Where I Vanished for the weekend: Into the strawberry days and nights

There, there! Hows it going with all of you with only 4 days left to Christmas? In this teeny apartment, to-do-lists are back! Isn’t that wonderful. Because perhaps I am the only one alive in this earth to be as daring as to go vacationing on the only weekend left for Christmas. Yup. I was up-early and away to Mahabaleshwar (Spell Ma-Ha-B’-Leash-War), a hill station about 400 kilometers away from Mumbai that’s also the largest producer of strawberries in India. can you see the hearty, happy, full of strawberry goodness and bursting with all the vitamin C, me? You can? Oh yay! Money well spent. Oh wait. it was a sponsored vacation, courtesy: Naaptol.com, one of India’s largest e-commerce platform of which I am a part.

Hydrangeas!!! Oh me my, kill me. I managed to get a cutting too but I do think it’s gonna survive. *sobs*. Let’s hope it does.  And now, on to some snippets of the road, the purely old school vintage stay and some colleagues/friends.

The entire road entwined rugged mountains set against the bluest of blue sky. Makes me wanna sing BB King!

When I opened the door to the verandah of our cottage that was given to us, I instantly fell in love with it. Bathed in sunlight, amidst greens and lined with terracotta, yes, I would love to buy this place. Someone evaluate please!

MTDC resort- that’s the name of the place. This is only one side of it, there are other cottages as well- the place is pretty huge and is kept quite old school- intentionally or due to lack of attention is a question to ponder on!

ye ye! You could tell i was smitten. Lurve the light fixture. I would actually love to have a similar one over my dining table. R, are you listening?

Okay, guys, my room had a transistor! A TRANSISTOR too. When was the last time you heard about it? oh, love at first sight again.

Vintage Drawer pulls. I was so tempted to nick one off…

The team. From Left: Sachin Singhal (The captain), Abhijeet Shewale on starboard design, Anil Rana on Ctrl X, Tushar Sarang: Ahoy coordinators, Rukmini Roy: The one and only, editor cum foodie turned cook cum brilliant photographer cum advisor cum all that makes you a genius etc. and Sheetal Joshi: On loading, uploading and exporting and a renegade hat lover!

These two individuals who seem to be asking me are actually warning of an impending accident. I was oblivious to a car behind me which was honking in its full glory and me without earphones or any sort of distraction couldn’t hear it. My mind is never at its place.

We caught someone sleeping in my very colorful Earl Flap hat. Mr. Rana it is- our designer. Well, this became quite a hit. (We tricked him to close his eyes- dont ask)

This would be Vidhi from IT. Chatter box, masters in whats app, head strong and an aspiring singer. We need Lime Soda here!

And this Mr. with my earl flap is Pratik Gupta who mumbles, cut=copy paste in his sleep. Signs of a hard working employee!

The two very-fond-of-each-other men again, I have a story to tell here. The man is yellow began with, “Dude, behind the taxi stand of Darjeeling, the one that’s below the road, there is a hotel where you have to self serve yourself. **** what a view man, that’s probably one of the best self serve joints I have seen. Tell me Rukmini, what’s the name?” I say, ‘Glenary’s?’. He says, “yes, yes, man…..what a…………………………… they have the best lime soda”.

And we hear a squeak from the man in blue. “All this for just Lime Soda?” Hahaha!

We also munched on some Farm Fresh Raddish. YUM!

And finally, doing what I do best. Anybody heard of the process called cross process?

Well, that would be about it from this daring little escape. Off to sleep for the day- we hardly slept. 6 hours in 48 hours. Think I can even stand straight? C

P.S: Coming up next Strawberry jam recipe from the Strawberries we got off the local vendors.

Toodles