Matheran Trip

Matheran trip turned out to be a great one, far beyond what I could have imagined when I registered for the same. The situation was that I hardly knew anyone in the whole group except for Gowtham and Malik whom I have met quite often in the office.
The trip started with us taking an early leave from office on the Friday. We took a cab to Begumpeth Railway station (during which we guys started making new friends). On the station the group strength was clearly visible we were around 70 in numbers. All ppl had doubts about what the trip of such a big group was going to turn up into.

The train journey started, very soon all my doubts were cleared. A few of us sitting in same compartment started talking and soon we became such good friends that we decided to keep awake the whole the night gossiping. The idea came from Somu who kept iterating it was rather senseless to sleep for a such duration everytime some one thought about it. Ultimately everyone did decide to go for sleeping only that it was hardly 1/2 hr to 1 hr we could. Of course the gossip that went on the whole night played a serious part in giving the whole trip a great start.
We got down from the train at Kalyan station, and from there took a local train to Neral station . followed by a Car drive to Dasturi point. Which is the last point for vehicles. From this point we walked mostly along the toy-train track (Toy-trains are not functional during the Monsoon season). The way was pretty difficult mostly because it was raining hard and very few ppl were actually prepared for that though most of us had rain cheaters but the rain was too heavy for that. Most of us were totally drenched by the time we reached the resort the "Brightlands resort".



The bigger trouble was yet to be witnessed, the rain water had soaked in into the bags and all the clothes were wet. The situation was the same with almost al l :)
As decided during the breakfast we left for Trekking right after the breakfast. We trekked towards the Echo point and got drifted off the way many times for there were many beautiful tracks on the way, including a big lonely Bangalow like ones seen in ghost movies. We moved on and reached Echo Point, it was wonderfull. I would leave the photos to speak about it. The best effect was that of the waterfall's water thrown upwards by the wind. The echo didn't really work though [:D]




As is got late we decided to walk back for Lunch, which was a long long run as we had no idea where to go back and had to retrack the way so many times (thanks to Luqman for his great intuitions :))







Post lunch a much larger group lead by Zubin walked to Charlotte lake. The lake was not the most beautiful thing, the whole trek was. Had a great run from the monkeys while eating Corn("Bhutta") and drinking tea on the way. The Corn was too tasty and the tea made lot of sense in the nice rainly weather.

The evening was concluded with an hour or so of Disc which was obviously great fun. The next morning we left from the resort came back to Dasturi point on horse. Where Kiran showed her horse riding skills. The reverse journey got over very soon as we gossiped a lot and made plans for future outings.