An unexpected vacation

A visit to Pune on a sudden burst of unexpected holidays. Well, I once read somewhere that the best things happen to you when you least expect them. I woke up on Sunday morning and found myself with nothing much to look forward to during the week. Monday was a holiday and Tuesday and Wednesday would see most of the lectures cancelled due to the ongoing GD/PI sessions at NMIMS.

I realised then that this was the moment to make the elusive Pune trip happen. I had been looking for this opportunity for a long long time. Knowing fully well that good old friend Saurabh would be as excited about it as I was, I called him up and confirmed that I would be in Pune hat night.

Pune, for me, always stands for unfinished business. A job that has to be completed, a mission which needs to see its logical conclusion. A visit, now, is a great way of directing my thoughts and actions to the goals I have in life. So, I packed my bags and was heading towards Dadar station, less than half an hour after waking up...not a bad job to motivate yourself to do that at 9:30 on a Sunday morning... An hour later I was sitting in bus that would take me to Pune. A Volvo bus has become a synonym of luxury for Intercity travel in our country, more than just a brand that manufactures vehicles that are far more comfortable to travel in then the old Tata and Ashok Leyland buses. Kudos to Volvo for doing that in such a short span of time.Its another matter that the tour operators turn the bus into a local train before heading in the right direction out of the city. My bus operator wasn't any different; a journey to Pune from Dadar on a Sunday afternoon should not take you more than 3 hours.. a journey which we completed in well over 5 hours.

The journey was scenic to say the least. The road winds and curls up to magnificent Western ghats crossing the famous holiday spots of Khandala, Lonavla and Khopoli before heading in to Pune city. The new highway,with its 6 lanes and a speed limit of 80kmph, is a success story crafted by our engineers in record time. 5 years back, travelling to Pune would have been a long ordeal taking up most of your time and energy in the day, but not anymore. The highway makes you wonder how easier road travel in our country would be with roads like these everywhere. Railways would then have more than just the passengers to worry about.

The first thing i noticed in Pune was the stark contrast it exhibits in terms of its demography. The city isn't called the "Oxford of the East" without reason, it seemed. The majority of the population in the city is between the ages of 18 and 30. Students make up the heart and soul of the city. Any marketeer with a target group of undergraduate and postgraduate students better be visible in the city. In case you were wondering where all the young people come from, well they come from each and every part of the country. Be it law, engineering,medicine, commerce, management or even the training of young cadets to become future officers of the Indian defence forces, this city has something for students of all shapes, sizes...and of course disciplines.

The next morning we (Saurabh and I) headed off to Sinhgarh fort to witness a beautiful sunrise. One of the many disadvantages of living in a concrete jungle(also known as a city) is being farthest from the comfort of a clean, pollution free environment where Ecology is maintained the way it ought to be. We started at 4:30(a.m.) from his flat in Viman Nagar armed with a couple of sunglasses and very very sleepy eyes.

The climb took us through an absolutely deserted road which was pitch dark. Our only intraction with living beings was the (pretty frequent) sighting of wild rabbits, which crossed our path. We reached the top well before sunrise