Mahabaleshwar - Sahyadri Splendor - 3rd -7th Nov 2012

It has now become a common habit for us to make week long trips to Mumbai and within that plan a 2-3 day vacation to a place around Mumbai. This time around the chosen place was Mahabaleshwar and here's how the trip panned out.

Mahabaleshwar is a 5-6 hour drive from Mumbai going through the Mumbai - Pune expressway to reach Pune and from there to mahabaleshwar via Wai and Panchgani.

Day 1: Mahabaleshwar
Mahabaleshwar is both a hill station and an important Hindu pilgrimage site. It houses the Mahabaleshwar temple and Panchaganga Mandir among others. Water from five different rivers (Koyna, Krishna, Venna, Savitri and Gayatri) join at the Panchaganga Mandir.

The innumerable view points in Mahabaleshwar bring out the spendour of the Sahyadris. Some points that we visited were Wilson point, Monkey point, Window point, Kate's point etc.

The Venna lake is the other tourist hotspot here. The must do's here would include - boating in the lake, horse riding near the lake and enjoying strawberries with cream!

I would also recommend a walk along the Mahabaleshwar market street for the shoppers and the non shoppers. What I enjoyed here was the roadside vendors selling fruits like strawberries, mulberries, rasberries etc.

Day 2: Pratapgad
Pratapgad is a fort located in Satara district of Maharashtra. It is at a distance of about 22 km from Mahabaleshwar. It was a comfortable half hour hike to the top of the fort with multiple breaks on the way. There breaks included a temple, a handicrafts store and many petty shops selling hats, bags etc. along the way. The top of the fort offers some breathtaking views.

You can see buttermilk being prepared in every shop in unique looking machines.

While climbing down, we stopped at one of the restaurants inside the fort to taste some authentic Maharashtrian food

Day 3: Tapola
Tapola is a little village about 25 km from Mahabaleshwar. The main attraction is the Shivsagar lake - a 90 km long water body which is the reservoir of the Koyna dam. You could take long motor boat rides to some nearby places like triveni sangam, datta mandir etc. or take a water scooter ride, or take a relaxing ride on a row boat.

The route from Mahabaleshwar is extremely scenic dotted with strawberry farms. If you are lucky to be there during the strawberry season (Dec - Mar), you can walk into these farms and pick some strawberries. Our visit was probably a month too early. But, we were still lucky enough to see some strawberries in the farms and eat them fresh.

As you get close to Tapola, you get some amazing views of the lake.

We got some superb views of the sunset on the way back.