India 2017

Day 16: February 3

Mahabaleshwar

At 8 in the morning the phone rang; it was the hotel owner, asking when we would like breakfast prepared. Very nice, of course, but not at 8 in the morning :) We asked for it to be ready by 10.

For breakfast, there was paratha stuffed with potatoes (the easiest way to imagine it is as a pancake with potatoes, only the potatoes seem to be inside the pancake), and by the way it was very tasty and, surprisingly (hooray!), not spicy. And also a little pot of delicious masala tea. Thank you, sir, I’m even ready to forgive you for that call at 8 in the morning.

Closer to 11, they cleaned the room upstairs and we moved there; it immediately became more cheerful — there was a window overlooking the inner courtyard, it was sunny and much nicer than the room downstairs.

View from our window

We went for a walk. It wasn’t entirely clear what to do in Mahabaleshwar. I had imagined it all completely differently. I had hoped until the very end that we would manage to find a scooter here and ride around the area, looking at the beautiful mountains… But it turned out совсем not like that. Everyone comes here for the beautiful views, but you still have to somehow get to them. Walking here isn’t really a thing; the road is narrow, there are plenty of cars, and there is no pedestrian area at all. There are no paths in the forest either. You have to go by taxi, which we didn’t feel like doing yet. We walked all over town asking everyone we could about a scooter, but no one would rent one out. We decided there must be some mafia in town that forbids renting scooters so that the taxi drivers can make money (and they are very pushy here).

It’s so logical to rent a scooter here! All the viewpoints are not far away, at most 30 kilometers, just get yourself a scooter and go riding around. But, alas, no.

As a result, after several attempts we did manage to buy a ticket at the bus station ticket office (for tomorrow) for a special government bus that takes people around the viewpoints; this bus was created specifically for tourists. So we’ll see how it goes. For now, we just spent the whole day wandering around town. We had a delicious lunch of rice (with chicken!) and soup.

Our lunch — you can’t see it in the photo, but the portion is huge

And we also found a man with a sewing machine and hemmed Volchy’s new trousers (because they were still ripped at the bottom after Volchy pulled the elastic out of them). The Indians, as always, were true to form: the Indian hemmed beige trousers with gray thread... Well, never mind, as Volchy said — they’ll get dirty soon enough anyway.

Waiting while the pants are being hemmed

We bought strawberries. Here they are so beautiful, and by the way they smell just like strawberries should. The strawberries were put into a box. They’re tasty, a little sour, and they’d go great with our sour cream...

Strawberry

In the evening, we bought Indian Tuborg and Budweiser. Beer here is made with rice and colorings, so it’s lousy, and also very expensive. We watched the movie “Captain Fantastic,” a funny film.

Day 16: February 3

Itinerary