Here is our story of a little fort called Lohegad and Tricia's first foray into driving on Indian freeways. This story is dedicated to a person called Rohit, who I met in Hyderabad. He reads my blogs on a regular basis. Rock on Rohit!

Sunday morning (22nd August 2004) we woke early at 6am and waited at home for Tricia's colleagues, Afshan and Ashu to show up. I made my customary South American coffee, which can also double as paint remover. After a few cups we all headed downstairs. The day looked pretty decent.

Tricia decided to drive... SCREECH! Drive? What the? what is this doing here? Well, we had no want to be wet all day. So we decided to drive. So Tricia drove the first stretch. Left at 7:30am.

We got to Lonavla in under 2 hours. The expressway was a little blocked since certain sections were using the southbound lane for traffic going both ways, due to landslides. Had breakfast and tea. The coffee made all of desperate to use the facilities, which we did with a lot of relief.

We parked our car at the village and a 16 year old school boy offered to be our guide. Initially I wasn't too interested, but he was really persistent, we took him (Vikas) along. A friend of his decided to be our car guard.

We started at about 11am. It was drizzling quite lightly. There were the usual gaothis running around in shiv sena singlets. Was amusing. There was also the usual assortment of aunties in salwar kameezes in the waterfall, while husbands stood around smoking.

We started climbing and the rain started coming down. Harder and harder. Soon all of us were drenched. After climbing for about 20 minutes, Afshan was all ready to give up. But she stuck to her guns. The guide boy took us through some dubious shortcuts. These were very vertical muddy uphill trails.

After about an hour of climbing we got to the Lohegad village. We stopped for a coke and a couple of dogs became our friends. We moved on to get to the top of the fort.

The steps were pretty steep. Considering the steps were for soldiers on horses, it made sense. But it was tough going with the pouring rain. The steps were slippery. We had to be really careful. The rain was really coming in quite hard.

We got to the top and walked around for a bit. Afshan asked us why exactly we walked up the fort through blinding rain. My answer was, "Because we can!" :-)

The walk down was reasonably uneventful and mostly dry till we were 10 minutes from the end and then the skies opened up again. Well, all of us dry clothes in the car except Ashu. I promised him that I would keep the aircon, on full blast. On the way back we had a few plates of Bhurji-Pau, scrambled eggs and bread, with some tea. Fabulous!

We changed at a villager's home, and hit the highway after a cup of tea in a nice hotel. The going on the expressway was good for about 2 minutes. Then we hit traffic and as always the typical drivers cannot drive in straight lines... very frustrating, no defensive driving here. Due to land slide, we were stuck for about half an hour, but plenty of music and some pasta salad made life easier.

We got back to Bombay by about 9pm, dropped Ashu and Afshan off before Tricia and I headed home, for some well deserved rest. A good sunday.

There is even a massive statue of The Buddha in the middle of Hussainsagar Lake. A few years back, The Buddha tried to vanish from the face of this bleak city (town?) by falling into the smelly polluted lake. But now he has been restored to his former glory, which he faces with stony silence.

I'm certian that there is a some sort of religious groups who set up these worship houses all over the places. Often these are placed very inconviniently on the sidewalk, so we need to step onto the road and face the wrath of irate motorists.

I have also noticed that all over India, Churches are demolished on a regular basis, by calling them illegal structures, without proper permits, but temples and mosques... God forbid. Usually you will see that these shrines have been constructed right next to a line of slums... Hmm, I wonder why?