Travelogues: Malshej Ghat

First of all a confession, I always thought of Malshej Ghat as some shore of a water body like how we have Ganges Ghats in the North. But not here, in the East, here it is derived from the word ghati or the valley. Ghats are basically the mountain pass like Western or Eastern Ghats.

As the long weekend during Dusshera deserved a short vacation we decided to go to Malshej Ghat, even though this was not the first choice for me. Since the beginning of my time in Maharashtra I always wanted to visit Mahabaleshwar but the odds have always been against that place. And once again we ended up not going to Mahabaleshwar.

Malshej was the second choice of the majority in the group. We booked the MTDC resort on the recommendations of the other members of the group. Their recommendation was based on their previous visit to Mahabaleshwar MTDC resort. Few commonalities between the MTDC resorts, these are known to be established in the best locations of the area, really spacious good rooms  and value for money.

We drove to the place, from Mumbai Western Suburbs it is around 140kms. The road is not one of the good things about this journey. It was a bumpy ride but a long drive with music never fails you. Once we reached the place we were a little unsure and quite disappointed. Unsure if we would be able to stay in that place and disappointed since we had already made the booking and the payment in advance and there were no other options nearby.

The resort was an old dilapidated place, which does not brag about anything. At the reception when we asked the person responsible if we can first see a few rooms and then choose from those, we were told that the rooms have already been allotted and there were no choices. We had booked Valley view non ac rooms. He handed over the keys to the room and pointed us in the direction of our room. Now the rooms situated in that direction further gave us the chill down our spine. Dismayed we unlocked the room, but to our relief it was not that bad. Ya, it had seepage at many places on the walls of the room, paint had come off at few places and you can see mold on the walls in the balcony, rusted window frames but it could have been worse. It was a really spacious room with clean and modest arrangement. The best was the view from the balcony which basically compensated for all that was lacking in facilities. From the day to the dusk to the nightfall the weather and the view from the valley grew more and more beautiful. At night and during dawn there were clouds all around us, you can say we were literally on cloud nine. So the place had two things to brag about, the weather and a great valley view.

I really got lost here with the valley view and forgot to mention the Flamingo Uphar Grah in the resort premises. I am not talking about a gift shop, even though we kept wondering and trying to locate the gift shop the entire time only to be told later that “uphar” in Marathi means refreshments so basically it was the restaurant. And we thought they were advertising for the gift shop in the restaurant. The restaurant building was shabby, not been repaired for a long time and really repulsive. Since it was located at the entrance of the resort-right opposite the reception, the restaurant building was the one that was actually giving away the resort. But for the lack of any option in that area the restaurant had good amount of footfall. The food as opposed to the ambiance was decent and not very expensive, you can even ask them to customize it as per your palate.

After coming to terms with the place we really enjoyed the trip. Though there is nothing specifically to visit for in Malshej, a waterfall, the weather, land beyond the clouds and the scenery accompanying you on the road, what more can you ask for!