Mountaineering on 39th birthday

So here goes one more year of my life, 39 years full of imaginery ups & downs. I had got 1 full week of leave but no plan to enjoy the long awaited vacation, apart from the 1.5 day tour of Mumbai which was planned well in advance.

Now in the morning of 21st June, I suddenly had this idea of visiting the nearest mountain from my city. Surprisingly this was my first time despite staying so close for so many years. Its just about 50 KMs from my residence so I left at 9.40 in the morning & travelled to Pavagadh in shared taxi. Shared vehicles take tightly packed people to the Machi haveli - the place at about 500 metre height - from where you can go ahead in a rope way or test your physical fitness by climbing approximately 2000 steps. Having no prior experience of hill climbing, I decided to try my luck at stairs & began the long walk to the temple of goddess Mahakali. But just in half hour of the upward journey, I knew its going to be quite a hard work to reach the top. It was like achieving the targeted score in 100 overs in a 50 over match when I reached almost there in 2 hours!! Almost there means I left the journey 250 stairs away from the temple which was the right thing to do actually as this was not a religious tour.
Getting down was much easier as expected & I enjoyed my afternoon tea after about 45 minutes walk down to the vehicle stop at Machi haveli.
Not much entertaining day but still I made it count with a completely new experience.

Getaway to Daman

Finally i got it - an excuse to write a blog after almost 10 years.

As a trial run for the solo holiday plan that has been cooking up in my mind since past 3-4 years, a short trip to Daman was planned & executed.

As is usual these days, the digestion was not up to the mark but I was determined to board the 9:30 bus to play a one-day getaway (Not Get Away!!!) game in Daman. Everything was planned but not the punctuality of the bus which turned out to be the game changer. Anyway the trip itself was a last minute exercise to pass time on the long weekend so i never expected it to be a grand success.

April 18, 2019

I realized even before beginning of the journey that going by commuter bus for a holiday was a bad idea. But still I was looking forward to all the fun I could have on the tourist place, mostly famous as the Drinking Destination of Gujarat, apart from drinking by the way. So I reached Daman around 6:30 in the evening & started looking for a place to stay the night & chose a hotel with a nice bar & restaurant. The good things in the otherwise bad day was that I got to view the Sea & drink scotch whisky - both for the first time in life. The seawater was far away inside the shore but still it was quite thrilling, almost frightening, to watch. After dinner I decided to have a night walk just like I do every day at home - only this time to check out the night life of this tourist place - which turned out to be not much interesting. So I got back to hotel room, relaxed dreaming about pretty ladies who may meet me tomorrow & slept around 10:30 in the comfy double bed.


April 19, 2019

I lost sleep around 5 in the morning which was actually nice as I got plenty of time to roam around before leaving for home. It was still dark outside so I decided to have bath first & tea later. After bath, I went out to search for tea & on the way walked to the sea shore to view its morning glory, if any. Somehow time was passed till 7:45 & then I decided to check out from the hotel after having a second cup of tea at another shop. After consulting the hotel staff, I walked to Moti Daman fort crossing Daman ganga bridge which overlooks the mouth of the river.
The fort area felt very calm & composed, maybe due to administrative offices in the area. I crossed the fort & took a rickshaw to the Jampore beach in a final attempt to make success of the trip. The beach was totally deserted & within 10 minutes i picked another rickshaw to get back to Nani Daman.
It was still 9.30 in the morning so i took another chance at success & asked another rickshaw to get me to Devka beach. But again I found the same empty stretch of water-less beach area. So finally I made up my mind & started for the bus station to go back to home.