We visited this beautiful hill station during the Monsoon region. I was traveling with my friends to relish the natural beauty and explore some popular attractions of this wonderful place. We planned to spend a day in Lonavala and then head back to Hyderabad. We decided to visit the three popular attractions in Lonavala:
- Lion point on Lonavala Aamby Valley Road
- Lonavala Lake
- Bhushi Dam
We rented a car from the Pune International Airport and stayed in a hotel for a night. In the early morning we had our breakfast, we ate “Poha” which is a common traditional local food from this part of region. We drove directly to Lonavala Aamby Valley Road and reached our first attraction spot. As it was a weekend, there was a heavy congestion on the road and took us more than an hour to park our car in a parking lot. The view of the valley from this spot was enthralling and I was amazed to see so many number of tourists at this spot. The energy level of the crowd here was remarkable to watch. We saw few tourists trying to cross the barricade lines even after seeing the big warning signboards for the sake of photographs. I saw a lot of local food stalls providing the spicy local food for the tourists. The restaurants provided its customers with proper seating arrangement to enjoy their meals while relishing the beautiful surrounding sceneries. The only thing which disappointed me the most was the way tourists’ people were spreading the plastic waste pollution in such a beautiful place by carelessly throwing the plastic bags everywhere. We stayed at this place for at least two hours and then decided to move to the second spot which is the famous Lonavala lake.
The entire area at this point was just beautiful with greenery everywhere. This is a good place to just relax and soothe your eyes with natures beauty. From there we went to our final stop “Bushi Dam”. The place was full of tourists who were enjoying with overflow of water coming from the dam. The whole place was flooded with the water which makes it difficult to reach the destination spot. It is highly recommended to carry one pair of extra slippers to walk through the muddy, uneven surfaces and reach the starting point of the Dam. This was more like a water park with the tourists splashing water and cheerfully enjoying in such a beautiful environment.
With this last spot, we decided to head back to our hotel and had our meals. Later we explored the main bazaar (Market Place) of Lonavala and were surprised to see the numerous number of chikki (Traditional Indian sweet) shops in the Bazaar. Through the locals we came to know that Lonavala is famous for its Chikki, so based on their recommendation we bought some Chikkis from the Bazaar and moved to the Airport.
So, Overall the trip was exciting and I enjoyed my connection with the nature at the beautiful valleys and the amazing local people from Lonavala.
