Experience the strawberry capital of India- A walk with Shaili Sharma

Unplanned trips are the most adventurous and become even more exciting with a bunch of crazy friends.

This time me and my crazy friends headed to Mahabaleshwar, a small town located in the Satara district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It's a lovers' paradise, a nature lovers' haven and a perfect place for someone looking for ultimate bliss. Well known hill station situated at an elevation of 1353 metres above sea level surrounded by valleys on all sides.

A perfect weekend getaway for people staying in Pune and Mumbai as it's only 125 kms away from Pune and 266 kms from Mumbai.

Most of us associate Mahabaleshwar with beautiful valleys, plummeting waterfalls and not to forget the delicious strawberries. And these luscious strawberries of Mahabaleshwar, grown in the hilly slopes of the region accounts for about 85 percent of total strawberry produced in India.

Strawberries were brought to this region from Australia by the British

I came across one interesting fact that Strawberry cultivation was introduced by prisoners from China and Malay imprisoned by the British in Mahabaleshwar from 1834 to 1864.Since it's a seasonal fruit, hence the season lasts between October- November and April-May.

One can also enjoy the famous annual strawberry festival hosted by Mapro garden, well known for their strawberry produce. The main attraction of this festival is the fresh farm picked strawberries available for visitors to eat and also various other traditional folk performances.

The city of strawberries has a great history of which very few people are aware of. As the legend says, the city came into being when the two demons atibal and mahabal in ancient period, around the period of creation of the world tried to terrorise the people to the maximum extent. The recorded history of mahabaleshwar dates back to 1215CE, when Yadav king singham of Devagiri visited this place and built a temple at the source of krishna river.After the fall of yadav dynasty ,the region was ruled by many other kingdoms. Finally ,In the 19th century this place received its real recognition ,when General P Lodwick ,the first European visited mahabaleshwar.It was he who made mahabaleshwar popular among the british.Another prominent visitor Col Briggs found this region as a perfect escape from the scorching heat of the nearby plains .He persuaded the then raja of satara to build roads in this region for better communication .He also requested the governor of Bombay, sir john Malcolm to visit the hill station. In 1929, Mahabaleshwar was officially declared as Bombay presidency's summer capital.

Well we started from Pune around 2pm in the afternoon and took the route via Wai -Panchgani-Mahabalehwar. The roads were fairly good, and the beautiful weather made our journey very pleasant. An unending drizzle followed us till Mahabaleswar.

Highways decorated in green velvet

Since we were short of time, we couldn't stop at Wai, a small town located on the Krishna river famous for its seven ghats and many temples. Another prominent tourist attraction in Wai is Dhom Dam Backwater.

This journey brought about some beautiful unexpected surprises that took our breath away now and then. One such mesmerizing thing happened while we crossed Wai and were moving towards Panchgini.

We came across a patch of land which had a beautiful view of the other side of the valley. We were shivering and quivering with excitement and happiness. A cool wind with drizzle took us into some other Utopian world.

Well this was just the start....!

This place not only gave the most picturesque view but also provided us with some fun activities like horse riding and camel riding. It was thrilling to ride a horse in such a pleasant weather.

Once it was also a place to enjoy paragliding where the entire paragliding gears were made available to the public. Now, one can do paragliding here but have to arrange for their own gears.

From this point we reached Panchgani in roughly 20 minutes. Another beautiful hill station near Mahabaleshwar famous for its various sunset / sunrise points and scenic valley view. It’s surrounded by five hills and hence the name Panchgani. Since we had to reach Mahabaleshwar the same day, we decided to visit Table land, a popular tourist place in Panchgani and skipped all other viewpoints. Table Land is the highest point of the entire region of Panchgani and offers some  breathtaking views of the valley.
It was nearly 8pm when we reached Mahabaleshwar .It takes about 40 mins to reach Mahabaleshwar from Panchgani. Since we went there in mid-August, due to heavy rainfall there was lot of fog and mist. We couldn't see anything clearly on the roads and it was a bit difficult to drive.

We had booked a hotel through OYO just an hour before reaching. But to our utmost disgust, the maintenance and facilities of the room didn't match the actual pictures shown on the app. Hence, I believe it's always better to book the hotel after visiting it. Since there was no dearth of hotels around, we settled in a hotel near the market with comfortable tariff rates.

We started our sightseeing next day in the morning. The very first place we visited was the Mahabaleshwar temple, located 6 kms from the main market. This temple was built around eight hundred years ago and the shiv-linga is believed to be much older, around thousands of years old. Inside the temple there is a 6 feet long Shiva Lingam, in the shape of Rudraksha, of which only the tip is visible.The temple also has old articles belonging to lord Shiva like Damru, Trishul, a bed and carvings of his sacred bull and Kalbhairav .It is believed that he still visits the temple and uses them. Like any other Shiva temple, this place offers a lot of peace and a feeling of nothingness.

Mahabaleshwar Temple

Atibaleshwar Temple 

As we moved forward inside the Mahabaleshwar temple premises, we found two more beautiful temples, the Atibaleshwar temple and Panch ganga temple .

The Panchganga temple is constructed at the convergence of five rivers Krishna,Venna ,Savitri ,koyna and Gayatri .Inside the temple one can see a cow made of stone .Most astonishingly we found that the water from all the five rivers was flowing through its mouth. And unbelievably it was the tastiest and purest of water we could ever had.

Our next stop was Kates point from where two other points, Echo point and Needle's hole were only walking distance. The Kates point offered a beautiful view of the Balkawadi dam.

We were completely awestruck when we saw the needle's hole point. It is another picturesque point where an overhanging cliff resembles the top of an elephant and hence named The Elephant's head viewpoint too.


The beautiful Sahyadri Mountain range with magnificent waterfalls can also be viewed from this point.Just another 4 kms away from Kates point, waited an enthralling beauty, The Lingmala waterfalls.

 I would rather call this place as an epitome of natural beauty. As we entered this place we got down roughly around 100 stairs and reached this small running stream of water .

At this point there were two beautiful waterfalls. Towards the left there was a small waterfall called Doh around 100 mts away ideal for playing and enjoying the cool dip in water.  Towards the right around 500 mts away, we came across this another stupendous and roaring waterfall .It's height was approximately 500 feet.Also this point gave a splendid view of the Venna Valley.

The Lingmala waterfalls was our last destination as all other viewpoints were closed down due to heavy rainfall. Though, Mahabaleshwar is pleasant through most of the year ie not so hot in summers and cold enough in winters but its beauty increases exponentially in monsoon season.

While going back to Pune, we came across numerous small waterfalls .We couldn't ask for anything more .

This delightful journey was coming to an end with the most exhilarating experience I ever had. The people of Mahabaleshwar are very friendly and warm and possess beautiful hearts ,as beautiful as their homeland.

I yearned to come back to this magnificent place again.