The Matheran Diaries - Day 1 - Mangalore to Mumbai to Matheran

here i am back with another blog series , this time visiting Magnificent Matheran, which is a popular hill station situated around 90 kms from Mumbai.

this time, i carried my 5dmarkiii + EF 16-35 f 2.8 L II USM and Sigma 35 mm f 1.4 ART lens with me.

the duration of our holiday was from Oct 31 to Nov 10th and the places we visited included Lonavala, Matheran, Pune and Mumbai.



me and my wonderful wifey Niki had originally planned to visit Lisbon, Portugal but due to time constraints we had to postpone that trip. so for now this blog series is the 2 of us visiting Matheran.

aerial pics of the Mlore Mumbai flight.

we landed Mumbai airport at around 12:30 noon and the first thing we did, in this unplanned trip of ours is hire a local prepaid taxi that took us to Matheran, or at least close to Matheran.

the prepaid NON -AC taxi charged us Rs 1741/- which we didnt mind paying as it was a tow and half hour drive to Neeral, which is the closest to Matheran. there are no direct cabs to Matheran as the place is a hill station and vehicles are banned. so u can travel to neeral by cab, then take another local cab from Neeral to Dasturi Naka which is about 3-5 km, up hill . and once u reach Dasturi Naka, u can either walk to Matheran or take a toy train (if u figure out the timings) or take a horse!

yes Matheran is very popular for horses!

anyways, so we take the cab, and while we were driving towards Neeral, Niki and me realised that we had not had lunch!. so we told our not so friendly cabbie to pull over at the nearest restaurant and he stops at a McDonalds on the Neeral highway.

the food was shitty, but beggars cant be choosers, so after a stop over of about 15 mins we hit the road again. we managed to parcel a sandwich to the driver, after that he was not so grumpy.

the drive was not so pleasant as it was a NON AC cab but it was rather tiring as it took over 4 hours to reach Neeral. that was the farthest the cab could go.

Neeral or Neral is a tiny hamlet housing a few thousand people, most of whom run small businesses that cater to the local tourist population that arrives to visit Matheran.

we needed a cab to take us to Dasturi Naka and we were fortunate to find a few men who belonged to the local Neral taxi association who came forward to help us and arranged a Maruti omni for us in 10 minutes flat. the Omni driver was Mr Sameer Khan who had 3 other friends with him and when he offered to drop us to Dasturi, we sat in his car wondering for a while if this was going to be our last ride together.

fortunately it turned out that he was a very helpful guy and we would use his taxi services on our way to Pune after 2 days.

the drive from Neral to Dasturi was very very scary! and u need to be a seasoned local driver to navigate the treacherous mountain passes. turns out that theres at least 1 accident every week , mostly from tourists who want to drive from their homes all the way to Dasturi Naka. we saw at least 2 car wrecks on the way to Dasturi.

at Dasturi Naka we missed the toy train that would have taken us to Materan, so we decided to walk while a porter carried our bags. there was this persistent horse trainer who kept nagging me and niki to take the horse ride instead of walking all the way to Matheran, but we chose otherwise.

oh, there is a small entry toll of Rs 50 per person at Dasturi Naka. the cab from Neral to Dasturi was Rs 350 and the porter charged us Rs 350 for carrying the bags from Dasturi to Matheran.

the toy train

our porter

hard work!

we stopped along the way to have a cup of chai and coffee. then niki wanted to have corn, that meant another pit stop of 10 minutes. no sooner did niki start to eat the corn cob, she was sttacked by a monkey who managed to snatch the corn cob and run!

mountains of matheran

breathtaking view

chai wala

corny

the local kids study in a catholic convent

after fighting with the monkey, we continued walking through the streets and markets of Matheran. the walk from Dasturi to Matheran was about an hour!

chikki and sweets everywhere

niki pointing out to her name on a can

so many horses so much horse poop

3 things are very common in Matheran (apart from the mountains) viz horses, chikki and sweet shops and shoe shops (leather products)

Next post - Lords Central Hotel