Memories - IV

Matheran 2012 - Alexander Point

The recent most Matheran trip was planned by Viraj and Anand and all the credit goes to them. As Aditya and Anand had some work in the morning, they were going to join us in the evening. Like earlier trips, this also started with a confusion. When we boarded the train at CST, we told our friend who was going to join us at Dadar that we were in the compartment after the last First class compartment. But we were partially wrong. The compartment was having 2 sections, one First class and another Second class. We were in the second class part of it. Due to this, our friend got into the next compartment and then had rush into our compartment at Kurla. Fortunately, everything went well afterwards, as we reached the Matheran gate by 9.15AM. From there on we had to walk till Matheran market which took us almost an hour. We had taken a different route in earlier trips, but due to rain and the mud we had to walk parallel to the tracks, till we reached the market area. 

After breakfast, we headed to the Alexander Point. There was an amazing view of the scenery at this point. There was Valley crossing from Alexander Point to Rambaugh Point which was around 1300 ft long. I decided to do the Valley crossing. It was one of the best experience in my life. Midway during the journey I turned in the opposite direction which can be really scary. I was silent throughout my journey, and even my friends asked me if I was scared. When I affirmed the same and asked why they thought so, they replied that everyone else seemed to be screaming their lungs out but I was very quiet. I am yet to get my Valley crossing video, so no uploads yet.

Matheran 2012- Lord's Point

In the evening, Aditya along with Anand and Nilesh joined us for dinner. The journey in the dark from market to Matheran gate was completely unusual experience for Viraj and myself. For most of the journey I was simply following Viraj's footsteps. During the night, there was again a game of "Badam Saat" which lasted till 2AM. Like Mahabaleshwar, not much late night discussions happened.

After visiting Charlotte Lake and Lord Point in the morning, we decided take rest in the afternoon. As I was supposed to have my Convocation rehearsals the next day, I was going to return to Mumbai alone in the evening. Before I left, we decided to play a game of "Mendhi Coat" (Remember this?). The team were - Nilesh, Babli and myself vs Viraj, Apu and Susmit's Mom. We won one round and for most time we kept the lead. Afterwards, when Susmit's Mom distributed the cards for the first and only time, we lost the game and we kept having bad games from there onwards. Aditya replaced Apu after a while and won a game for them in his first attempt. As I had to leave on time to catch 6.47PM local from Neral, we decided to end game. We were lagging by 1 game. During the so-called final game we were close to winning but in the last hand of the game Aditya managed to stave off our attempts. I was pretty disappointed and was about to leave, when Aditya (God, himself) asked to calm down and play one game. Can you refuse something when the God asks you to do it? I sat for one more game and what you know, we won it even though Viraj's team started off with key cards. I had hardly played such games, since my summer holidays at our old Chawl. I so desperately wanted to leave on a high note, that I could feel my heart beat rising as each progressed. Thank "God" for asking me to wait for one more game :)