Absurdity

The heat in Mumbai was becoming overbearing so I decided to pack a day bag and head to some “hill stations” for a couple of days. A few places were recommended to me by Martin, so we decided to meet up again for a short 3-day trip since he was close by in Pune at that time also.

So hop on a train and meet half-way in Lonavle. The train experience was rather fun. I started my day quite late due to being locked out by my sleeping hosts... Finally made it to the station, the (delayed) train arrived and I hopped on – my first time going on general admission rather than sleeper. I was in the ladies car, which is the last one, and it smelled of fish (apparently because there were fish in the stock room behind it). The women went mad; pushing and shoving galore. There was no way I’d get a seat. I wasn’t in a fighting mood, so I went to sit in the tiny space by the open door, where 2 other women were already settled with their bags. At subsequent stations, the ladies car got ladier. Eventually, we were something like 10 women cramped just in that tiny cubicle between the doors. With bags and all. Early on, a lady who spoke some English sat next to me and I asked her where to get off for Lonavle. She was headed to Pune and invited me over to her place as well. We spent the whole ride chatting about different things, especially South Indian food and how to prepare it. Yum. She became protective of me and was shouting at the other women to let me sit, and then made sure I got off at my station.

***

Turns out Lonavle is famous for chikki, so there’s literally hundreds of chikki shops one next to the other selling the exact same products. It is addictively delicious. Martin “unfortunately” dislikes nuts, so it was all for me. The shops did have tons of other sweets however. A good business option in Lonavle is to open up a dental clinic.

After finding accommodation and walking around town a bit, it was too late to do much else so we headed back to the hotel and planned to see some caves and waterfalls and shit the next day. 

Initially, we were going to spend only one night in Lonavle, and head to Matheran the following day after seeing the sights around Lonavle. But we overslept past the checkout time and decided it wasn’t worth rushing, so we would stay one more night. 

Neither of us knew much about Lonavle or how to get to the interesting places around it. We walked around asking for a map, or if there were buses going to Karla caves, or if it was possible to rent bikes or a scooter. Finding information was difficult, and it was already afternoon. Some rickshaw drivers tried to bargain to take us there, but we were up for an adventure, cheap-o style. So I said “let’s hitchhike!”. We knew that Karla caves were about 8 km away from Lonavle, so at worst we would walk there, and hope that someone would pick us up along the way. Martin had already hitchhiked once with his host in Pune, so it was worth a try.

As we neared the highway and were at a decent distance to avoid rickshaw drivers spotting us and coming to harass us, I stuck out my hand and hoped for the best. It brought back so many memories! I couldn’t help laughing and enjoying trying this out in India. Not even two minutes later, a truck stopped for us. We asked for Karla, the driver nodded (or rather wobbled ;)), and we hopped on. Hurray! We passed a toll where some questioning occurred but all was in order, and the driver dropped us at the junction for the caves. It was awkward because I didn’t know if he would expect money or how it worked here. We jumped off, he smiled at us, we closed the door and walked away. Ta da!

It was still a 3 km walk to the caves, in the heat. But I didn’t mind. I was beaming. Hitchhiking was something I really wanted to try in India, but I couldn’t do it alone, and I hadn’t met other people I wanted to travel with and who also were up for hitchhiking. I was already dreaming big, of hitching long distance, to nowhere and beyond :)

The caves weren’t a big deal; a small (overpriced) Buddhist cave temple area, where there wasn’t much potential to explore. The only other caves I had to compare with were Kanheri caves. And I hadn’t even seen Ellora or Ajanta, although Martin did (and everyone keeps pestering me about how wonderful they are and how much I should go -__-). But the whole experience was lovely; good company & conversation, unknown villages with no foreign tourists, even a curious goat…

After the caves, we walked back to the highway and still hadn’t decided what to do for sunset. It was a toss between going to Sunset Point (I guess it’s a good place for it, I mean why else would they call it that :P), and going to Toni Daa Dhaba’s to see the “Live ostrich on display”. “You can see the sunset anywhere, but when else will you get to hitchhike to see an ostrich in India?!”, I pleaded with Martin. So we literally tossed a coin, and the ostrich won. We had no clue if this dhaba was close to any landmark, so we just hoped that whoever picked us up would know where it is, or that we would spot it off the road.

We escaped the hordes of rickshaws near the highway junction from the caves, and soon saw a truck stopped ahead of us. We weren’t sure if it had stopped for us so we went up to the window and asked for Toni Daa Dhaba, in the direction of Pune. The driver and his companion gave a positive sign and we hopped in. On the ride we had gotten to the caves, there was only a driver, but generally there are two people in the trucks.

 

There was a little bit of talking in broken English and Hindi, but from what I gathered, the driver knew of Toni Daa Dhaba and was trying to warn us that the food there is horrible; he wanted to drive us to a nearby town for better food :P. We soon passed the sign for the dhaba and the driver continued, so we told him to stop, because we were keen for Toni Daa Dhaba. He seemed surprised, and maybe slightly disappointed, with an air seeming to say “Ok, but don’t blame me if you don’t like the place”. He stopped, and again we got off, waved goodbye, closed the door and walked off.

I was so excited to see if there really was a live ostrich! As we got on the grounds, we saw an enclosure full of emus and other big birds. Well, that’s a disappointment. Emus are cool and all, but that’s false advertisement right there. But then Martin pointed to an area behind the restaurant, and we saw two small heads perched on long necks and giant bodies staring at us. Effin ostriches! Ha ha ha! I couldn’t believe it.

Hey cheeky, want some chikki?

As we later found out, you could actually have emu meat there; you could literally go with the cook and point and say “This one”. We didn’t know this at the time, and the place was pretty expensive so we just got some drinks and set off again.

By this time it was getting dark, but thankfully we quickly managed to get a ride back. But wait. There was one more stop along the way. Martin insisted on visiting the wax museum. Yup, that’s right. So we asked the driver to drop us off there, and they asked us for some cash and chai. Hmm. It was mildly awkward, but eventually they left after chai, and we had a look inside the (expensive) museum. It was quite fun, and I do believe it was my first wax museum visit ever :P 

So there you have it. Hitchhiking in India; milega :)