The beauty and horrors of Lanavala

Had been to Lonavala for a 1 day trip on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Lonavala is a rather overcrowded hill station between Mumbai and Pune.

The road is quite pretty in the monsoons. The greens are all out, covering the mountain slopes. The waterfalls open their gates and you get to see some magnificent sights if you have the eye for them.

But overcrowded is the word!!! The place is swarming with the whole of Mumbai and Pune, especially in this season. All the usual scattering of 'points' are filled with parked cars and buses and their inmates. Among the more famous is the Bushy Dam (a misnomer), a small barrage across a smaller lake, that squirts out water over it's edge, with just enough force for people of all ages to safely wet their asses sitting on the concrete steps that form the downstream portion of the Dam wall. Enjoyable??? - Shmuck!!! That place is a veritable 'Kumbha Mela' of the west. It looks like a pilgrimage, with all the colourful people and the mess they leave behind sans any devotion or care. And it's disgusting to even think of getting into this melee. Fear of get jostled and falling is one, skin disease is the other! I'm sure it's a hotbed for germs, what with all those people bathing in it upstream. Yuck!!!!

So it's better to look for greener(or should I say, cleaner) pastures at Lonavala. Walk up a bit more and you will come across some less crowded and rather enticing waterfalls. Make some space, change, and get inside! And MY, it's a feeling hard to describe... sheer xtacy!!!!

And yeah, mind your footing there. It is mighty slippery. At one point we also saw a pair of small snakes. Now reptiles freak me out, and snakes? well, of course they do!! So I turned back, and slipped, lost my footing, and slammed my face into some cold hard rock. For a moment I thought, well, this is it. Either I'm gonna start 'floating' out to the abode above, or I'm gonna be horribly disfigured like Two-face or something. Fortunately, it was an inch long cut. I wrapped my shirt around it to stem the bleeding, and somehow made it back to the car. After some initial first-aid, we realised that Lonavala does not have a single approachable hospital, so off we drove to Pune. Basically, I ended up with some staples on my forehead and loads of bruising on my face. In fact, I thought I looked like some bhai who just same out of a fisticuffs with another goon. Not a very enticing description, but typical of my unearthly humor at such times. In fact, I have not put up my picture here for fear of inviting too much sympathy!!! [:)]

So, moral of the story - Go to Lonavala, get wet, but I won't be at your side...