! I think I would’ve rather lived in blissful ignorance!!! No such thing tonight so Yan went to work trying to kill them…in the end, 6 cockroaches died at the hand of the cockroach Jedi Master and 2 died from the poison we were burning to kill them!!
We had stopped at the reception and as we paid, the guy opened a drawer and I saw something against cockroaches. When he left to get change, I opened it to see what it was. They were some kind of incense sticks you burnt (non-toxic apparently) and within 3 days your place was supposed to be cockroach free! When the guy came back I told him we had seen a couple of cockroaches and he offered us the sticks and went and got some matches for us. I think he was pretty amazed we hadn’t freaked and left already but at that point we had only seen the two… And we figured we’ll likely stay in more places like these during our trip so we might as well get used to it! Anyway the incense really seemed to work! Downside is it brought out the cockroaches but they were slower and easier to kill. We’re well on our way to become expert exterminators now. Oh and I did end up killing that huge cockroaches whose antlers we had seen the night before. And he really was huge, about 5 inches long…
We, of course, slept in our cocoon again to protect ourselves during the night!
**Cockroaches WERE hurt during the making of this blog**
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment