Wanderlust.

Across the pale parabola of joy

After 2 weekends sitting at home taking care of a chest congestion, it was time to break free and run off away to some place. Wandering took me on to the re-done Pune - Nasik road via Chakan. Its 4 lane until Rajguru-nagar after which it turns 2 lane - It reminded me of the Nagar - Shirdi road which is quite picturesque being in the middle of a canopy of trees. It was quite a drive, though only 128 km from Pune I did it one way in 4 hours thanks to a variety of breaks for some stunning photography . The other reason for such wanderlust is utilizing the 1GB SD card in my Nikon D50 DSLR and attempting some photographs.

Bhimashankar is about 128 km from Pune, take the Pune Nasik highway and turn off near Manchar village. You'll get to the Dimbe dam a large dam on the Bhima river from where its around 35 km. That stretch is among the worst in the whole travel otherwise its quite a beautiful drive along wheat fields, paddy fields and some brick kilns here and there. Since I spent more time in driving I ended up in Bhimashankar around 7:30 p.m.- there's a small temple for a jyotirlinga of Lord Shiva. This is supposed to be among 12 swayambhu Shiva temples in India. However because of its religious significance I didn't want to antagonize anyone by taking photographs of the temple by itself.

Left Bhimashankar around 8:20 p.m. and reached home by around 11 p.m. a drive of around 2:30 min. In the process of driving back I managed to make my car fly by going too far to the left trying to avoid a rampaging Indicab and ended up hitting a stone on the front left wheel ! There was a sound , a minute of flight and then an interesting landing. Its left my wheel in a bit of shambles.

The year seems to be the year of long weekends which will only serve to encourage me on more photographic expeditions around Western Maharashtra - some of the places that I want to visit include Raigad - the capital of Shivaji, Kolhapur to see anything of the wide Krishna river and the Panhala fort , Nasik to see Triambak and the origins of the Godavari . All this in the trusty new WagonR with or without company. !