APSA ReUnion trip to Divyagarh - Lonavala

06/02/2009, 8AM in the morning, five of us reached Pune from Hyderabad to celebrate reunion of our batch ( 2001-5 batch, Andhra Pradesh Students, SVNIT, formerly SVRCET ,Surat.) after four long years. By the time we reached the apartment, folks from Bangalore were eagerly awaiting our arrival. We all have been received with lotta affection and love filled hugs. All of us had quickly gone back to those good old days, when we used to assemble to celebrate birthdays of our dear ones, much excited to eat the ice cream or cake than wishing him on his b'day. we used to generate so much noise, enough to generate few MWs of electricity. Such were the noise levels in that apartment, I'm sure Pichayya would have received the mouthful from his neighbours after we'd left. Many of us, have met earlier in a group of two, three or four, but nothing matches this get-together. All of us had put on few pounds and few of us had healthy family packs :)
11 of us were present (6 others had ditched us) :
Musali (Myself)
DaKota (Sridhar)
Bothu (Hari)
Pichayya (Viswa)
Banda (Raghu)
Pindaal (Krishna Kishore)
Don (Durga)
Half Mind (Kiran)
Mestry (Chandra Sekhar)
Laughing machine (Nag)
Mouli (Mouli, only man who has no nick name)

We must be very much grateful to Pichayya n Nag who have taken care of all the arrangements such as the tempo to travel around and restrooms to fresh up :). We all had breakfast in a nearby restaurant, seated in two tables ordered few plates of Chapathi, Poori and Idly. Gulped few sips of Coffee and Tea. Waited at the apartment about an hour for tempo to arrive. Tempo arrived @ We had several plans on our table, featuring beaches, hill stations & treks, and nailed down "Divyagarh", a very famous beach in Maharashtra, well known for its rock solid shore. Pichayya n Nag have done all the necessary arrangements for stay and food.

V commenced our journey @ 12 in the afternoon and reached the outskirts of pune by 1:30PM. We got down near a Dhaba and had a very heavy lunch, few plates of chicken kebabs, roti-naans and biryani. We reached Divyagarh by 6 in the evening and settled under a roof. We just threw all of our belongings in the rooms and locked the doors. We just sprinted towards the shore, on our way we found a "thela" (kiosk) where aamchi Vada-Paavs were sold by a family (Husband and Wife). We ate several plates of it and resumed to the shore. It was pitch dark out there, and there was no concrete path to reach the shore. We had to pass under the moon's light, no sights of street lamps. It tooks us five to ten minutes to reach the shore. To everyone's surprise, the beach was so calm, no trace of any human beings around, much different to the normal beaches in Goa, or anywhere else you visit. Sand resembles the rock solid floor you have back home, I call it "Sand Bed" than just "Sand". We didn't get into the sea, as Arabian sea is much aggressive during the night.

The place is not very much commercialized, though it cost us dearly for dinner, lunch and breakfast. You won't find any lavish or luxurious hotels around to put up, stay is gonna be in normal houses where they spared couple of their rooms for the tourists and feed them. We just took one of that kind.

After few minutes, everyone had slipped into sleep after tiresome journey through hills. Cold breeze passing through, and full moon looking from top, decent enough to make any sensible human being slip into sleep. As one of us realized after a couple of hours, few layers of water had gone underneath our backs, and soon realized that water advanced its movement by several feet. Though we had kept ourselves at least fify feet distant from the tides an hour ago, we had to leave the place and shift our base to another fifty feet away from there. And this time, we kept track of the advancements by the tides and left the place after fifteen minutes.

Dinner was prepared in a home few metres away from the place we stayed, v had had a quick shower and reached the place. Food was very much homely and less spicy. Gone into bed by 12 in the night after having few cracks at each other. I'd never forget the discussion we had during dinner. I'd not want to name that friend here as he had had a couple of affairs with next door girl and a colleague in his office. He was trying hard to defend himself, nonetheless, "Pindaal" and few others of us had a different perspective altogether. We couldn't come to any conclusion that why was he doing that. He was happy in that relationships, so are we for him. We prayed the Almighty that he would learn his lessons very soon.

07/02/2009, woke up in the morning and had breakfast. We've been charged 20 bucks for a single plate of "Pooha", this is costlier than what we used to have in Surat, and that too of very less quantity. As I said earlier, Food is the biggest problem there, they always seemed to be in a deliberate mood to loot visitors big time. We went into the beach in this sunny morning. I'd take this opportunity to promote this beach big time. I'd visited numerous number of beaches across arabian & bay of bengal coasts, ranging from Goa (Arabian - Covalam, Calangute, Anjana,...), DevBagh (Arabian), Kakinada (Bay of Bengal) and Visakhapatnam (Bay of Bengal), ........ , I rate this beach right on the top of all beaches for various reasons. Water is damn pure out there, tides are not rough, Sand underneath is very much shallow. We jumped into the water and went inside for at least 100m, you wouldn't believe this, the water was still chest high. Any amateur or non-swimmers can blindly get into the sea and have fun, in fact, not many seas offer you such a comfort. We spent, spent and spent hours there, played cricket, football on the shore and dried up on our energy. All the calories we gained in the breakfast were lost. We came out and gulped few coconuts and regained our senses :)

Sprinted back to the huts and freshened up. We set our sights on " Jalzeera Fort" for the day. This fort is pretty famous and 30KMs away from Divyagarh. Fort is situated in the middle of the sea and few hundreds of metres away from the shore. We had to park our tempo in the town and catch a boat to reach Jal Zeera. This fort was constructed hundreds of years ago, during Shivaji's time by some of his counterparts, this was the only fort which shivaji's son couldn't conquer. Boat ride into the sea was pleasant and fort was decent. It was 3PM by the time we returned from that place and all of us were feeling hungry. We had found no decent restaurant around, settled ourselves to eat vada-paav/samosa and killed our hunger. In fact, "Half mind" went on eating spree and ate few tens of Vada-Paavs. I had to pay 500 bucks there in just Vada-Paavs, imagine how much he ate :)

Time had come for "Pindaal" to leave as he had few appointments in Mumbai. We said good bye to him and wished him all the very best. We thoroughly enjoyed his presence. We returned to Divyagarh by 6 in the evening and ordered for non-vegetarian meals. What next ??? We split on our views here, few of us were suggesting a trek and few others wanted to visit "Lonavala". Latter won the battle (Trek would be more tiresome), and former had no other choice, except to obey them. Gone the second day.

08/02/2009, woke up in the morning and left the place without any breakfast @ 6. We were on our way to Lonavala/Khandala. Visited the place by 2 in the afternoon, after tiresome 8 hrs drive, and had our breakfast on our way back. Visited Khandala View point, and had lunch in Lonavala. Not the best of the times to visit this place as there were no rains, and SUN was at his best. We came down to Lonavala and found out a place to rest our butts for that night. It was a government managed resort, situated right at the heart of the town. It didn't cost us much. We had dinner outside and slept for the day.

09/02/2009, returned to Pune to the same apartment where we'd all started a couple of days ago. We thoroughly enjoyed each others presence and shared wonderful time with my old buddies. I met Bhavesh and Ashish during the day and caught a bus in the evening to Hyderabad.