Salvation called mumbai....

Mumbai...Mumbai...Mumbai....finally... after an eternal wait I visited my city of dreams and it gave me warm hug that i cannot forget for rest of my life. It all started when I was a kid and had been to nampally station ( Hyderabad) to see off somebody to mumbai. As the train started moving, a boy (in his teens) was shouting (with a lump) at a man who was in a inebriated state, "bambai ki train jaari bhai.... jana nahin hain bambai ku??" and as the train left the platform he broke down with tears. This indelible scene gave birth to my curiosity towards this city of dreams. Since then, any mention of this city, and I become curious to know the details.

You go to visit a city for the first time in life and yet you know the details of the city, deja-vu, how many times does that happen? Not many, mumbai is one such city, Andheri, Bandra, worli, Malabar hill, chembur, dadar, mahim, juhu,all these names were known to me, sometimes through movies, sometimes through the address provided at the end of the television serial, for suggestions or contests. Even now, I am sure anyone who has not visited mumbai and reading this blog would know these names.

My first day experiences included the thrill of the "locals" of mumbai, I was told mumbai has 3 veins, Western, Central and the harbor line. It was Saturday so I did not get to experience the Super-Dense Crush Load (14 to 16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space). I was standing in the Goods Compartment ( realized only when i got down), a super-duper drunk man was tantalizingly close to falling off from train , all efforts to bring him to conscious turned futile, some were even afraid to talk to him, some were not bothered, a woman boarded the train at kurla, realized that he could fall of the train, dragged him inside the compartment holding his collar. When I looked around, I saw the luggages in the compartment, I was looking at each compartment with doubt ( like madhavan in mumbai meri jaan), but people were hardly bothered, they did not have an alternative.

My second day started with visit to siddhivinayak temple, I walked the same road (Pedal road, now veer savarkar marg ) that Sachin Tendulkar used to walk sometime, I saw the shivaji park, where the greats like sachin, gavaskar, kambli used to practice. We had booked a "Mumbai darshan" tour package. It started from the Gateway of India, where we got to see rahul bose. Then we moved on to rich mumbai part, marine drive, malabar hill, and the bunglows of Shah Rukh khan, Amir khan, Salman doesn't have a bunglow but we got to see his flat. We even saw the edifice of Mr. Mukesh Ambani. I couldn't count the floors, but my head was at just more than 180 degrees with my spine. Next was juhu chaupati, a mouthwatering "pani puri" and "kala khatta" removed all the salt taste we had after being in the sea water. The tour ended with a visit to Hare rama Hare krishna temple, with I thanking God for being there with me all the time.

All the way back to pune, I was feeling bad that i left mumbai. May be I was lucky that i found good company, that I stayed at a location which was like centre to mumbai, that I found no taxi drivers who charged more or fooled with distance, that I travelled in "local" at a time when there is no super-dense -crush-load. Not sure how I would have reacted if I had not had all these. But all i remember now is the hug that this city gave me, it was warm and welcoming.

Raigad sojourn...

"Sojourn" a pretty strange word to use. Though nobody amongst the group stayed there, but somehow felt that i had left my heart there at raigad for the night.

What started as a sultry ride in the heat of 42 degrees, ended in a romantic affair with a beautiful place like raigad. Atleast 4 members in the group felt the "heat", people exchanging their seats, was a warm and a welcome gesture, though some people in the group were meeting others for the first time. As a Organiser-participant-travelmailspammer it makes my job a lot easier and simpler, when I have such people in a team.

As usual, ( it is becoming so cliched that i ain't gonna mention this in my next blog), the first person to suffer was Devendra, waiting for a eternal time for the vehicle to arrive. And just when we were telling kirti and rupali about deva's typical Hirathi ( Hindi (30%) + Marathi (70%) ), deva gets into the vehicle and shoots a sentence in Hirathi and everybody bursts into laughter.

All along the way, everybody was praying "Please God, let it rain". It was the same route, that we took last time when we went to shivthargal, but so hot, that some of the waterfalls that preetam gifted us, during our last trip, had dried up. But it was good for us, because had they been flowing like last time, we could have never made it to rajgad, as it was little farther than estimated. As we reached raigad at around 1:30 PM, it was still hot and humid. Abhijit and Santosh decided to fort through the rope-way. Rest of us ( minus preetam and rupali) had decided to trek it. But we convinced the half hearted girls to come with us.

Contrary to what people had said, raigadh climb ( I wouldn't call it a trek) was one of easiest. But 10 min into trek and rupali realized that rope-way was a better option for her, but I and kirti disagreed and insisted her to come along with us. Another 10 mins we both realized that rupali was right. Renuka, Preetam and Deva continued their trek. While the RPD ( Renuka,Preetam, Deva) gang was far apart from the KPR (Kirti, Pawan, Rupali) gang, we were still communicating, thanks to the natures mobile (echo). Oh I fogot to mention in above 5 lines that there was not a moment in trek where we felt the heat of sun , all our prayers had reached the Almighty and there was a sudden change in the weather. The waterfall on the way provided all the relief and erased all the bad experiences of traveling in the hot sun.

As we reached the entrance of the fort, we were standing amidst the fog. The RPD gang was lost in the fog, KPR gang was busy shooting pictures. We reached at the Statue of " Shivaji Maharaj The Great " and just couldn't believe the weather, there was hardly a visibility of 10 to 20 meters with Abhijit and Santosh walking amidst the fog and we had a unioun. We saw, Jadishwar temple, the ancient market place, the Samadhi of Shivaji The Great, the place where Shivaji The Great was coroneted as King and started moving towards the Rope-way. As we sat in the rope-way to descend from the fort, I felt satisfied and salutations to the great King for his fight against the tyranny, another visit is due.