Alibagh Trip

It was a holiday for Holi and my enthusiastic batchmates of PGPM planned for an outing to Alibagh, one of the nearest weekend getaway from Mumbai. After taking suggestions from mumbaites in our batch we decided to take a ferry to Gateway of India towards Alibagh.

As per plan we left Hostel at 6.30 am, took a fast local from Andheri to Churchgate and from took a taxi to Gateway to India. While some of us were standing in the queue, others including me roamed around the gateway of india doing photo sessions. 26/11 events have really changed our mentality. In contrast to my previous visit last year this time I chose to capture the image of Taj Hotel first, not the famous Gateway of India! Surely it was an effect of image getting burnt on my retina due to media coverage.

Ferry travel and Sea Eagles
At 8.30 am the ferry departed from the jetty and we were on the sea waters which were used by terrorist to enter into Mumbai. After 10 minutes of initial journey the ferry was followed by several sea eagles. They used to catch the food items thrown by generous travelers by using their maneuverability skills. Looked like it was a day-to-day activity for sea eagles. The phenomena turned out to be challenging task for me capture by camera. I managed to get a perfect composition after 25 attempts.

After an hour journey we reached Mandwa Jetty, from there we took a tempo to Alibagh. Our first obvious activity was having breakfast at an hotel near bus stand. The menu of the food items turned out to be very amusing. There were about 30-35 variants of masala dosas. After useless brainstorming I just ordered Masala dosa, Krishna and Sivaram ordered Idly Fry and Puri, just to minimize risk by diversifying. But in actual all three were not upto the mark. Then after getting suggestion from Kedar in second round I ordered for Misal Pav, a flagship product in many hotels of Maharastra. Takeaways from the breakfast activity, always have the flagship in an eatout.

Kashid Beach
After breakfast we took a bus to our final destination, Kashid Beach . The plan was to find an accommodation right next to the beach. But against our wishes the surroundings of the beach were deserted, I mean there were no concrete structures. Our accommodation hunting campaign ended after waking a km from the beach. After checking into the lodge we had light snacks and headed towards the beach skipping the lunch. Majority of the boys got into the beach immediately but I chose laze for a while on hammocks in front of one of snacks shop in the beach simultaneously enjoying scenic beauty of the beach.

Later when sunshine crossed its peak I decided to get into the water to enjoy the waves. But the water was hopelessly saline. I just spend an hour in waters and cameback to rest on the hammock. When the time was 5.30 pm, I got ready with my camera to capture sunset at the beach. In between we were regularly having solo-n-group photo session. After the sunset I handed the camera to Balaji and accompanied Puneet for a casual beach jog. It was an amazing experience on a nice, clean beach in dusk time. Later we were back to Lodge in order fresh up and desalt our bodies. Since we had decided to return by 12 midnight bus, we utilised buffer time to have dinner in a relaxed manner and also had ample time to play teen-patti.

Return journey
Just half an hour before the arrival of the bus, Sivaram came up with his theory that we won't be able get seats! As many people will be returning back to Mumbai after Holi vacation. The bus arrived at 12 midnight on dot and Sivaram was bang on with his theory. As the next bus was at 5 am in morning we decided to board the bus without any second thoughts. The bus was so crowded that we didn't had any room to stand. Initial part of the journey for half an hour I just stood on the footboard. Later we got standing at normal positions but no signs of getting seats. We made ourselves mentally and physically prepared to stand entire journey. To keep ourselves awake we engaged in some tit-bit discussion like 'As a manager what's the learning from this' etc. Even when we doze for a while, the jerky ride used to break our minimal sleep.

Finally we were back to Mumbai at 4 am and got down at Dadar. Then we decided to take first local train from Dadar station to Andheri, expected the train to be empty. But in contrast to our wishes the platform was fully crowded with people. We managed to get into one of compartment of the first train and again encountering a standing journey we got down at Andheri. We were back to hostel at 5 am concluding the memorable Alibagh trip.