Smiley Saturdays - 4 (Monsoon Calling)

With each passing week, the itch of a good ride is getting more severe. Alas, when the Mumbai Monsoon is at its best, I have nowhere to go! Blame it to poor-lazy me’being, no partner to ride with or whatever, truth is that I’m dying for a good rain-ride!

So when there are no rides, there’s no ride-tale either. Smiles appear to be the only savior for my blog-writing. But, difficult is to accept the fact that the wish to Click a new Smile and post it on Saturday is still to realize; all I’m able to post are the smile from my database.

Today, I’m posting my roommates smile that I clicked at Malshej Ghat last year. It was done on Canon Powesrshot A3100 without flash and of course on Auto settings.

My roommate, a naturally artificial pose at Malshej

As the week is ending, I'm waiting for the next to bring some surprise ride....surprises are what I really love! Be it a ride, or a Smile! :)

Trekking Ghansoli Gawli Dev (Parsik) Hill

It’s been there for geological ages, we have been looking at it for last about 4years and I have been planning to trek it since a long time. Finally, few weeks back, we trekked the Ghansoli Hill.

Ghansoli Hill is located at the eastern boundary of Ghansoli town, behind our office complex at RCP. The hill or better hillock is a part of small range that separates Kalyan and Navi Mumbai towns. A search on Google Map returns with a name Parsik Hill for it, though there is one more rather famous Parsik Hill in Navi Mumbai. We also found a NewsArticle, that talks about NMMC plans to develop Nature Awareness Centre at this hills and calls it Gawli Dev Hill. Here, we would be calling it Ghansoli Hill. I asked my colleague about it and he readily agreed. The very next Sunday we did it with another friend. We weren't aware of the route. All we knew is that a Central Road runs along the western edge of the hill and can be reached through the Vashi-Mhape road. We later found that there’s a Bus…

A Day at Global Vipassana Pagoda (A Photo Story)

What I like most about the cities we live in is the places we generally not aware about. Like the case of one of its own kind Butterfly Park of Thane, which is at stone throw distance from my place and I came to knew about it a few months back only. Then there is this Pagoda – another one of its own kind – world renowned and still not known to many city dwellers. We visited this place to take pictures and let me confirm it, we were stoned by the colors and the mystical sky (check out the Photo Story at the bottom of the post)
Located at Northern most corner of the Megacity of Mumbai, across the Gorai creek, Global Vipassana Pagoda is a meditation hall built out of gratitude to the Buddha, his teaching and the community of monks practicing his teaching (Wikipedia). The Pagoda is also known for being built on the world's largest stone dome without any supporting pillars, at height of ~29 metres and external diameter 94.82-97.46 m. It is, thus, twice the size of the Gol Gumbaz Dome in…

Trekking Naneghat in Monsoon

Naneghat has been like an annual pilgrimage for me. So, when I planned for the ride and trek this year, I was sure I wouldn’t be blogging about it. But the way it turned out to be – I couldn’t resist jotting it down and share. On just a few days’ notice three Decide&RideTM Bullet guys agreed for the ride and trek along with a colleague and my roommate. Plan was simple - Ride/ Food/ Trek/ Food/ Trek down/ Food/ Ride back. Itinerary included Heavy to moderate Rain and Fatigue with Directions, misdirection, lot of fresh pahadi water, scenery and slips. We started it at around 6 AM morning. It was raining since last evening, and when we started it was still raining. Josh took Ashutosh as pillion and Abhishek hoped on to my pillion seat, Sandy was to join us at Kalyan naka with Monty – who found his bull not ready for ride and had to cancel it (though he rushed and did power-trek to meet us at top later). Anyways, it was still raining when we met at Kalyan naka and left for Naneghat.
Nane…

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