Most Memorable Trip to Panchgani – 1st Part

After so much of postponement we finally shortlisted one beautiful Hill station, Panchgani… and believe me that small little place is no less than a Heaven.From lush green fields, to foggy mountains and windy days – super windy nights, it was like a dream coming true for me. And yes that’s the reason it’s my most memorable trip in recent years.

So let me elaborate that Trip to Heaven in below post. And I am dividing this whole trip in parts, where first part (this post) will be about my journey from Pune till Panchgani. Second Part will be about my experience in Panchgani. And Last part , journey back from Panchgani to Pune.

Before I start about the actual travel fun some background on what we did couple of days before D-Day. It was so exciting to discuss within the team as to what all we will visit there and what all we gonna do. We spent so many hours discussing about every aspect of the trip, be it looking for the Vehicle for our road journey, or the place where we will be staying, games – fun activities… and much much more. Everything was finalized after so much brain storming and we started our journey on July 29, 06:00AM.

As always someone has to be late to it was not exactly at 06:00 AM. Most of us reached on time but we still had to wait before our Traveler could move, reason not everyone was in. Lastly at 07:00 am Everyone was there we started from our source i.e our office.

This very first pic marked the start of our Trip and it has to be posted here…

That day was nice and it was raining heavily, I could not resist myself start exploring the options to use my Black Beauty, my camera. And finally caught below and felt happy.

Here onward I started towards an unknown place (only to me as many of the accompanying friends already visited it last year). And every passing moment was just increasing my excitement to reach my destination even faster as all described it as one beautiful and serene place that I’d fall in love with.

Rest everyone were enjoying the journey by singing, dancing and playing but I could not. Simply cause I cant take my eyes off the abundant beauty by nature scattered all over the sides of the road. I did not want to waste a single moment by looking elsewhere and not clicking. I just kept  my camera focused outside and clicked some really nice pictures, below are some of them

Panning Effect

Dramatic Clouds and Reflective Road

And at one point I found one under construction bridge and expected the standing beams to give me a creative frame for the background natural view, and clicked below picture. But it did not come out as expected as I was in moving vehicle. So I learned the lesson, next time ask your drive to stop the vehicle and then try such clicks.

Nature Through Pattern

And as of now we were still not anyway near to the hilly area that we were heading to. So it added to my anticipation as to how my final destination would be when the path towards it is this gorgeous for me and my camera.

 

Oh yes I forgot to mention… we did stop midway to have breakfast. And the breakfast was so yummy. Misal Pav, Pav Bhaji, Upma, Onion/Potato/Palak Pakoda, Dal Pakoda, Masala Dosa etc as I cant recall each and every item we 16 people ordered…(I guess this is the first I am telling how many people we were on trip). Lastly the icing on the cake was piping hot tea. It made me forget I got up at 4:15 AM that day (thats one of the most daring task I have done)

Next we were back on our Traveler and started towards Panchgani (which I have seen only on google maps or in pics so far). And as usual started clicking pictures of all available options, camera focused outside window and me twisting/turning/standing/sitting to get perfect angle for my shots. Some of them are below

I caught one wandering cloud piece here. The one grey path in middle is that Cloud.

Nature is no less than a Magician

So much contrast in one Pic

Few of my favorite pictures from the journey’s first part are below:

Clouds over the mountain

I am speechless to find any caption here… so serene and marvelous

Now we have reached first landmark of our journey i.e. Dholya Ganpti Temple, Wai

I wasn’t allowed to click pictures inside the temple, and literally forgot to click anything outside as I was so overwhelmed looking at that beautiful temple and knowing its history. Ganpati Idol was so mesmerizing that you can just keep staring at it for a long time without wanting to move. So if by any chance you are in Wai dont miss to visit this place.

And yes for an information, this beautiful place Wai was the start of us moving towards the hill station (our final destination). Next are many of the pictures clicked on the way from Wai to Panchgani. And these are beautiful…

So that’s all about the very first part of the trip… and how I enjoyed this part thoroughly by clicking as many pics I could. And at the same time excitement was uncontrollable to finally reach the place where we would be staying in Panchgani i.e. Panchgani Tent House.

More about this part of the trip in next post. Hope you liked this post. And if you have visited Panchgani do let me know how was your experience in comments section.

Do share your views and feedbacks… C you all till next post.