This is my second thread in the Travelogue section. My first one was about my trip to Goa which you can find here
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...goa-again.html:
Last time I made that trip with my hostel friends – well this time too. One my friend is doing PhD in Canada and had come to India for a few days. We wanted to have a get-together. Watching a movie/going to a mall/dinner was not fun. We wanted to go somewhere outside Bombay. So which place can we go which will be fun and can be done in a weekend? Lonavala? – well all of us had been there too many times. Matheran? – HHmmmm. Last time I went to Matheran was during my school days and now I do not even remember anything. All of us agreed on it and the planning began – Well there was not much to plan but still. Following is only for those who want to know about how to reach there:
We decided to reach Matheran via train and not by a taxi directly from Bombay. First you need to reach Neral (NOT NERUL!) on the central line. You can take the Karjat Fast train from Dadar. Cost might be about 20 bucks. One interesting thing I came to know was that if you take a return ticket on a Satruday – it is valid till Sunday night! Note that for a weekday the ticket is valid only for that day.
So here are the train timings from Dadar:
5.58 am – Karjat S
7.03 am – Karjat F
9 am – Karjat F
9.43 am – Karjat F
There are many more but I am just listing the early morning ones.
It will take approximately 1.5 hours to reach Neral. We did get to sit in the train at Dadar but you might not be lucky. If you want a place you should look at sitting from CST. Outside Neral there are many roadside restaurants where you can have breakfast – Misal Pav/Poha/Medu Vada etc. Now Matheran is about 20 mins away from Neral. You can take a taxi to reach there. Taxis come in the form of Omni’s with a fixed cost of 60 per person (can seat up to 6 in one car!). The drive to Matheran is through the ghats which is pretty scenic.
But the drive is pretty tough – There are steep slopes, hairpin turns. These taxi wallas are experts at driving. I think if you are not confident of your driving on slopes then it is better not to take your car. Now in 20 minutes you will reach a place called Dasturi naka – where all the taxis/cars stop. No vehicles are allowed inside Matheran so all cars have to be parked at Dasturi – I am not sure about the parking charges as we had taken a taxi. You will be greeted by the Monkeys at the main gate itself – There are lots of monkeys in Matheran too. You will need to pay entry fees to enter Matheran (Rs 40 per person). When you enter there are two ways of going up Matheran – Either take a horse or walk. Since we all were trekking enthusiasts, we decided to walk along the toy train tracks. It took us about 1.5 hours to walk up.
Matheran can be very messy during the rains – There are no roads as such – it’s just rocks and red soil. Many people might not like walking in rainy conditions. Only those who like trekking will enjoy Matheran during rains.
We had not booked any hotel before coming to Matheran – we thought we would search hotels after reaching here – quite risky if you are travelling with family but since we were all young guys, not booking a hotel in advance was not an issue. One thing I found was choosing a hotel in Matheran is quite tough – in the sense there are very few choices IMO. In Goa - you will find all kinds of rooms at all kinds of prices. But in Matheran either the rooms are too expensive or extremely cheap. Note that when I say expensive I mean it from the prospective of a college guy. We reached one hotel – Usha Ascot – one of the well known hotels. A deluxe suite for 6 guys was Rs 20k (meals included). We found it to be way more expensive for just 1 night. After some more searching we found a hotel called Lakeview (near Alexander point). We took 2 rooms (3 in each room) for Rs 1200 for one night. So per head cost came out to be just 400 per night. Of course there was not room service or swimming pool. But the bed was nice, bathroom was reasonably clean and there was water supply. We were looking for a cheap room because we were just going to use it to sleep at night.
If you ask me what are the things to do in Matheran, I would say not many. There are plenty of points out there and each of them offer an amazing view. Covering many points in a single day might be a little hectic and tiring but youngsters can aim at doing that. Note that all points are the same – the only way they differ is the view they offer. So one thing in Matheran would be to view different points.
Another must do activity at Matheran is Fly Zipping – basically going from one point to another point hanging on a rope in mid air. Note that this activity takes place at many points but the only activity worth doing is the one at Alexander Point (from where you “fly-zip” to Rambaugh point). This would cost 400 per person (there is an offer of 1 free on purchasing 5 trips). It will seem really dangerous and it takes place at a considerable height and you will be fly zipping for 54 secs (length of 400m). Adventurous people should certainly try that.
Pictures to follow...