Matheran at its best !!

We started early morning at 7 am (now thats too early for anybody who prefers not to wake up before 10am on week ends) from Pune, boarded Sahyadri Express, the only train from Pune that stops at Neral Station. We reached Neral station at 10:15 am.

Now the major attraction in Matheran is a 100+ years toy train that takes you from Neral to Matheran, 2 hour journey uphill. Lady luck was probably not on our side that day. We missed the 10:15 am toy train (Thanks to some search results in Google which gave us an outdated time schedule of the toy-train). Toy-train being a major attraction, people had queued many days in advance to get the tickets & the only option left was to buy a FIRST class ticket for a whooping Rs 210/- (v/s Rs 37 for 2nd class). But since this didn't fit in our SST factor (Sundar, Swast, Tickaoo), we decided to take a taxi to Matheran.

Matheran is the only city in the world (after Venice, Italy) which is a vehicle-free zone i.e. No vehicles are allowed inside Matheran. The only options to roam about are - horse rides & human-driven carts. We decided to follow a trail up the hill (remember the SST factor ??). The first thing you notice after arriving in this hill station is the thick green cover of trees embellished with conspicuous red sand. You will also be greeted by monkeys who will follow you along the trail, at times irritating you (I had to sacrifice a slice of cucumber to get relieved from them).

We had our lunch - an ok gujarati thali at a local restaurant & headed to Khandala point. God knows why its called khandala point. I find the original Khandala much better than this.

Other major tourist spots in Matheran are - Louis point, Khandala point, Market & Charlotte lake.

After roaming for some while we headed back to Matheran station & tried our luck at getting the Toy-train tickets. Probably lady luck was in a good mood. We got the tickets without much ado. After getting the tickets we heaved a sigh of relief and were elated to see all our efforts paying off.

Narrow lanes of the train, hilly terrain, steep valleys and brown,dry grass cladded mountains made for the need of a picturesque climax to our Matheran journey.



Matheran