Go lose yourself... Review on Panchgani

Forget being a tourist in Panchgani and open your mind up to enjoy your most bohemian holiday in the hills of Panchgani - essentially get close to nature, physically DO NOTHING. There are no activities here - you just left them all behind in Mahabaleshwar. Here life is slow and unhurried. Relax.

A genteel hill-station towering over the Sahyadri ranges of Maharashtra, Panchgani simply doesn't cater to commercial tastes. Pastimes include walking, riding, or simply lazing on the cool of your hotel veranda sipping tea.

Contrary to reviews, you don't have to find activities to do. You don't have to shop for leather goods (shoes, bags, slippers), you don't have to eat the famous roasted gram in its three varieties (plain, lemon, spiced), do rounds in the Budhwari market, and during your visit to The Tableland you don't have to hire a buggy to take you around the standard fare showing you the "Shooting point" where a number of Hindi films have been shot, "Pandav's Feet" which are allegedly imprints of the feet of Pandavas, "One Tree Point", "Devil's kitchen" where the Pandavas allegedly cooked their food or even notice the hotel where Aamir and Kiran waved off after marriage. Most tourists slurp this all in with their ice-creams and come back satisfied. Believe me, Panchgani is much deeper than all that.

The name is symbologic - Pachgani is located amidst five small hills, which are topped by a vast plateau, the second highest in Asia (and 4.5 km long) after the Tibetian plateau, and locally known as "Tableland". You could as well take a taxi or drive up to it from the bazaar, passing the check-post, the Old Church Bakery, St.Joseph's school all the time navigating hair-pin bends.Or you could walk up and see grand old Silver Oak trees rustling in the wind (practically called the Lungs of Panchgani, and responsible for the cool filtered air you breathe), and after a side visit to St.Joseph school's old church, for its architecture and antiquity,continue your walk besides flowering Bougainvillea, Geraniums, Petunias over to tableland where driving is thankfully banned beyond a point. A part of Tableland is indistinguishable from Bombay Chowpatty - a carnival in tourist season complete with game and food stalls, , ferris wheel, buggy rides, ponies, and even a mini-train chugging side-by-side a round-about. I know your feet are weary, but don't hop into a buggy yet. Solitude is a serious matter. If only to avoid the chatter of the driver and passengers, walk. Not even the sweet clatter of horse hooves. Silence please.

Once you walk past the noisy fanfare where people are thoroughly enjoying themselves you come to The Plateau. You find hard believing that this place has an edge - a steep fall of 1334 meters into the Krishna valley from all sides. An endless ocean of land, barren except when it rains, when it turns into a lush green carpet laden with quaint daisies and other flora and a lake fills up in the middle turning it into wonderland.

Peer down a steep slope and take in the picturesque scenery of the Krishna river flowing among agrarian greens and browns, and watch a paraglider sail over the panorama as he, having airborne himself from a place called "Harrison's Folly", takes it all in.

Down below you see roofs of schools, Parsi and British bungalows and school-bys and girls coming up for a game of football. Panchgani has a rich collection of historic buildings. Some bungalows date from the turn of the 19th century - many belong to the early part of the 20th century and are charming - verandahs, sloping roofs painted bright red. Some are lavish in ornamentation and embellishment. akin to San Francisco villas, and some are wooden structures. And do you see Shivaji and bands of marauding Marathas somewhere down there or is it your imagination?.

Just for the sake of a touristy angle, and especially so that the walker in you is not caught in unawares by the swarming cabbies around: The main attractions are Tableland, Parsi Point and Sydney point. All are walkable from each other.

Parsi Point is just-a-kilometer away from the bazaar, and is called thus because it was a favorite evening spot where Parsi gentlemen and ladies would drop by in their Buicksand Dodges and Plymouth cars at sunset and made a social ritual of chatting, lying over deck chairs and munching stuff from hampers while taking in the sunset.

Sydney Point, located as you enter Panchgani (from Pune / Wai side), gives a breathtaking view of Krishna Valley, the Dhom Dam where it pours into, the tabletop and other mountains. Named after Sydney, a surveyor who carried out the first mapping of Panchgani.

Baby Point, which is close to the bazaar, very near the town library and club house - this strange name seems quite sensible considering that this was a spot where nannies would bring the Britons' babies for a stroll in Panchgani's pre-independence days.

The latest and most popular addition to Panchgani is Sherbaug, a well-landscaped expanse of land full of exotic plants.

Activities? If you are into birdwatching there is no real way you can be bored. In case you are the sports of hiking, parasailing and biking can take you places around this plateau. Or just watching the school children in their world of innocence.

The Britishers set up numerous sanatoriums in Panchgani due to the silver oak trees, which were considered therapeutic. They also set up schools. There are a total of twenty-two residential schools in Panchgani which isn't surprising since Panchgani was first 'discovered' by John Chesson, who was looking for a place ideally suited for a schooltown since British children were in fear of dying of a plague in Bombay and Chesson who was entrusted with the task of finding a suitable village that could provide a clean, disease-free environment found it in Panchgani.

The high point in the lives of the children's lives here, as a schoolgirl says,"is Mama and Papa's visit from Dubai once every year". Life is hard, but the children take comfort in Enid Blyton's books.

With Panchgani having elite boarding schools like St.Peters and St. Joseph's Convent, the prestigious all-girls' institute, where such starry boarders as the actresses Kajol and Twinkle Khanna have studied, there is bound to be an Enid Blyton-esque landscape. Here is a jolly discussion that took place in Panchgani. This occurred in Farzana Contractor's tea party, incidentally among the Principals of the Panchgani schools:

"What do you'll do on Saturday nights?"

"There's no such thing as Saturday nights here!"

"The heavenly weather is the only compensation."

"There is no social life. We do have get-togethers and picnics once in a while."

"What about midnight feasts like Enid Blyton wrote in her Mallory Towers and St. Clare's books on girls' boarding schools?"

"Yes, the students do have them but in their dorms."

"I once caught my boys roasting a goat! I didn't know what to do, so I joined them!"

Which proves that even Principals can be little boys and girls sometimes.

So what makes life in Panchgani tick? Nothing, actually. Which is why it is so important as an holiday destination. You can just stroll around and hunt for activities and endlessly buy chana, eat bhutta, load bushels of strawberries and pick up jams and fudges to take back home, but the essence is in doing nothing at all - Panchgani is all about the crisp mountain air, the call of the wild, the non-existence of a clock, the innocence of childhood and a spreading vast emptiness of the mind like the tableland. Which is perfect rejuvenation for the mind, body and soul. Go lose yourself...