Mumbai

Day 4 – Goa to Mumbai – 28th Aug 2018

That is when we reached Amboli, and we came across a waterfall on the way. Even if we had never heard about such a waterfall on this route, it looked so amazing. There were steps leading all the way up to the waterfall, and the time we visited was picture perfect with water flowing down the steps. 

Me and Insha decided to climb up the stairs. It was a great experience walking in the milky white waterfall. We continued our journey, after spending sometime there. We couldn’t find any proper lunch place, as we were mostly on village roads, and survived on the parathas which we had packed from our stay in Goa. The rolling hills and the roads later on were very scenic, especially as it was monsoon, we could spot a few fields with pink flowers spread across like a carpet. 

The roads were very bad till Ajara in Maharashtra. We got onto the NH48 by 1.30 pm, and the roads became good again. That was almost 5 hours to travel 150kms. It took so long because of bad roads and our frequent halts on the way to click pictures. Once we got onto the National Highway, we gained speed and reached Kohlapur by 2Pm. There were a lot of bikes on the left lane of the road. So the trucks prefer to keep the right lane occupied. This makes overtaking possible only through the left lane. There was Maharashtra police checking after almost all Toll booths. We were stopped once for not wearing seat belts on the passenger side. Fasi had forgotten to wear it after one of our intermediate halts.

Around 4Pm we reached Satara and had tea and snacks at a hotel named Ruchi Sagar. Without wasting much time, we got onto the roads again. NH48 gets crowded as we approach Pune. We reached Pune around 6:15pm and then Panvel by 7:45pm. Though we had a GoPro, we had not made much use of it until we hit the sight of Pune-Mumbai expressway, where we really wanted to capture the roads and tunnels. The road from Goa to Mumbai is surely one of the must drive highways in India.

We reached our stay in Mumbai which was near SantaCruz around 9:30PM. The highway was mostly wet and the car had become a mud pack by the time we reached Mumbai.

The airbnb stay with an elderly couple in Mumbai gave us really a home like feeling, and our daughter was very happy there. We cooked our dinner with the rice we had packed from home, and had a very sound sleep.

Day 5 – Mumbai – 29th August 2018

More than the usual excitements of reaching the farthest place ever in our car, travel to Mumbai had some more specialities. This is the place where I spent my childhood till my first standard, in a small apartment with my parents. I had vague memories of the place and my school, and wanted to show the same to my family now! When this thought initially came up in my mind, I had bigger plans, and I had actually booked flight tickets for my parents to Mumbai for the same date. The feeling of being in the same place with them after several years used to give me so much of excitement, but unfortunately this was the time Kerala was hit so badly by severe floods and the Kochi International airport got closed exactly at the same time, and we had to drop the plan at the last moment.

We woke up to an amazing tea made by our airbnb host. Aunty was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast for us, and we decided to wash our clothes by the time food is ready. The breakfast with aloo parathas, dahi, dhokla and hot tea was so delicious, that it filled our mind and stomach equally. We freshened up soon and went out in search of the school. I was really delighted to tell my childhood stories to Insha and show her the school gate. The security guard talked to us at the front gate, and allowed us to go inside and have a quick look around the ground floor.  Later on I drove around, and managed to spot the apartment complex where we stayed, a really nostalgic feeling.

We were already missing fish fries and Kerala meals, and went in search of a Kerala restaurant. As it was Onam week(Onam is the official state festival of Kerala), we were lucky enough to get a delicious “Ona sadya”, but we ordered a seer fish fry along with that! 😉 Finding a parking to get into this restaurant was a mess, and we ended up using the paid parking on the street paying Rs 450 for 3 hours. Gateway of India was an amazing experience, Insha was so excited to feed the pigeons. We had a quick visit to the Marine drive and drove on the amazing Worli Sea link.

Another awesome experience was that we went to see Sachin Tendulkar’s house. FYI, this is not a tourist place, we went there out of curiosity :D. The curiosity to convince ourselves that our childhood hero also lives in a “house”.  That’s when Fasi had another request, “why not see Shahrukh Khan’s house too!”.. Google Maps took us on several crowded and narrow one ways, and we finally reached no where! We dropped our plan in between, and returned home! While Fasi packed all the clothes which were washed in the morning, I went out walking on the Mumbai markets to get some fruits. The dinner with methi parathas at the airbnb home, which aunty made specially for us, was so yummy, for a peaceful sleep!