Salt Restaurant - Balewadi

I visited Salt restaurant in Signet Corner, Balewadi last Tuesday.

Timings and Route: I reached the restaurant at around 8 PM. The restaurant is in Signet Corner just near balewadi phata.

Food: The menu is available here. We started with Tom Kha soup which we liked a lot even though it was a bit spicy for my daughter. We also ordered a Blue Wave mock tail which was a mix of pineapple and lemon juice. We then took Paneer Corn Tikki from starters which was average compared to its price. In the main course, we took Mix Veg Diwani Handi with Naan, Roomali Roti and then plain Rotis. The sabji was a bit oily but overall it was good.


Fees: The total bill came to about INR 870 which I consider a bit on the higher side but we had ordered mock tail, soup, starter, main course and roomali roti too. So this was expected.
Activities: The restaurant has provided a lot of area for children to play.
Overall, it was a nice experience for us.

Alibag-Kashid-Murud

I visited Alibag-Kashid-Murud during this diwali holidays. It is a very nice place to spend a weekend provided you get good booking.

Timings and Route: I started from Pune on 15th at 7:15 AM. I took the route shown here i.e. Pune-Pune Expressway towards Mumbai-Khopoli-Pen-Poinad-Alibag-Kashid-Murud. We reached Alibag at around 11 AM and spent around an hour on the beach. We had our breakfast at Sun Glow Resorts. The food was pretty good but a bit pricey. We left Alibag at around 12:30 PM and reached Murud at 2:30 PM. During our visit, it was bhau bij-tij-chauth so the high tide timing was around 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM. So we reached Alibag at the right time but by the time we reached Murud, it was low tide and we couldn't spend much time on the beach.

Tariffs: The list of tariffs is long and here it goes:

• I had hired a Tata Indigo with a driver for three days. Generally it costs around INR 9 per km with a minimum of 300 KM per day for an Indigo but I bargained that it will not be 900 KM for three days for us (and it really turned out to be just 550 KM trip) so I was able to get for INR 7650 plus INR 100 per night halt for a driver.
• There are a lot of toll collection booths between Pune and Murud. 
  • Mumbai Pune Expressway - INR 126 till lonavla. If you take old mumbai-pune highway, you can reduce this to INR 62. There was no traffic on old mumbai-pune highway in the morning when I went on 15th but the expressway was having a lot of traffic when I returned in the evening on 17th.
  • Alibag - INR 20
  • Poinad - INR 20
  • Murud - INR 15
• I stayed at Sand Piper Resorts. The resort offers three different kinds of rooms, 100% sea view, 70% sea-view and no sea-view. The tariff chart gives you the expenses the hotel charges during normal season but because of Diwali, the rates were hiked by 15%. The rooms were average but were lacking a lot of facilities such as
  • Hot water
  • Intercom
  • One room didn't have working hand-shower in the toilet.
  • The swimming pool wasn't clean. There weren't any transat kept near the pool. There were no air-bed provided to just relax in the pool while reading a book or listening to music.
  The food was average. The staff was quite co-operative and gave us hot water buckets delivered to our bathroom whenever we asked for. I would give a 3 out of 5 to the hotel since it wasn't value for money.

Activities: There were a lot of places to visit. Here is the list:

• There are places along the route to stop and take snaps.
• Murud Beach: The beach is not a white sand beach stretching around 1.75 KM. The local janta calls it a chowpatty. It has boat-ride, horse-ride, and some other activities.
• Janjira Fort: This is a very old fort built around the year 1140 on an island. 
• Kashid Beach: This is a white sand beach stretching around 3 KM. There are some water sports as well as horse ride.
• Birla Temple: This is situated just near Revdanda bridge. The aarti takes place at around 7:15 PM in the evening. Mobile and cameras are not allowed in the temple but women are spared so one can carry cameras in her bag/purse.
• Phansad Wildlife Sanctuary: It is situated between Murud and Kashid and remains open till 6 PM. It requires around 2 hours of walk so plan it either in the morning or just after lunch. We reached there at around 5 PM and no desire to walk for two hours, we skipped the visit.

All in all, it was a trip worth visiting.

Kaas Plateau Bamnoli Sajjangadh

I visited Kaas Plateau, Bamnoli backwaters and Sajjangadh fort yesterday with my family. If you have not visited it even after you are staying in Pune for quite some time with your family and kids, then I would say it is sad.

Timings: I had decided to visit the place with four other families from our housing society but unfortunately nobody showed up so I just hired a cab and went solo. The cab was booked to come at 6:30 in the morning but it reached at 7:15 and then instead of me it picked up somebody else from some other housing society. When I called the driver at 7:45, he dropped the other customer wherever he was and came back to pick me up so finally we left at 8:15. I would suggest you start early so that you can visit Thoseghar waterfall too.

How to reach: I took the route shown here. From chandani chowk, take the highway towards Bangalore and continue till Satara. When you are just leaving Satara, there is a flyover which you have to go underneath and take the right turn towards Kaas. You will actually go through Satara city. Make sure you take proper turn towards Bogda (Tunnel). When you reach Bogda, take right before tunnel towards Kaas and if you want to go to Sajjangadh, go beyond tunnel and then take right.

Parking: The Kaas Pathar is a no-parking zone so you better drop your family there and then go ahead 1-1.5 KM where you are allowed to park your car and then come back.

Tariffs: Satara Forest Department charges INR 10 per person when you enter Kaas. You also have to shell out INR 50 if you carry a camera. The cab I took charged me INR 8 per KM. From my home to Kaas, it is around 150 KM. To go to Sajjangadh, you have to come back to tunnel and then it is 15-20 KM more. So the total trip came to around 400 KM which costed me around INR 3200. The boat-ride in Bamnoli backwaters charge INR 450 for a boat of 6 people.

Food: I had searched for some restaurants/hotels in Satara and found 'Radhika Palace Hotel', 'Rajtara', 'Sagar Deluxe' all of them near Powai naka on the same road. I chose 'Radhika Palace Hotel' and ordered 'Poha', 'Dosa' and tea when we reached Satara at around 10:45. The food was average but the environment wasn't. The hotel stinked a lot and I decided not to come there again for food. In the afternoon at around 3:30 after visiting Kaas, when I came back to Satara, my wife found 'ShivSagar' and she thought most of the restaurants with that name generally offer good food. So we visited it and to our pleasant surprise, it was offering above average quality food. We ordered Hakka Noodles for my daughter and Naan+Roti and Veg Kadhai for ourselves. We finished our part but my daughter didn't take a single bite. So we took the noodles in parcel which my daughter did eat when we reached home at night.

Activities: Once you cross the toll collection booth on NH-4, both sides of the road is filled with bed-sheets of flowers. There were clouds in the sky and some of them were touching and playing with the mountain ranges of Sahyadri in front of our eyes. I had decided to take a nap along the way in the cab but the beauty of nature didn't allow me to blink my eyes.

• Kaas Pathar: When you reach Kaas, the beauty of the nature just astonishes you. The Satara-Kaas road is surrounded by two dams on two sides so when you travel in your car, you will just want to wait at several places and keep taking snaps. Once you reach Kaas, you will see nothing but bed-sheets of flowers on both sides and you will just feel sleeping on them. I felt like I am God Indra who is taking a stroll in the gardens of Heaven with my wife and daughter. The only problem was that it had rained a lot in the morning so most of the ground was wet and I didn't take the risk of spoiling my clothes by taking a nap on the bed-sheets of flowers.
• Bamnoli Backwaters: If you go beyond Kaas, you will reach Bamnoli backwaters where there is Shivajisagar lake and you can take boat-rides.
• Sajjangadh: This is a fort. We reached there at around 5:30 in the evening and it was getting very late and dark so we just reached its entrance and came back.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. Have fun visiting these places.

Company Offsite to Fort Jadhavgadh Hotel

I visited Fort Jadhavgadh Hotel today as part of company engineering offsite. It is a nice place to spend quality time with your friends/family if you just want to relax.

Timings: We started from our company office on Senapati Bapat Road in a Volvo bus at 8 in the morning and reached Fort Jadhavgadh Hotel at 9:30. The fort is obviously on a hill so there were lots of scenery along the way to capture. There were no clouds or rain otherwise it would have been much better.

How to reach: We took the route shown here. I don't know the exact route since I wasn't driving, but I did see the koregaon park-fatima nagar-saswad road combination.

Tariffs: The hotel website mentions charges of around INR 5000 for a night's stay in tent with complimentary breakfast. If you want to go for AP (breakfast + lunch + dinner), it costs INR 7000. Add INR 2000 if you go for a suite. We weren't going to stay overnight and the company only booked a conference room. I don't know the exact charges that the company paid.
Food:  We were served breakfast at 9:30 at the time of arrival, lunch at 2 and snacks at 4:30. All of them were delicious except for a few issues. The tea didn't have much milk, the poha was not cooked properly and in the lunch, the items were either very sweet or very spicy.

Activities: From arrival at 9:30 till 3:30, we were busy discussing the current and future of our company's software products but then we were set free to explore and play in the big ground the hotel has. People divided them among teams playing football, volleyball and cricket and I too tried my hands on cricket after a very long time. The hotel also has a swimming pool at the top but it was close at the time of our visit.
All in all, it is a nice place to visit and spend some quality time.