To Mulshi and Beyond

Last weekend, my friends/colleagues suddenly planned to travel to the west coast (Konkan). The place decided was Harihareshwar. It is a tiny village on the edge of the Sahyadris (Western Ghats). The route is one of the most picturesque I have seen. You have to go beyond Mulshi where the western ghats are all the more breathtaking!

One of the best parts of the journey is when you have to travel beside the Mulshi Lake for many kilometers.

Here is what the wikimapia shows:

I have labeled the places. Lonavala is just for reference...

About 6hrs after leaving Pune, we finally felt the sea breeze. That evening we visited the beach. The sand here is a dark brown and the first reaction is that it is dirty. The color is probably due to the undersea rocks (which are almost everywhere in this region) getting eroded.

Right now I have only the snaps taken with my colleague's digicam. The snaps in my digicam and from the film camera, I haven't got them on the hard disk yet. These pics (except one) are all shot with a very narrow field of view and I find them making me a little claustrophobic!!

We went to the Harihareshwar temple the next day.

The village had this narrow lane about 6 feet wide with various shops and restuarants lined on either side. The atmosphere there reminded me of R.K. Narayan's Malgudi village! :-)

Perched on one of the houses near the temple was a loudspeaker. Interestingly, it was silent.
Then on the other side there was this narrow alley leading to this quaint little house...
We saw a staircase leading to the other side of the hill and decided to see where it landed...


Hmmm... it lead to a rocky shore on the other side. A kind that I had never seen before.


The stairs landed at a place that looked like a tiny docking area. This could have been a scene straight from a classic James Bond movie. The secret docking area to the villain's lair who is planning world domination!! :-))

Close to the top of this hill grew a lone tree...
Waves smashed against the rocks sending water as high as 10 feet in some places. Away from the seafront the rocks formed recesses on which you could sit. There on those rocks sat two non-identical twins...


On this rocky shore was this turtle-shaped sea-sculpture in a pool within the rock... I told my friend's wife to sit on it.... this is her reflection...


That chilly evening we had dinner sitting around a bonfire and then played dumb charades...
In the next post I will put up the wide angle landscapes that I shot...