Heaven on Earth

They say, "marriages are fixed in heaven". Well.. don't know about that, but I can surely say "marriage gave an opportunity to see the heaven on earth!". Me along with my friends had to attend a wedding in Kolhapur. Kolhapur is situated at a distance of 233 Kms from Pune. Though, we knew about the wedding details well before the wedding day, we hadn't confirmed our departure yet as it was a weekday. Getting leaves from office has become so difficult that we had to fell mock ill and bunk the office. We started our journey to Kolhapur at 7.15 a.m. One of our friend and the owner of the car was driving the car. He drove it through Katraj Tunnel and then moved it to NH-4 - the plain highway! One of the good thing about this highway is it has got 2 wide lanes to and fro, each of them is split into 2 other wider lanes. So in all it was an easy ride and not so tiring! We had our breakfast at Shirval, a place on the way and continued the journey, listening to Pink Floyd. Finally we reached Kolhapur at around 11.30 a.m. Fortunately the marriage hall was very near to the entry point of Kolhapur. We attended the marriage and had lunch! The clock was pointing at 1.30 p.m. and we thought it was the time to leave the hall. But what’s next? This was the time, one of us suggested to visit GaganBawda which is around 50Kms away from Kolhapur towards Kokan region.

That’s it! It was then and there decided that we would go and visit the mountain "Gagan Bawda". Our friend again took the charge of the steering and we started heading towards the heaven like place on earth. The road was not so plain initially. The Indigo's wheels were bouncing back on the road and making noise. It continued till we got onto a nice and plain road to GaganBawda. I can still remember the beauty of the road. It was so nice, that I couldn't get my eyes off it. The turns were looking insuperable. The trees on both sides of the road were joining their braches with the one in front of them to create shadows for the passersby. wait.. m I missing something here?? Yes .. the most amazing thing out there - the fog! It would not be overhyped if I call that place anything greater than heaven. It was like, leave the destination and just enjoy the journey. We were driving on the ghat and reached the top of the ghat.

From there, we were coming down from the top of the ghat towards Kokan region. We were actually driving through the clouds. Probably, the heavenly experience we had just then, was less, that we reached an another amazing point on the ghat. Our friend who was driving the car, could see things at some metres away. We decided to take a halt at that point itself. We got down from the car, and what we could see in front was only clouds, clouds and more clouds. It had rained just before, as the road was wet. The road has a complete 180 degree turn with a high ramp down. We could only guess, that besides us is a valley spread on the three sides of the ghat. Soon it was realized that rainy season is the best season for any outing. Orwise, how can we get to see and feel the clouds, touch them . We clicked some nice snaps at that point, like it was mandatory for us to show the close distance between the clouds and us. But they surely made the snaps to look more beautiful than ever.

Spending half an hour in the beautiful heaven on earth, we started the return journey. Eyes were again looking at the marvelous curves of the road and mind was stuck back to the U-turn we left some time ago. Clouds were still accompanying us in the journey. To feel them more, we decided to get down and have a cup of tea. After tea break, we continued the return journey. Probably our departure was not so impressive, so the clouds started disappearing slowly and it was getting dark. I bided a warm goodbye to them in my heart. Pink Floyd was at its best again. We were Coming back to Life, after knocking on Heaven's door!!!