1.40 Ki Last Local…. (Trip to Mumbai)
Main Characters (alphabetical order):
Gaurav Garg alias GG
Nitin Vasishtha alias NV alias Photu Grapher
Pardeep Mittal alias PM (Me)
Parul Gupta alias PG (Guest Appearance)
Upendra Chauhan alias UC
Everything went according to plan until something happened badly. Plan was to enjoy the long weekend (6th April to 8th April) by Mumbai trip with Mumbai gang. GG, NV and I hurried from office to catch the earliest Volvo to Pune. But destiny has certain other plans against individual’s plans. NV lost his mobile (Sony Ericsson W-810i) along auto rickshaw journey from our Viman Nagar flat to Pune Railway StationLLL.
This incident delayed our journey from Thursday evening to Friday afternoon, only after NV bought new mobile handset (Sony Ericsson K750i)JJJ. Galz pl. message your no.’s to NV as he has lost them all. we hired an Indica from Pune Railway Station to Dadar (Mumbai) for journey. Upon reaching Dadar, we boarded Mumbai Local (Lifeline of Mumbai) from Dadar to Andheri (coz. UC lives at Chandivali, Andheri east). From Andheri east railway station we traveled in BEST to finally reach at Chandivali around 7.00 P.M. Once reaching at UC’s flat, all planned for some outing to any nearby place with whole Mumbai gang. GG was extremely excited to see the sea with someone….
First plan was to see the bandstand at Bandra. Again we all (me, GG, PG, NV and UC) traveled in local. But to our sheer disappointment bandstand was close when we reached there around 9.30. But our main Photu grapher wasn’t totally disappointed he clicked some very good pics of Mannat (SRK’s bungalow). GG wasn’t disappointed at all coz he was seeing the sea. We clicked some poses for NV specially GG wid PG. We also had our first share of Mumbai’s famous street food (Pani Puri’s alias Golgappa’s) at bandstand beach. Mumbai don’t sleep in night (its true guys). There was enough traffic on road at 12.30 AM as we can see in Delhi at around 9-10 PM. We all were stunned to hear that local runs till 1.40 AM. We reached at UC’s flat around 2.00 AM after UC dropped PG to her flat. Then we had very sound fight with mosquitoes all the night not to mention some sleep also. The weather is also very humid in Mumbai, which makes thing even worse.
Next morning after very sound sleepL, we planned to go to Elephanta caves. From boarding BEST bus from Chandivali to Ghatkopar, local from Ghatkopar to VT (Victoria Terminus) alias CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) and ferry from Gateway of India (GOI) to Elephanta caves, the journey was hip and happening. Someone told us that long distance between CST and GOI is walking, which took almost 40 mins of walk. But this was blessing in disguise for NV, who clicked some masterpieces (CST, BMC, BOI, BSE, Taj buildings) with his Canon S3 along the way. The journey in the ferry was very exciting. NV was as usually clicking picks, GG, UC and I also enjoyed our first voyage to Elephanta caves. But journey from shore to caves was tiresome, which date back to the Silhara kings of the 9th through 13th centuries. But after looking at the architectural masterpieces of 9th centuries, we felt the journey worth while. We spent almost 2 hours at the caves.
After coming back from Elephanta caves, we walked to marine drive. The place is just fantastic. You can have a long drive along the sea shore. The scene in the evening was just incredible. We all felt very relaxed after tiring journey to Elephanta caves. The place has many historic buildings nearby including Brabourne and Wankhede Stadiums. After that we’re again in local to travel to Vashi. We had great time at Vashi. And after very tiring and eventful day we reached back to UC’s flat after changing three local along the way. The sleep was better then previous night not because there were fewer mosquitos but we’re tired very badly.
On our last day of trip we’re planning to visit Essal World Water Park or Alibag beaches. But we zeroed in for visiting Alibag beaches in anticipation of some good crowd. Again we had to travel to GOI for catching ferry to Mandwa (a place near Alibag). This time ferry journey was even better. NV clicked some great pics along the way. From Mandwa we boarded a bus (provided by Ferry Company) to Alibag. But after reaching Alibag we’re utterly disappointed after seeing the crowd there. On one so called main beach there was no sand but only rocks were present. The whole crowd was local people. Then somebody told us about Akshay beach. This one was better coz it was having some sand but it didn’t had any crowd. But we all had good fun and swam in sea for one and half hours. Then backward journey was made interesting by some good crowd (UC I’m right naaaa…).
Now it was time to come back to Pune. We (me, GG and NV) planned to board Volvo from Andheri, but we weren’t that lucky. Again we had to travel to Dadar from Andheri in local for one last time. At last we reached our flat in Pune at 3.00 AM.
Next day (Monday) in the office was very boring after such an eventful long weekend.
