No, I am not going to write about how benefitial the Mumbai-Pune Express highway is… Just some glimpses of what I saw on it , and was struck by, while travelling to Mumbai last weekend…How I wish i had a camera mobile that time!!

Highlight #1:

At the beginning of the Highway, there’s a huge board:”DO NOT STOP ON THE EXPRESS WAY” . Right in front of that board, two big cars were parked, and a big congregation of its passengers had gathered and were discussing what seemed to be their khandaani  affairs! How good was that scene!

Highlight #2:

Midway between Mumbai and Pune, they were recolouring the dividing lines on the road. So i guess they had to scrub off the older lines. This was happening simultaneously for a long span. One worker was scrubbing the line, another was sweeping off the scraped color with a broom. And later in the line, I guess the brooms were less, so they did it with branches of neem trees!! What a combination of ancient and modern techniques!! 🙂

 HighLight #3

After Vashi, there are two parallel bridges to be crossed. As my bus passed over one of them, I read this line witten on the other one “Non-Smoking is the bridge to Good Health”. Classy, clear and clever, right!!

Have any of you tried White Water Rafting?? If you havent, then plz plz plz do it, and soon!! Coz seriously folks, it is an absolutely fantastic experience, to those who have a quest for adventure, AND to those who dont, too!!

Let me start from the start. Last Saturday I, alongwith 12 friends, set out to try some white water rafting…. After a picturesque journey(We passed from Mulshi Dam, Tamhini Ghaat, and the view of the lake and the valley was supperb!!) we reached the place Vile, where we met the instructors, who ushered us quickly to the place where we were supposed to begin rafting.(Quickly, because we were only 2 n 1/2 hours late! LOL!).

So quickly we went down to the Kundalika river, got into our life jackets, put on our helmets(the girls got blue ones, and the guys..pink!!) Then we had a quick round of introduction with our instructors, and “if-need-be” saviour life guards, and with quite a few tips in our ears, but only excitement in our heads, we got into the rafts. We were looking like the modern versions of Adivasis(natives), with our funny jackets, helmets, and the oars(the instructors preferred to call them pedals) in our hands. Once in the raft(and the raft in water, ofcourse), we learnt the basic pedaling techniques, and gave each other a high-five with our oars. “Jai Kundalika!!”, we roared, and there!! We were all set to enjoy the totally unexplored territory of white-water rafting!!! 🙂

After pedaling for a while,we came across our first rapid. As instructed, we were supposed to lock our legs firmly into the tubes of the raft, and hold up our oars from water. Most of us did that pretty well, I repeat, MOST of us…. Zapp came the wave…n thud!! Before we even realised it, let alone doing something to stop it, one of our co-rafters got knocked off hte raft and straight into the water! She was confused, we were confused….She held on to the raft, we clutched onto our oars….and there was a general state of pandemonium….Except in the minds of the life guards. One of the life guards rose, gave a tug at the “lucky-girl-in-water”(yeah we all were jealous..we too wanted to experience the fall..heheh) and she was back in the raft again. bubbling with excitement, we continued our journey. We traversed through the many bends, crevices and rapids of the river, with screams, oars, and lots of fun! At places where the rapids were too huge and deep, we were told to get into the rafts, crrouch and hold the rope on the outer surface of the raft tight. Then the raft would enter the rapid, and we would be in it, we water gushing over us!! It was an absolutely amazing experience!!

later when the speed of the water reduced a bit, the life guards allowed us to jump into the water. And weren’t we glad!! We floated, swam, played, held upstream swimming competitions, what not!! after a loooong time in water, the instructors finally coerced us back into the rafts. Then we pedaled our way through singing, cracking jokes, chit-chatting. We also passed from below a smal bridge, where we had to struggle to keep our heads from hitting it, even after crouching hardest!

Then came another twist. We wanted to experience the over-turning of the raft(To give you a small background, the guides were telling us that during monsoons, the current in the river is so strong that rafts just dont shake and bobble, they actually overturn!! Whoa!!!). So we were all made to stand on one edge of the raft, and they pulled some string, and splash!! At the next moment we were all in water, with the raft on our heads, and water down our nose!! Coughing, spluttering, and yet yelling with ecstacy, we popped to the surface of water!! My my!! didn’t we have a time of our life!!!

All happy and content, we began the last lap of our white-water journey, and only to realise, that this was the toughest part of it! The water was very still now, so we actually had to pedal our oars hard to make it move, and the banks were like 500 meters away!! Huffing and puffing, we finally got the raft to the banks….and not only that, we carried it up the mountain!! Phew!! You people should have seen us then!! We were the perfect blend of exhaustion and coontentment! To the core!! Seriously!! 🙂