Pune Camp

Pune Camp area is an active commercial locality - malls, shopping, hotels, pubs...and a typical MG Road :)
Locality is quite good, mix of wide and narrow roads.. mix of old and new structures...

Ram Krishna, PUne - Vegetarian restaurent - offers wide variety of indian food... one things stands out missing in the menu is - Thali or buffet lunch or dinner... All ala-carte for some strange reason... food, taste is quite decent... reasonably priced... cuisine is not definitely authentic, sambar is full of sweet, veg biriyani is awefully bad and comes with dark brown color.... But But But the other items like Pulav, Naan, Panner tasted reasonably well. Do visit and eat but choose your menu carefully.

SGS Mall - typical mall, no great shakes.

Kayani Bakery - Lovely, tasty biscuits. Dont even think of missing this place.

East Street Cafe - Nice setup and getup like some European street. Nothing more than that. You order Nachos... some readymade nacho with another readymade butter poured over it... come on guys, just dont take people for granted for Rs.150 !!!

Shoppers Stop - Great place for bird watching... shop at your own will :)

MG Road - little high end shopping, big shops, decent collection of jewellery and textiles.


and some glimpse of places for you....

Laxmi Road., Pune

Laxmi road, Pune offers exciting shopping opportunities for middle class. It offers wide variety of items like Bindi, ear ring, textiles and what not....

Fully crowded streets, best suited for general walking and buying.... Its closed on Mondays... so plan it out folks...

Only issues is finding parking lot. Once you get that, you are on roll... You keep going from one place to another, one shop to another for shopping with ample small hotels to fill in your stomach.

Some clips for you.... To quote some examples... Kala Chappens offers wide variety of Kholapuri chappals, men's shoes, floaters.... Some big bollywood stars like Nana Patekar had bought shoes here... Its run by Amit Sheth, lovely dressed person, offers nice service too. He is saying, they are exporing to USA too !

I found one more interersting brand of men's shirts called Ciera for Rs.425. Lovely colors, combed cotton shirts...

Have a look at the lovely looking Ganesha temple too !

Trip to Konkan coast Dapoli

Onward Journey Pune to Dapoli
via Katraj tunnel, Harrisons Foly (New Wai), Panchgani, Poladpur, Khed

Return Journey Dapoli to Pune
via Veer (river), Shenale, Ambet, Lonere Phata, Mangaon, Mulshi, Pirangut, Pashan, Pune

Photo Link: http://picasaweb.google.com/svijayganesh/DapoliKonkanCoast#

Distance covered - 650kms with a hired tavera
Terrain - Mountains and Ghats with very limited plains

Self and couple of friends went around to explore Konkan coast. It turned out to be a memorable experience. The trip started off with drive through lovely Katraj tunnel - nice, wide and long one with good light. The drive in the hills of Panchgani, Mahabaleshwar was relatively peaceful but little strenuous. Mapro gardens was a wonderful place and gave us some relief. Simple garden with eating facilities. Also provides sneak preview of manufacturing facilitues through transparent glass windows. Nicely marketted i should say.

We reached Dapoli around 1:30pm (7hrs of journey) and went to SeaPrincess resort. It was right on the beach, quiet place with basic facilities. The lunch was very decently made and we went out to see Panhale kaji caves where pandavaas supposed to have lived. No proper route guidance was given to us and we took some round about route to reach there by close to 2h and 15m where as the return trip just took one hour or so.

The caves were interesting and were on a riverside. The caves offered glimpse of facilities, worship of lord shiva and was found in 1976. The caves were quite long and going interior and could take more than a day to visit each and every one.

We returned back had dinner and slept. Woke up early morning and went on a ferry ride. The ocean was quiet and the waves were generally subdued. Water color was not green and it was semi green with mixture of black. The ride was peaceful but we could not sight the dolphins. I was very disappointed with that but to my dismay the ferry ride of another batch over the next hour successfully sighted couple of Dolphins.

We had breakfast at Lotus Resort (group of Kamat) and it was a good property and loads of facilities. The buffett breakfast was priced at Rs.100 and had a decent offering of bread, eggs, idly, sambar, pav and misal. We ate and went on ride to Anjarle. It turned out to be one wonderful ride with picturesque locales of ocean, mountain, temples, eagles.

We went from Ganesha temple of Anjarle to Keshav raj temple which was situated in Ashwadbag. The temple was deep inside a forest. So, we had a scenic walk inside the forest for some 45m to reach the temple. One can happily medidate in that forest as there was no disturbance at all. We loved every bit of this visit due to its serene atmosphere.

We came back and had lunch at one of the villager's place. Traditional maharashtrian, konkan lunch cooked with normal vessells without any gas facility. Food was very nice - Rotis, chawl, dal with 3 different curry.

We returned back to Pune in different route which was less of Ghat but it took same time of close to 6-7hours.

Over all rating: Interesting.

Warning: Dont plan your journey time on kilo meters... it takes double the time to travel

week end surprise

I have come all the way from chennai to pune and from there to a resort at Dapoli (konkan coast).

I met some interesting people. One turned out to a surprise... it happened like this... all in Hindi...

Hello sir., I am vijay... reply... Hi., I am Mr M. where are you from?
From pune sir... hw abt u?
i am also from pune.... where in pune?
Me: Pimple... and u? reply: aundh (near by place)...
oh... ok sir... where is ur office?
reply: Hinjewadi and u?
Me too sir... that means we work for IT company.....right?
yeap... I work for ... and u?
I also work for them ... sir !!!

Wow... what a surprise... and after some time., where did u studied... it turned out to be chennai mutually !

Ada paavigalaa :) idhukku hindi, konkan... resort... enna kodumai saravanaa idhu...

Pune - first impression

As you all know that I had moved to Pune for now.I am writing about my first impressions. I am living in a locality called Pimple Saudagar and working out of Hinjewadi phase two. The distance between the places is around 10kms and the established nearest neighbourhood is called Aundh and Baner.

Pimple Saudagar exactly looks like 90s madipakkam or velachery. No great roads, street lights and construction everywhere. But Aundh and Baner has got nice facilities thanks to Balewadi stadium which came couple of years ago.

Pune railway station, Pune Camp, Kalyani Nagar are located some 25Kms away from my place and i am yet to explore them.

For me, it looks like Pune is definitely behind Chennai or Bangalore infrastructure as of now. But lot of construction, road building which is happening now might make the place more comfortable over a period of time.

Traffic - No driving sense at all and people drive at all the places. No right or wrong side as of now. Autos are costly but Tata Aces, Marutis and shared Autos are cheaper than individual autos. Signals are relatively less and traffic moves comfortably as the roads are reasonable broad. Lot of sign boards help you to move around freely.

Will post more info as i keep exploring. so enjoy some photos as of now.

ASAL - Movie Review

Saw my first movie, that too, tamil movie in Pune - that is Asal.... My feedback goes like this:

Story: One big man.. his two sons have hatred against another son... why bcoz of the dad's affair (chinna veedu) logic... they are all in arms dealing biz... they slug it out for 2 hours... Yuhi Sethu fails to provoke any laughter but makes the story move.

Acting: Ajit as usual tries his best to carry the movie on his shoulders.... Sameera and Bhavna are pretty decent. The villains are ok but some how it doesnt settle with you.

Technical: Photography is good and cool. Choreography is really bad. in fact, ajit competes with Bhagyaraj in kuthiraikku song and loses badly. The movie is mounted stylshly...

Music: I liked 2-3 songs when the music released. But in the movie, they are all cut by half.

What i liked: London location, conversation bwn Sameera and Bhavna

Opinion: We know it will be a masala movie., but why cant u make it little better? avoidable movie, over all.

Crowd: I saw it E Square, Pune. Crowd was cool, noisy and celebrating.60% occupancy for the first day, night show.

Rahman wins Grammy

Rahman winning grammy is a such a great feet. Any music lover will realise the value of winning a grammy. Its a pinnacle of music awards and it is a proud moment for all of us.

Its also two to tango. Hopefully, people will keep quite after calling "slumdog millionaire" is not one of the best of Rahman !

I pray to god that Rahman should get good projects in future so as to enable him to demonstrate his versatile music strength.

Jai Ho !