Matheran, the pedestrian hill-station with red earth. The last time I was in Matheran I was around 16 years old I think. So it was after 20 years that
The first thing I have to say is that I was positively thrilled at the ease with which I got there. I left home (in Ahmedabad) at 6 am, took the flight to Bombay, a cab from the airport to Dadar station, the local train towards Karjat and got down at Neral, then a shared taxi from the Neral railway station up to Matheran, and finally after a sweaty 45-minute walk with my rucksack (filled with some books... pant pant...) I reached the guest-house just after noon. In fact, it would be just as cool going by train – taking an overnight train from Ahmedabad to Bombay that stops at Dadar – that way I can have a smaller ecological footprint and even the cab from the airport to Dadar station can be avoided.
The monsoons were in full swing which was nice. The verandah at Rugby Hotel, and later the verandah at what used to be called Barr House – now a Neemrana property called “Verandah in the Forest” - were absolutely lovely places to lounge about, both to watch the rain and mist and to read and work on my writing.
pages curling from the intense moisture in the air
rugby hotel verandah
When the rain stopped and I felt the need to stretch my limbs, I went for a walk through the mist. The mist cleared during only one of my walks to give me a lovely view of the valley below and the hills beyond. I reached this viewing spot quite unexpectedly. I'd noticed a narrow curving path between the hedges and trees during one of my walks and I had to take it. Emerged in a clearing at the edge of a cliff. The mist was less thick and there I stood, looking at the sunlight breaking through the clouds to stream down on to a small hillock across the valley. There was not a soul in sight anywhere. Only a group of youngsters, in silhoutte, in the distance on an adjoining hill. I went back the next day with my camera, only to find that I could not see anything beyond 10 metres. In a way that was good – the experience of the previous day could not have been repeated in any case. And some moments are best not captured on camera, for then they are more free to become a lovely memory in the recesses of the mind.
watchman and his umbrella, at rugby hotel
companion on one of my walks (don't know why this dog took to me; they never do usually. he refused though to look at the camera)
mist curling around the trees
I was enchanted with the ruined colonial-era bungalows scattered all over the place, and which looked all the more eerie in the mist. Hill-stations were made by the British as places of refuge from what they felt were the dusty plains, places where they could recover from the illnesses they seemed to contract in the plains. Their elite “native” collaborators took to the hill-stations too, perhaps more so near Bombay with its particular history of British-era “native” elites. I took my camera with me only once during these walks, when I went specifically to find a sanitorium that had been built during the colonial period, now in ruins and covered with moss and undergrowth.
gate of a colonial-era bungalow
sanitorium photos below:
And to end this blog-post with something entirely of the present:
one, Shiv Sena's presence in Matheran.
and two, "hope hall hotel since 1875"
which has certainly been true to its word and given Matheran "a touch of the new"
