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I had a short span of 10 days to visit Mumbai and Pune. In this time, I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Mahabaleshwar. After the customary paani puri and bhel puri rounds with friends and family in Mumbai - all of us headed to Pune for some more fun.

Pune had a lot more malls since the last time I remembered it - a lot of road construction projects, and the same crazy traffic. The fun about driving in Pune is that you don't really need to remember which side of the road you need to drive on. A lot of people drive in the opposite direction - leading you to wonder which side of the road you should actually keep to!

I had my fill of mangoes here .... Every meal had mangoes in some way, shape or form. For all my friends who missed eating the 'alphonso' mangoes - I ate your share too! :)

Driving to Mahabaleshwar - a town about 200 km(125 miles) from Pune was a pleasure. This is where you can see the new & improved roads which do cut down your travel time drastically. You do need to pay a fairly steep toll to use these, but they are well worth it.





As soon as we finished the steep climbing drive and entered Mahabaleshwar, it was like someone had turned a switch and a refreshingly cool breeze greeted us.





Compared to 40 degC (100 deg F) temperatures in Pune - MahaB was cool enough to wear a light jacket in the evenings! Trekked around to a few of the sights - one of the pictures here is the "Elephants Head" rock. I was skeptical about this one, but once we got there - I had to agree - it did resemble an elephant's head!

We also trekked to the Pratapgad fort for a taste of history, and after listening to all the stories - I was glad I was born a couple of centuries later!

The 'Sahayadri' range of mountains - presents an extremely picturesque view from this point. These mountains are made of igneous rocks, and every once in a while you can see the colors on them. It would be fun to climb these (of course, I'd need to visit the gym a lot more seriously before I can even consider that!)

Before I knew it - it was time to board the flight back to Chicago. The flight back was interesting only because we flew right over Greenland. This was the largest mass of ice that I had ever seen! With a hope to visit it someday, here's a glimpse ...