Namaste Everyone,
It's been a hot minute since our last blog de blog blog post. We’ve been to hill stations, cities, both gotten flu bugs to deal with, and moved to our next exploration area, Goa, since our last update. Here’s a little update of our experience at the Hill Station of Lonavala.
Harking back a fortnight ago, a long time friend of Andrew’s, June and her husband Alan, very kindly invited us to stay a few nights at the hill station spot of Lonavala – located in between Pune and Mumbai.
We jumped on a train from Pune and were picked up at the train station by June and driven to the very comfortable accommodation aptly named “Cestlavie” where we spent two nights, along with a visiting friend of the families from Germany, Cordelia.
We were treated to lunch each day around the corner at their home, where I quickly fell in love with Dahl. And Paneer Palak (spinach). We were welcomed by June and her mother-in-law “Aunty”, son and daughter to eat with them, and we had good conversation about India, Germany, and New Zealand and they were very patient and accommodating of a myriad of questions we had during our time there.
We were taken on a tour through Malavi to the Bhaje Buddhist Caves dating back to the 2nd century BC and included a carved chaitya hall and carved bowls to honour monks that had passed – the bigger the size of the bowl, the more knowledge they had imparted.
We stopped in for chai tea on the way back to Lonavala, when following a quite change of threads, we were taken on a winding drive up a hill for 30 minutes and over the top to Alan’s Restaurant – MakaBawa Café & Bar. We were treated to an amazing spread of Goan and Parsi food including fish, prawns and mutton cooked to absolute perfection with such amazing flavours. We fully forgot to take any photos before the feast was all entirely gone.
At Cestlavie, I slept for the first time under a mosquito net, which was quite a novelty, and there was also a little green tree frog hanging out on the door of the wash room which understandably, was a huge hit for me. We also had some dogs to keep us company around the property, and had lots of smooch pats with Thunder, the rottweiler cross, who was actually made of gooey caramel on the inside.
The following day, we took the opportunity to have a good wander around Lonavala, partake of coffee at the LoVa Café, and sit and breathe for a while at Ryewood Park.
Lonavala is particularly popular during the monsoon season, when the place is infiltrated by persons from Pune and Mumbai to come and … stand in the monsoon rains. Because as a hill station, Lonavala has far more rain than in the cities. Andrew and my experience was also that its lovely and quiet, and there is not a lot of smog about either comparative to Pune or Mumbai.
We were again treated to lunch at June’s home, followed by an afternoon of reading in the company of Thunder & Salsa (a sweet lady with a very kind face) the Dogs before wandering back to June’s for dinner spotting different birds, lizards and squirrels along the way.
We learnt on our last evening that for dinner one is not really supposed to have rice AND chapati (although both were on offer for another feast of gorgeous homemade meals) – bread is for night time only and rice during the day. And my favourite, dahl was served again. It will feature a lot in proceeding weeks!
As did meeting Chikki, which June and family kindly provided for taste testing. Of which we of course obliged. Chikki is an Indian sweet that is made with jaggery, sugar and then a flavouring – my 2 newly found favourites are Peanut Chikki (much like peanut brittle) and Coconut Chikki, which is basically a less sweet version of coconut ice if you imagine it thinner and uncoloured. Moreish. And yum.
We expressed our sincere thanks for the wonderful experience and boarded the train back to our apartment in Pune. During the train trip back Andrew started dissolving into sneezes, and that started the downhill slope of cold coping for the next few days. First him, and then he generously shared with me 3 days later.
We’d like to say a very, very special thank you to June and the whole whanau for accommodating and sharing your home and daily life with us, providing language translation assistance for such things as buying postage stamps, and for kindly showing us the fabulous sites and sounds around Lonavala – we so appreciated your time and generosity in hosting us. Thank you.
.... And I also tried not to have a nervous breakdown at the HSEQ considerations of the local lines company:
This featured blog entry was written by nzfrankiebeans from the blog A Life Less Ordinary.
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