DAYS 98 AND 99 – DEOLALI
Day 98 – Sat, 1st Feb 2014
Day 99 – Sun, 2nd Feb 2014
It’s Saturday morning 10:00 am, Khyati and I are all packed up and ready to leave for the last destination of our India trip – Deolali. It’s a small town just south of Nashik. There are few tourist spots here but the main pull for Deolali was that two of my closest friends were driving down from Mumbai to see us and we intended to spend the weekend together.
train route to Deolali
The last train journey was a smooth AC chair car ride. We reach Deolali by 6 pm in the evening and our friends – Parag and Mittal are there to receive us. It’s 6:30 pm and Alisha joins us as well from Mumbai.
Deolali rly stn
We are a full house now, we head to Parag’s home in Deolali and just relax for the evening. The air is a bit chilly in the night as we step out for dinner around 9:30 pm. We didn’t expect to hit waiting times at the restaurant but to our surprise, we were waiting for over half an hour before we were seated at the table. Well, the wait was worth as the food was so good.
Post dinner, we bring in Saturday night by playing cards and board games throughout the night. Don’t know where time flew but it was 5 am by the time we hit the sack.
It’s Sunday morning 11 am, there is an air gliding club in Nashik and it’s open to visitors during the afternoon / early evening. Our friend has made reservations and we were quite excited about this.
We take a stroll around the neighborhood in the morning and visit the Jain temples here. It’s noon, all of us are playing a murder mystery board game – “Cluedo”. The game is quite interesting and gripping. The challenge is to find answers to three questions – who is the murderer, where did the murder happen and what weapon was used to commit the murder? Mittal emerged to be the winner of the game and rightfully so, she had the most experience playing this game.
It’s 2 pm, we head out for some lunch in Nashik town and then plan to go to the Air gliding place. It’s 3:30 pm by the time we get to the main entrance of Air gliding centre, the guard stops our car at the gate and declines us from going further inside. He says that the air gliding centre allows entry to fliers on a first come first serve basis and so far, 3 cars have gone inside. That’s 15 people and there won’t be space for any more people to do air gliding today. We were disappointed on hearing this and kept persuading the guard to let us in. He just won’t budge. Eventually, we gave up on our wish to do air gliding.
It’s 4:30 pm, we head to Sula wines. There is a Vero Moda festival going on there. On our way there, we see a lot of grape vineyards and if possible, we wished to do grape stomping. Unfortunately, due to it being a Sunday and the festival time, there were huge crowds of people and the grape stomping option was ruled out for today.
at Sula wines fest
We gate crash one such vineyard and walk through the farm. We tasted a few grapes but the grapes were sour.
at the grape vineyard
It’s 6 pm and we are on our way to Mumbai. We reach Thane by 8:30 pm and meet few other friends over dinner.
USC friends
It’s 11 pm and we bid goodbye to Thane and take a taxi home.
Hope you enjoyed Day 98 and 99 of our India travel. Tomorrow is Day 100 and the culmination of our fantastic India trip.
Best wishes,
Paras