Living the “Mumbai life”, where you get busy from the word go, we crave for a relief of even an hour. Maybe that’s the reason weekend getaways are so popular with us. In fact, I think this is true for every metropolitan city. So, a month ago, Zoomcar and Icy Tales along with the amazing Saffronstays, decided to do a little collaboration where they gave me the most beautiful two-day getaway ever, Lavasa.
After a month of waiting anxiously for our exams to end, deciding upon and ditching places to go to, and some more waiting I finally found something alluring. The awesome food blogger group The Hungry Duo, a car freak and I, a writer, picked the Mahindra XUV500 from the airport and geared upon our journey to 188, Hill Street, Lavasa.
About the Car
It was our first time driving an XUV (for obvious reasons), and the car is a beast and a luxurious beast at that! The road to our villa was pretty steep but this car was so smooth we didn’t feel a thing. And let’s face it, we’ve all had a “reverse” moment at least once in our lives. I’ve had many, but this car’s reverse sensors helped me a lot. However I loved this car greatly for two particular reasons,
- We folded the big wide middle seats to play cards.
- The dashboard lit up when it went through a tunnel. Ah! The simple joys.
Now it’s hard for us to go back to driving our normal everyday cars. And I still regret the moment I doubted the people at Zoomcar and asked for a different one because we thought this one was too big for us.
The roads
The beauty of the roads just captures you and for a moment, we all thought that we would go on driving, not wanting to reach anywhere. We were pretty sure nothing in Lavasa could beat the trees, or the red soil or the huge dam. But then, it happened.
We paid the Rs. 100/- fare and entered the gates of Lavasa and then, we stopped. What else do you expect from a hill station? The view. Ah! The view of the whole Yellow and Red city was right there in front of us, and there are literally things one cannot describe in words. It was that. At 2 in the afternoon.
So, after following all the instructions given to us by our lovely people at Saffronstays (did I tell you that they texted us the route of the whole journey?), we reached the villa in our “Make Way for Noddy” like town. What do I say? Look!
And now, about where we stayed…
This house was a dream. And we lived in that for a whole day. In fact, the first thing we all did after coming back to our tiny apartments in the city was to pressurize out parents into buying one of those villas (Not kidding).
The villa has everything. With a view of the lake, a garden, two floors, four full-size bedrooms, huge french windows, and a rocking chair, it is a readers’ delight and literally a place to relax. Except that we didn’t “relax”, because Saffronstays had stacked board games for us. We’re a competitive lot.
Since we were already late after exploring that way-too-big-for-Mumbaikars kind of house, we realized that almost everything at Lavasa closes at 6 p.m. So, we roamed around the lake, soaked in the beauty of the spotless clean town with a town hall. The roads, the lake, the weather, and the whole environment was so picturesque that even the worst photographer among us all, was clicking good pictures (not me).
With the slightly chilly breeze and a prayer for rains, we left for our villa again to play twisters. And after that, we went outside to face the pleasant cold weather that just wouldn’t let the showers happen. We did not have a clear starry sky because it was covered with clouds. But we had was the beautiful moon and fireflies for our companions. So many of them. But, unlike they show in the movies, you cannot catch those things. You just can’t.
When you come from a city that has traffic, blazing horns, trains, and everything, you never realize the worth of silence but it was the atmosphere, the villa, the night that made us appreciate it so much. Still, the night has to end and we all took our leave to wake up early in the morning for our nature trail.
The beautiful Lavasa
Greeted by a dewy, clear sky morning, our hope of rain had weakened, but was not lost. We went on for our nature trail, and found beetles, lady bugs, plants we had no idea about, and the constant buzzing of bees that makes your heartbeat drop. But, they had butterflies and an artificial waterfall and a swing so that which was quite a lot for us.
After that, we decided to walk again on the promenade until we spotted some kayaks. Ditching the idea and comfort of our old fashioned paddle boat, we decided to do some kayaking. And who said thin, row style fragile boats can stop you from shenanigans?
But, the trip had to end as we all had to get back to our city by that night. So, after our kayaking, a bit of arcade activities, roaming around, and lunch, we decided to bid Lavasa a goodbye. It was hard, especially when we had to go back the same way we came. Looking at the city from the top, the buildings literally looked like they were little toys. And we just didn’t want to leave.
Nature brought us to Lavasa and it took us away from it too, silently, serenely. The rains did not happen, and after reaching Mumbai we realized that we didn’t even need them. The breeze was enough. When you live in a city that believes in running, it’s nice to take a car, run away, and then stop. Especially at the villas, because they’re really pretty.
*cries in the corner of my tiny apartment*
*cries more after driving my little car*
Thank you, Zoomcar and Saffronstays.