Our bus in Pune
On the way to Pune, we made one stop; everyone went to eat, and we ate bananas, as the food seemed suspicious to us.
We arrived in Pune only at 3 p.m. (and the bus left at 10 a.m.). Pune is a very large, noisy city. We jumped off the bus not far from the railway station, read that there was a bus stop nearby from which buses to Mahabaleshwar depart. And that was indeed the case. We found the bus station; the bus we needed was leaving in half an hour. There was time to grab a bite at a little restaurant right at the station.
We hadn’t even left Pune yet when our bus got a flat tire. So we went to a bus tire shop. It took about half an hour to change the tire, and the time was edging toward sunset.
Mahabaleshwar is 100 km away, but we got there only by 9 p.m. It’s so strange — we spent the whole day traveling 300 km!
As we approached Mahabaleshwar, the air began to smell different. Of pine trees and freshness. Apparently, we had finally entered the mountains; by then it was completely dark and nothing could be seen from the window.
As soon as we got off the bus, a crowd of Indians rushed toward us, competing to offer rooms. We quickly retreated from the bus station; a couple of them tried to run after us, but we sped up our pace so briskly that they apparently got scared.
Luckily, the town is very small and the bus station is conveniently located right in the center. It’s at most a 10-minute walk to our hotel. Правда, we couldn’t find it ourselves (there were no signs or anything), but some Indian helped us and led us to the hotel, probably hoping to get a commission for bringing supposed customers, but our room had already been paid for and booked…
The hotel turned out not only to be rather sketchy, but they also put us on the first floor — the hotel owner said all the rooms on the second floor were occupied and promised to move us upstairs tomorrow. There was nothing to do; late at night it’s hard to argue.
So we checked in and went to dinner. We knew in advance, of course, that Mahabaleshwar is a very touristy little town. That was also clear from hotel prices — there were simply no cheap options here. Restaurant prices were also about one and a half times higher than in the rest of India. Mahabaleshwar is a town of two main streets; there are many people here, but no white tourists. We decided it was the Indian version of Yalta. A kind of resort town for wealthy Indians, only instead of the sea they have mountains… I, of course, don’t like arriving in new cities at night because at night it’s hard to understand or see much. So we tried not to jump to conclusions until morning.
We were fed quite well; to start with, we ordered one thali for two. This dish includes rice, which they supposedly forgot about, and when we reminded them, they were very apologetic and brought a whole plate of delicious rice. So we even got full.