htech inc. Blog

Today I have visited Besda cave, which is more a Temple carved out of mountain rock. After reading about it on the Internet I presumed it would we bigger, but it was rather small. We had to travel a great distance in order to get there and I was slightly disappointed. Here you’ll see the few pictures I have taken. Also some of the view.

After this I went to a village that is between Pune and Mumbai, Lonoavale, a stopping point for the travelers. Had lunch there in a small restaurant without any tourists, well except me of course. Had a good lunch and afterwards travelled up the hills that are surrounding it. Santosh had heard that there was a nice viewpoint up there and he was again right. It was magnificent, in more ways than one.

I have been in India now for more than one and a halve month. It has brought a lot of change in me and I’m more at peace than ever have been before. It has been a wonderful experience and I still have some time to go. When I arrived it was just for 3 and a half months and I thought that it was more than enough. I never expected that I would have such a good time here and hope I will get more time in India.

The pattern of live that I had here in India has now also changed and I’m sorry for all my loyal readers that I will not have the time to be so active as have been in the first period. I will still write from time to time, but there are currently other things occupying my life that are more important to me.

I was invited to go to the beach this weekend, but unfortunately that was canceled. And since I had made no other plans for this weekend, I didn’t do anything interesting at all. I did a little swimming in the pool, some book reading and a lot of relaxation. This means that I have no special sights to show for this week.

Don’t be discouraged because there are still places for me to visit I the 2 months that are ahead and as a regular reader you will find all the stories here on my blog.

This Saturday I started the day way tooearly after the party of last night. I had too much to drink last night and energy was low. Somehow I was able to visit 4 landmarks again.

Santosh said we should go to a fort that is about 40km from Pune and so we did. On the way we passed a temple and of course I had to take a look. It wasn’t as big as previous ones.

After this we drove on to Purandher fort, the primary target. Whilst driving I already saw a big mountain again and was afraid that we had a long clime ahead. Fortunately the road was not closed and a lot of the climbing was done by car. The road was in a bad sate but the 4 wheel drive had no difficulty driving us near the top. After that it was only 15 minutes of climbing to reach the fort.

Here you see the swirling road we drove on

As with the previous fort we had a magnificent view, the pictures don’t do it justice. The main difference was that there were no big cities visible, mainly agricultural fields. The fort was in a bad shape, covered by a lot of plant life. At the highest point there was a Temple which was still in good shape.

Images of the view

Images of the fort (what’s left of it)

An image of the temple

On the way back we stopped at the biggest temple of the region that we were in. This is the Balagi Temple, not to confuse with the Bellagio (that is something totally different). It was a really well maintained temple and people were standing in line to get in. Unfortunately it is not allowed to take pictures from the inside, so I took some from the outside. It was a strange experience since I’m not a believer in any faith and now was participating in a religious ceremony.

The last thing I visited was Jadahav Gadh fort build in 1710 and restored in 2007 in order to make a Hotel of it. They tried to have the least impact possible on the original structure and I think they did a nice job. We first had lunch because consumption was compulsory, which was a good idea since I had not eaten for 7 hours. After lunch there was a tour guide to show us around the fort that gave us more info than I could ever remember. There was also a museum with again a tour guide and he had even more to tell then the nice lady that showed us around the fort. To be honest it was at some times quite boring. By the time we left the museum it was already 6 o’clock and we still had a 45 minute drive to go. After these last two days I was more than happy that Sunday was already scheduled as a day of rest.

Pictures of the fort (in the museum there were no pictures allowed)

It’s the end of the week again and today is a special day for Wouter, it is his birthday. Some members of his team started the celebration early by going to his apartment and cover his face with pie. It seems that this is a tradition in India. In the office there was also pie at lunch and of course happy birthday was sung.

After work a group of the office including me and the birthday boy went to celebrate in the LeatherLounge. My first thought was a kinky bar, but that was absolutely not the case. The name refers to the seats which are all leather. It was a combination of a lounge with a dance floor. The music was what I would associate more with a disco then a lounge. The lounge closes at 12 o’clock and then we went to the restaurant for some food. It was a exhausting, but a good day. Had a lot of fun.