Monsoon camping in the Sahyadris

Unlike most other trekking and camping destinations the Sahyadri range is best for hiking during the rainy season. Being lucky enough to live within a couple of hours driving distance from many great hiking locations makes monsoon season the perfect time for weekend getaways to one of these places.

So to make the best of the last leg of the rainy season I went off to one of my favourite areas - Gotha village which is about 80 Km west of Pune, near the backwaters of Mulshi lake. This is where Ecogrid has been set up - a green commune concept place which ultimately aims to become self sustainable; I'll write more on that in another post.

En route to the final destination

This one is going to be about the cave-behind-the-waterfall that was discovered about a 45 minute trek from Ecogrid and found to be a perfect camping place. 

 So we set off from Ecogrid, through the very green and lush landscape which is surrounded by hills. In the rains there are streams of water falling down the slopes creating lots of small waterfalls - what a sight!

 Our destination was a natural shelf formed behind one of the larger waterfalls. The picture below is taken from right behind the falling water, standing warm and cozy inside the 'cave'! We pitched our tents and slept off with the sound of the falling water as the background score. 

Behind the falls

The whole experience was as close as it could get to the kind of adventures I read about in Enid Blyton books growing up and always wishing I could be there. Well this time I was!

Bringing in 2010 along the Konkan coast. Part II - Goa!

It's impossible to cover all of Goa in one post, so I'm just going to try to capture the best parts of all the Goa trips I have ended up going for in the past couple of years.

This post is the conclusion to my previous post and about our final destination in the ambitious road trip - Goa.

View from our hut at Palolem

South Goa beaches are more scenic, less crowded and less ravaged by commercialization. Of course at New Year's time all those are very relative terms. We stayed at Palolem - Brandon's Huts - like most huts these were pretty basic, but our hut was right on the beach and that made up for everything else. I've been to Goa three times in the past as many years and have stayed in 1. house converted into a large guesthouse, very close to Calangute 2. a mid-level 'resort' place in Candolim. 3. coco-hut right on the beach. I usually like the idea of a house converted into accommodation mostly because these often turn out to be really old, restored houses and are charming. My only advise - ensure that it is!

As for activities - Palolem's calm waters makes it perfect for kayaking, I'd recommend highly. Anymore activity than that seems quite antithetical to the relaxed atmosphere. All the way to one end of Palolem was another knot of beach huts but they were done up in a manner that made you feel you walked into Alladin's world. The food was great too

Palolem

Not too far from Palolem is Galgibag which in peak season was almost isolated and the drive up (obviously on bikes!) is beautiful. Perfect if you want to get away from the usual mix of hawkers, shacks, beach-chairs for rent, water sports on most beaches, and just laze around, which is exactly what we did.

My previous trips to Goa have been more activity filled mostly because I've stayed longer and in the busier northern part. More on those later!