Road Trip II: Raigad Coast

In October of 2009, we planned to have a biking expedition from Pune to Alibag, Kashid and Murud which is some 160 Kms away. That time we had to cut short our trip due to an emergency and visited only Nagaon and Kashid.

What couldn’t happen in 2009, happened in 2010. I, Nilesh, Alok and Bhagyashree set out for Road Trip II. The Plan: Pune – Srivardhan – Harihareshwar – Murud – Kashid – Alibag – Pune all in 2 days !!

Check out the snaps here !

We started on the morning of January 25^th, 2010. After having a sumptuous breakfast of pohe and tea at Chandni Chowk, we set out towards Mulshi. We had decided to take the Pirangut – Mulshi – Tamhini Ghat – Nizampur – Mangaon – Morba – Mhasala – Srivardhan route. This can easily be traced through google maps. This is the shortest route into the konkan plains from Pune. After a few snaps at Mulshi Dam and maneuvering through the lonely but beautiful Tamhini ghat, we reached Morba for some tea. Tamhini ghat is extremely lonely and with no visible help of food/fuel or repairs in sight for a long time, it is advisable to cross this section only during day time.

We finally reached Srivardhan at 12:30 PM after travelling 160 Kms. We checked into a home stay for Rs. 450 a room, had some nice fish thali at a local restaurant (Prasad Vichare) and headed for Harihareshwar which is 20 Kms away. Harihareshwar has a famous temple. While the temple is a simple place, there is way through the temple to top of a hill from where you get a spectacular view of the Harihareshwar beach on one side and rocky formations on the other. We also spotted some dolphins from there! As Harihareshwar beach isn’t safe for bathing, we headed back to Srivardhan before sunset to bathe in the sea and enjoy the sunset. It’s amazing that one doesn’t get bored of the beaches how many a times you see them. As the cool sea winds started to soothe our bruised asses, we knew there’s more coming tomorrow :)

We woke up the next day to the sound of children singing patriotic songs early morning. That is when I remembered that it was Republic Day. It is this law of the land which prevails which is allowing us to make such a trip a success!

There are two ways to go from Srivardhan to Murud. One is to reach Dighi Port (20 Kms) and take a jetty to Rajapuri (20 Mins) from where you can go to Murud (another 10 Kms). This is obviously the shorter route. But because of the uncertainty of timings of the jetty, we took the longer route (totally by road) to Murud which is around 60 Kms. The road from Srivardhan to Murud was the most beautiful road in the whole trip. While the initial patches were bad, later on the road became smooth and with the sea view on the left, the bike ride was fantastic!

Murud is a long beach. While the surroundings are great, the beach suffers from deposits of black silt. I would recommend not bathing in this beach as you would get dirty in the silt as you get out of the beach. We had some refreshing lime soda at the beach and then did some beach biking! Yes, as the beach is long and the sand is stiff, you can ride a bike on this beach. After our outing, we decided to have lunch at one of the beach side restaurants. While the food there was good, the service was pathetic. We started for Kashid beach around 2 PM which is just 20 Kms away.

I was horrified looking at the crazy Mumbai-Puneites at Kashid. While the approach road was chock-a-bloc with MH 01 and MH 12 vehicles, the beach resembled something like Juhu! Inspite of the crowd, the beach was good to have our second dip in the ocean J We managed to climb up a nearby place to have a look at Kashid beach from the top and man, what a view it was! I am sure none of the general public knew about this place and we patted ourselves for how smart we were ;)

Now it was 4 PM and it was time to head back. We went towards Alibag, took the city bypass, fueled up once again and headed back at 5 PM. This time we took the Pen-Khopoli-Lonavala route as it was getting dark. While the Pen-Khopoli-Lonavala route was serene, smooth and full of natural beauty, Lonavala – Pune was an example of modern infrastructure at its best making us cruise past 70-80 Kmph to reach Pune by 8 PM. After having some nice Paratha’s at our favorite ‘Aunty’s Parathas’ in Pashan, we came back to the hostel.

It was a bike trip like I had never done before. We travelled for 483 Kms in 2 days visiting 4 beaches and covering the entire Raigad coast. Yes, we felt the pain in the ass more than once but it was all worth it!!

Acknowledgement: While I keep on hearing stories of how GPS is all so helpful in the US, in the absence of any such thing in India, I must say Google Maps has done a fantastic job for helping us plan the trip to perfection with most major towns, roads, turns and distances mentioned accurately. Our trip wouldn’t have been as easy as it was without Google maps :)

Thank God, it's Thursday !

So it’s my 3rd weekend at SIBM today. Yes, we have a weekend off on Friday. I have the same feeling today as I used to have on every Friday while in the IT industry. Loads of mails used to come in which all said basically one thing; TGIF (Thank God, Its Friday!). This Friday culture is extremely rampant in the IT industry. There is even a restaurant named as TGIF on Airport Road, Bangalore. What I mean by the ‘Friday culture’ is, most of the guys would head off towards bars and some teetotalers like me would head off to food joints, while still others would complete their quota of films or quota of bird watching on popular roads. What all this means is, you should do something to the extreme by convincing yourself that the next week is going to be a hell of a monster again and this is the last day of your life, so enjoy every moment of it in your own paradise.

Unfortunately, we have a session on Friday mornings as well. It’s on philosophy of life, self awareness and something else which I missed out in my in-between nap :) Attending this lecture is a tussle between the eagerness to listen to this wonderful gentleman and the all encompassing sleep of a weekend. If I am able to get out of my slumber and get to the class on time, it’s really worth it. Anyway, talking about weekends and the eagerness to do something you have dreamt all throughout the week, all of us here have a perfect occasion to do so tomorrow night. The fresher’s party. I am tired of listening to people going mad about the booze and getting drowned in the glass. May be it’s their Shangri-la!

Working Saturdays and Sundays is hard work. We have full 9-5 lectures on Saturdays and GDPI workshops on Sundays. Gone are the days when Saturdays were devoted to washing clothes and miscellaneous work while Sundays were a time to enjoy delicious food and a good afternoon sleep. It takes time to change habits; it takes time to come out of the comfort zone.

But for now, we all are looking forward to some dance, music & food at the freshers welcome bash !!

First Impressions of SIBM Lavale

Here I was in front of the SIBM building on Senapati Bapat Road at 11:30 AM on the 6th of June 2008 to begin my MBA journey. Excited, enthusiastic, determined, and courageous on one hand and nervous, afraid, cautious on the other. This was my state of mind that day. A minibus took us all the way to the SIBM Lavale Campus which I had been hearing about from so many days. This ‘Lavale’ thing was such an enigma and the anxiety to know what,how, why about it was so much in my fellow batch mates as well as our seniors that the discussions about it had taken to crazy proportions on the OnBoard SIBM 2008-2010 community on Orkut.

The wait was finally over. Over a picturesque surroundings near lavale gaon, about 20 Kms from Pune city lies the beautiful Symbiosis Knowledge Village. It hosts SIBM as well as two other colleges of the Symbiosis society. We completed the hostel joining formalities and were shown our hostel rooms. The boys hostel here is situated at a cliff. Magnificent hills and cool breeze greats you in front of your hostel rooms.

Most of the things here are ‘Work in Progress’! Not to be misunderstood, basic amenities are mostly taken care of and everything else should be in place soon. After all it’s a 300 Acre campus and ours is the first residential batch of SIBM, so some teething problems are expected.
The Hostel rooms are well made. I got a room with twin accommodation. The rooms have a bed with a mattress and pillow, a cupboard, a table with drawers and a chair, each for both the occupants. Moreover, it has an attached restroom with solar powered hot water system, albeit it isn’t working currently, thanks to the weather! They have even provided us with buckets, soap cases and ‘Good Knight’ machines !

The weather here has been rainy for most of last week. I rarely had a chance to greet the Sun! It’s cool, sometimes cold and it’s wet. The footpaths are well made with concrete blocks, lots of saplings can be seen and I can imagine how it will all look some years later when the trees are full grown.

The academic block is around 1 Km from the hostel and makes a good walk. The mess lies in between and serves vegetarian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yes, I mean vegetarian. Not even eggs for the time being. Once the canteen committee is formed, I hope things would change for the better for us and for the worst for the lavale chickens :)

The academic block has a beautiful building with lots of classrooms, computer labs, large assembly halls, administration and faculty areas and a central library. The library and the hostels are also shared by the SITM and SIMC guys but they haven’t joined as yet. The academic area is Wi-Fi enabled, so you can take along your laptops anywhere here to get wireless intranet & Internet connectivity. Hostel rooms have wired network connections. Mobile connectivity is a big problem. Some rooms do get mobile network in their windows, I am not even that much fortunate. Mobile goes not of the network when inside the room, and mobiles are banned in the academic block. What that means is I can call everybody when I want, but somebody calling me as to be really lucky (I mean I have to be really lucky :) ) to get the call. I don’t know how I will cope up with this!

Connectivity to Pune city is nil with no sign of public transport and with we too not allowed to have private vehicles, its up to the college to provide it. SIBM has arranged daily bus service to the city which should suffice at the moment. We need to understand that it will take time for things to settle and systems to get matured. We all need to make it happen!