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    Pick Your Escape Route (Mid-Dday Feb 02, 2012)

    February 11, 2012 - By 

    If you choose to do one trip a month for the whole year, that is 12 short trips in an year. When Mid-day asked us to give us an all-year itinerary in Maharashtra for travel lovers to explore, we were only happy to do so. It was late January and so we came up with a 11 month schedule. Here it goes. The full text February: Koyna Valley (Koyna Nagar) Why should be here: Far away from the maddening crowd. Without the trappings of any hill station. Spend a quite weekend in the MTDC resort or a couple of other…

  • TravelWithacouple Unny Radhakrishnan Bindhu Unny Matheran
    Arts & Culture - Fun - Places

    Of Faith & Creativity – Part II

    May 6, 2010 - By 

    Most of us have grown up with the philosophy of seeing God in everything – in every stone, every tree, every human being, every animal and what not. Roadside temples are not anything new in India. We have earlier written about a tree with a slight resemblance to an elephant’s trunk turning into Ganpathi idol and a street side temple. (Of Faith & Creativity). This is another interesting version. A huge rock in the Matheran hills turning into another massive Ganpathi. Clever use of colours and artistic rendering have converted this huge rock into a divine statue complete with a…

  • Matheran Toy Train, TravelWithacouple
    History - Places

    A Toy Ride. A Joy Ride

    May 3, 2010 - By 

    It’s in the long list for UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. Whether it will get the heritage tag or not, the Matheran Light Railway is a fun ride as the small bogies laboriously climb up and down the hill. So when a friend and Mid-Day reporter decided to do a story on this to-be or not-to-be heritage rail, we decided to tag along. Being a Saturday, the general seats were all taken. So we went First Class, which is an eight-seater cabin with cushioned seats. Though not the fastest way to reach Matheran (meaning ‘wooded head’), a tiny hill station that…

  • TravelWithacouple Unny Bindhu Bordi Ganapathy
    Arts & Culture

    Of Faith & Creativity (the Divine Tree)

    May 3, 2009 - By 

    With countless number of Gods & Goddesses (83 million by someone’s estimates or 830 million?), roadside stones and trees turning to temples is not new in India. There is no rural-urban divide in these phenomena. All that matters is faith. This interesting tree apparently has a mild resemblance to Lord Ganesha’s trunk. It is clear that the clever and creative painting is what brings it live. Nevertheless, the Ganesha tree has already started attracting attention of travellers and is listed in the ‘must-see’ places in and around Bordi. We saw this in the Bordi-Asavali road, about 2 km from the…