Well it all began when my cousin sister landed in india on the 30th, the following week my cousin brother landed & that was the begining of two whole weeks of fun, as i shall describe sometime down the line.I last saw them 8 months ago but i missed them so!!! We had so much fun, all the cousins with their spouses and respective children all under one roof, man it was crazy! The first week was spent shopping & talking ,catching up with each other's life, watching movies, gaming.. was awesome.I almost forgot to mention we went to this place for dinner which was called " SHIKARA" for the uninformed it's a Kashmir-style canoe if u may, a much bigger one, as u must have seen in all the Kashmir based movies.We actually dined on a shikara that was held up by stills, in a feet of water they had some fake rocks and the atmosphere was completed with ducks, which let me state i detested. The ducks sure did look all pretty but they were'nt in their natural environment which is'nt fair to the birds.They even had some ghazal singers there who lended to the environment, it was enchanting & the food was good.I wish those birds could be free though.After that time just flew by, well its true time flies by when your'e having fun.My sister boarded her plane the next week and was on her way back, to strange lands....We were all sad to see her go!!
We all went back to our respective houses, and got on with our lives gloomily for two days.Suddenly we had surprise visitors, more cousins came down(it's rainin cousins!!!!), so we all met up again.Did the usal cousin things, had loads of fun! One day as we were just sitting at home and talkin, watchin the rain unleash itself, we thought why not go for a really long drive? Why not drive down to LONAVLA?? I almost did cartwheels, the only reason its almost did & not did is i do not think i can do a cartwheel anymore!!! I've been wanting to drive down to LONAVLA for a really long time.Being the only child is not always favourable, as it isn't in this sitauation, as my parents were'nt letting me drown there earlier, atleast not alone. So this was a good opportunity for me to drive all the way down to LONAVLA, not alone offcourse there were peple in the car besides me, but i the only one who would drive all the way to-&-fro!!! I was ecstatic!! This was to be my first out of bombay trip with me & only me behind the wheel. Yipee!!!!
The plan was made & we were getting ready to leave in 2 hours time.We were startin our trip from New-Bombay & as i was'nt too familiar with the roads it was decided i'd tail my brother's car.We started amidst much fan-fare & pouring rain, lemme re-phrase that pelting rain.There have been a lot of seasonal changes in Bombay since last year , i guess one can say in the whole of India. It does'nt rain anymore, it pours!! It pours conitnously sometimes for hours sometime for days on end, there is recurrent thunder and lightening way more frequent, more powerfull from all the years before.The rain we recieved last year was the largest amount we have recieved in 100 years.That crazy rain pattern continued this year too, but was alittle more spread out, with short respites, though it did manage to bring Bombay to a stand-still, with quarter the amount of rainfall as last year, it wasn't all that bad.Well this year's rain is accompanied by it's friend strong ,billowing winds , up-rooting and breaking a record numbaer of trees this year. Sorry for the diversion, the inclusion of the weather report, but i just wanted to give an idea of the weather we were driving in.
So there i am tail-gating ma brother's car at 90-100 km/hr, which was not bad considering the zero visiblity - owing to the rain.Since the high-way is good(that's an understatement as we all know, the roads in bombay serve a dual purpose getting us to our destination in one piece hopefully, two is to give us the delight of the best joyrides, in the most famous amusement pak-"BOMBAY ROADS", this is applicable to all the roads except a some stretches of da east & west highway & the new & improved link road), i did not have any major problems inspite of da low visibility, i had to just keep drivin straight, varying my speed acording to the downpour,zooming away when the downpour ceased, and slowing down when it got crazy. It was an hour & a half's drive down to lonavla from there, & a beautiful drive it was!!! The pictures posted above do not do justice to the beauty, but as they say "A picture is worth more than a 1000 words", they do give you an idea of the green hills, the gushing waterfalls,& one of them gives u a faint idea of the fog there, there were times i could'nt see four feet in front of me, that's expected though when your driving to a hill-station in the rains especially.
Did not manage to get more pics cos everytime we got out of the car it started pouring,too bad , there were so many beautiful sights i wanted to capture in my lens & carry home.We did manage to get something else, something really important also when you drove down to LONAVLA , the fudge and the chikki( though i'm personally not a chikki person i love the fudge), our journey would have been incomplete without it.After the fudge/chikki craziness we decided it was time we got back home, cos there was more take a gues "SHOPPING" to do.
So we get back in the car & drive back home enjoying view and the fudge.It reminded me of my trip with my college-friends, kriss was driving(she is good!!), her family was kind enough to accomodate all of us in their house there.We screamed our lungs out everytime we passed through a tunnel, scaled hills, danced our asses off, gobled down awesome food her mom made, was loads of fun!!That was the first trip i made to LONAVLA.
So here we are cruising along the way in my car and we head to a mall in New-Bombay & an-route saw the picturesque waterfall you can also see in the third pic. i have to park the car at the end of the parking lot.We get inside and it's the usual rig-ma-role, was fun though, did i mention i love shopping!!The rest of the day was uneventful till it was time for us to head back.The bright me had left protective gear in the car, so i had to hold an umbrella and head out towards the car. I had just walked a few steps when i was getting blown away in the opposite direction by the wind & needless to say i got drenched completely.I somehow managed to get to the car after taking shelter behind a tata innova for a while, like that helped!! That was really really embaressing. The next day we headed back to good-old Bombay & chilled out at our place. Had another big get-together before parting ways cos my brother was heading to london.So had an almost lazy day, saw them off at night & then headed back to home sweet home.
That was how my two weeks were spent. I'm missing them already. Hope they come down soon!!
