Travelling

Monsoon getaways are always fun. This one was the first in this season.  We got our XUV700 ready for the trip and started around 8am from home.  On to the Pune - Bangalore highway , is the BAPS swaminarayan temple around 45 mins from our home in Pimple saudagar. There was minimal traffic and the drive was smooth. The parking was muddy, but the temple was beautiful. It had been raining causing the floor to be slippery. Mats were laid to avoid slippage. There were some people as well to warn about the slippery floors. The temple interior is intricately carved and houses idols of majority Hindu Gods and swamis. Luckily it was Guru Purnima as well that added to the charm and decorations. The surroundings are beautifully maintained with trees and gardens around. We clicked some pictures and spent some time there before moving ahead. Our next stop was Necklace point in Bhor. It's a river in the form of Necklace. A view point only. There is no place to get down to the water, n

Annual tradition of spending summer vacations at mom's place took me to Mohali in May-June this year. The hottest summer months in Northern India. You think of stepping out of the home , rethink and reconsider looking at the scorching sun. We started earlier on a Monday morning around 7:15am. The first destination was Mata Naina Devi shrine. The routes were good, with the entire route almost in Punjab except for the final 12kms that fall under the Himachal Pradesh jurisdiction. That is a hilly terrain with quite curvy turns. Car goes almost till the foot of the temple steps. We reached there by 9:10am and starting our ascend. This is also the place where the cable cars drop the pilgrims. So, Naina Devi temple is on a height, cable cars operate to and fro carrying the pilgrims.  The steps are low and broad. The entire route is adorned with shops selling various stuff like Prasad, idols, other stuff like toys, wooden things, puja samagri, etc.  We reached the top in around 10-15 mins

Fireflies festival takes place every year between 15 May and 15 June. This year we planned to experience it. I explored a couple of options and booked to visit Bhandardara for 18-19 May '24 with "Hire A Camp". We started around 11am from Pune. The route wasn't very good, but was average. Some single roads through the villages , some ghats, a bit of stopping for break and we reached the camp site around 4:30pm. The campsite was called "backpack camping". There was ample parking space available at the camp site. The host Shubham was available at the site to help with the check in. We chose our tents , kept the backpack and went for a stroll at the lake side. It was Rocky as expected but very clean lake side. We spent some time there, clicked some pictures, then returned back to our tents.  Bhel and tea were ready for evening snacks. We had the snacks, then relaxed for some time in and around the tents. Families and groups were still che

Another thought of a family outing was finally put to implementation today. The initial plan was to go to Bhigwan for bird watching.  While the research was on, there were additional thoughts and inputs.  So the final plan was to go to Bhigwan and then to Bhuleshwar temple which is on the way between Bhigwan and Pune.  We started our journey very early on Saturday morning (24th Feb 2024) around 3:50am in our XUV700. We followed the google maps which took us through magarpatta/hadapsar, fursungi along the pune-solapur highway and we reached Bhigwan by 6:05am. The roads were all very well maintained making the drive pretty smooth. We reached "Nagare Flamingo Point" In Bhigwan. This was a non stop drive.  The person there, got the required stuff like life jackets and fuel, etc to take us for boating.  We again got into our car for another 5-min drive to the Ujani Dam where we were to boat.  It was very early in the morning and was quite cold by the Maharashtra standa