The Western Ghats - Pune and Panchghani

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We left Mumbai early in the morning by train from the massive Gothic inspired railway station for the four hour trip up into the Western Ghats. Our first Indian train trip was enjoyable - you find the right platform and train, check that you actually have a seat by checking the computer printout which is pasted on the side of each carriage and load your bags aboard. The train started right on time - no announcement was made so there was a rush as everybody dived on as it started to move - and we headed out of Mumbai through endless rows of tin shacks and high rises. The fun started once we arrived in the city of Pune, at the base of the Ghats and known throughout the Western World as being the home of the Orange People or Rajineesh Ashram which is known as a Spiritual Disneyland for it's ethics of free sex (they offer the fastest HIV tests in the world as you need one to stay overnight there). We left the railway station to be faced with a raised road in front and no visible way to cross it to actually leave the station. We eventually realised that there were tunnels underneath the road - five of them going in different directions - so chose one which we hoped would lead to a tall hotel we could see about half a block away. We hadn't booked anywhere but figured that hotel would be a good orienteering point. Unfortunately we still couldn't find our way across the road when we left the tunnel - I have never seen traffic that was as heavy or as crazy. We have since found out that Pune is considered to have the worst traffic of any city in India. In fact the day after we left a boy once knocked off his bike by a bus on that same street and killed - the locals were so angry they rioted and torched that bus and the one following. The newspapers were full of how fed up the local population were with Pune's traffic congestion.
We actually ended up having to hire a rickshaw to literally get us across the road to the hotel and it was a terrifying 5 minute trip. I literally had to shut my eyes! When we arrived at the hotel we negotiated a room - they gave us a double for the price of a single - as it was a more expensive hotel then we had budgeted on staying in but really couldn't face the street outside again. We checked a couple of other hotels later and we actually got a good deal - the hotel was really good value, cheaper then a lot of much dirtier hotels nearby. We left the hotel to find the tourist office which was around the corner - it took an hour and half to find it as it had no sign and a locked gate - you entered it via the back door. We also tried to book a local bus up to Panchghani but gave up in the end and booked a luxury bus after being told that it would pick us up near the hotel. Next day we knew that we wouldn't be able to cope with the traffic so also hired a taxi for the day to take us around some of the tourist sites. It was a bargain - $AUD21 for 8 hours or 80klms.
We mainly wanted to visit the former palace of the Aga Khan where Mahatma Gandhi was placed under house arrest and also where his wife of more then 50 years died and was buried. We left the rest of the day up to the taxi driver and he took us to many places we would never have considered visiting. The palace was a very elegant building, well maintained and set in lush green gardens. The burial site of Gandhi's wife is beside a monument containing some of Gandhi's ashes which were bought here after his cremation in New Delhi. The driver then took us to a temple which had never been renovated and was in superb condition- a stone building with detailed tile work and colored glass windows with a cluster of intricately carved gold topped spires set behind it. A very peaceful place. Next stop was a small tribal museum which had great displays of the local indigenous tribal people - masks, jewelery and village houses. The absolutely incredible privately owned collection in the Baja Dinkar Kelkar museum followed, rooms displaying walls hung with very heavy carved doors (including two large doors totally made from ivory), walls hung with vibrant silk carpets and the most amazing array of musical instruments. And all housed in a restored traditional wooden house with the same heavy carved doors and window frames.
We stopped briefly at the War Memorial where one of the young Sikh soldiers happily allowed me to photograph him in his uniform on the way to another more modern Hindu temple and yet another in the distance up 100 steps. We bypassed the 100 steps - it was far too hot - and settled for lunch instead. The last stop of the day was a large palace built in 1794 which to our eyes appeared much more like a fort as it had a large wall all the way around it. It was a great day, made much more enjoyable by the knowledge that we didn't have to find transport to the next place. Definitely the way to go and we'll do it in future. Last stop that day was to a local phone shop to set ourselves up with sim cards - we had tried in Mumbai but were told we needed a reference from somebody in India to get one. We found out in Pune that the letter of reference can merely be a local hotel receipt. We now had local phone numbers - which will make reserving hotel rooms etc easier. Not totally trusting the information we had been given re next days bus departure point we decided to go and find it. Our instincts proved correct as the stop near the hotel no longer existed and we found that we had to go to a spot on the other side of the city. We were not impressed as the local bus station was across the road and we would have persisted with our ticket requests had we known this. Too late now so we re booked our taxi for another trip early next morning - and he very kindly waited until the bus arrived because the bus stop was literally on the street beside an overflowing rubbish bin with a family of pigs feasting in it. I don't think he actually thought that the bus would leave from there either!
Three hours later - our “luxury” bus did eventually arrive - we reached Panchghani, a small village in the Western Ghats, 1372 meters above ground level, where Jerry's grandmother was born. Her family were missionaries and Jerry hoped to discover a little more about them. 25 kilometers further down the road was the town of Mahabaleshwar which is firmly on the tourist trail . It also has one of the highest rainfalls in Asia during the monsoons with rain non stop for 3 months! The driver let us off in Panchgani but was surprised that we were stopping there. Jerry left me and our luggage in a small cafe while he went to find accommodation - it was a very small place, literally one main street and it was fascinating to watch the local people go about their daily business. Our hotel for the next 5 nights was about 15 minutes walk from the main street and right out in the countryside. It was a small resort, tidy with friendly staff but the sheets on the beds hadn't been changed and were really dirty! Little English was spoken and I couldn't make them understand that I wanted clean sheets. The whole time we were there guests came and left and I didn't see any laundry coming out of the rooms. We ended up sleeping on the sheets but my first stop was at a local shop to buy pillowslips. I'm sure it won't be the last time we sleep in dirty sheets here. Their levels of cleanliness are well below ours. The streets are filthy, rubbish everywhere - we've even seen waiters open cafe doors and throw our scraps out onto the footpaths. The whole country is a toilet - at least for the men as we see dozens a day urinating against the closest wall. Toilets which are available are dirty and I've certainly urinated onto nothing else but cement floors since I've been here.
Our five days in Panchghani were spent very quietly, chatting to the local people, eating at the
same little cafe - the food was good and clean - and generally just watching village life. There town is known for it's schools and there were 48 in a 4 square kilometer radius. All boarding schools for mainly children from Mumbai. We spoke to one mother who was up visiting her 6 year old son - he had been at school since Christmas and she saw him for one night a month - after a 7 hour car trip from Mumbai.
We caught the local bus up to Mahabaleshwar which was very busy. The main area of town was row upon row of little tourist shops and the outskirts were full of go cart tracks and horse riding stables. Full on tourism - we were very pleased that we were in our peaceful little town. We did however discover Panchghani's claim on the tourism rupee one afternoon when we climbed some steps up towards the top of one of the flat ridges which bordered the town. It was like a different world up there as a small funfair had been set up - shoot the balloons and knock over the bottles - plus there was a mini ferris well and a couple of children's rides. Plus people everywhere, looking at the view from the top and having rides on horse drawn carts around the plateau. It was incredibly dry and dusty but everybody was having heaps of fun. We went up the following evening again, mainly for the view as you could see for miles - ridge upon ridge of flat topped hills. It was like the small local sports ground which every afternoon was full of young boys playing cricket - just brown dirt and nothing else.
I wasn't feeling particularly well the last couple of nights there and was becoming concerned that the malaria medication we were on was making me feel nauseous. Thankfully I did recover so it wasn't the medication - maybe the dirty sheets had something to do with it!
Jerry meanwhile had traced the church his great grandparents had been involved with but unfortunately all church records and the current building dated from 1884, two years after his great aunt was born and six years after his grandmother was born. The young couple who run the church now, and live in a tiny shack built off the side of it, were familiar with the house Jerry's family lived in but said that it was no longer there.
We had planned on catching the same bus back to Pune that we arrived in but found out that the taxi union in Panchghani didn't allow the bus companies to let people board in Panchghani so we would have had to go up to Mahabaleshwar to catch it so we decided to catch the local bus instead. We've found out that some of the taxi unions are very strong in many of the smaller towns in India and make it difficult for visitors to catch buses thereby forcing them to pay inflated taxi prices. The local bus to Mahabaleshwar cost us 40 rupees, the taxi company wanted 280 rupees for the same trip. Most of the local tourists pay the taxi prices but then will load a dozen people into the taxis! Our afternoon entertainment was watching the local small buses which are land cruisers fill with farmers etc going back to the smaller villages at the end of the day. They literally pushed people in and when they were full there would be 5 people each side, 4 squatted between the two rows, 3 in the front seat plus the driver. On top of all of them there would be 2 or 3 children plus baggage and then a couple of young men hanging off the back! That was not the type of local bus we planned on catching but the larger bus we did catch back to Pune was just as crowded and Jerry had to stand for the whole 2 hour trip. As I would have had to as well but a young man insisted I had his seat - he then stood all the way as well.
We thoroughly enjoyed our few days there, dirty sheets and all. Every afternoon we would watch the little old man at our hotel pluck the top of the grass off by hand, singing as he worked. The Indian version of the lawn mower! Life is just so very different here - it really makes you appreciate how lucky we are to live in Australia. We had a flight booked to New Delhi from Pune later that day so when we arrived back at the local bus station (which was next door to the train station) we returned to our Pune hotel for lunch. I had by this stage lost connection on my sim card so Jerry walked around to the man who sold it to me for him to sort - I still have no connection on it but at least that time we knew how to cross the road from the train station to the hotel!

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Photos

Who is the most handsome?
Jerry and tribal masks at the Tribal Museum in Pune

Kitchen Ganesh (for Jane)
Saw this in museeum in Pune

Mother and child, Panchghani
Note the dark kohl around the six month old baby's eyes