reaching mandu.....

one more lovely trip ended on a lovely note. As always the road is a great way to travel to reach any place.And thats exactly where we went.... any place, any place we liked. The last few days we had been on the road travelling to MP ( madhya pradesh) trying to reach Mandu. I say trying bcoz of all the detours and off roads that we took on the way. And of course with Smit driving and charting out the route thats bound to happen:) Thats the advantage of having a husband who not only loves to travel but also loves to drive to do it. So, instead of taking the general route of the highway, we went to MP thru Dangs..( the place where 60kph guys go crazy) and of course we had to see it.
The plan was to drive thru Dangs to reach Mandu but coz we did not get bookings for the night in Mandu we decided to go to a place called Maheshwar (abt 65 kms frm Mandu) and a distance of 620 kms frm Bombay. But instead of reaching there we ended up staying in a small little village abt 100 kms bfore Maheshwar due to car trouble or 'auto woes' as smit calls it. So 'trying' to reach Mandu we detoured to Maheshwar and eventually did not reach there either :)
The sunrise next morning brought a new dawn of a new day and we set out to reach Maheshwar a distance of abt 2 hours which we covered in 4 hrs due to more 'auto woes'. The wait was worth it though, 'Narmada Retreat' turned out to be a peaceful place on the banks of the river Narmada.
We spent half a day there and the night during which time we visited the fort of Ahilyabai Holkar, took a boat ride across the Narmada and also discovered a quaint little cafe called 'Laboos Cafe'. The nxt morning saw us on our way to Fort Amla as we did not get bookings for the night in Maheshwar which actually turned out a boon in disguise else we wud never have discovered this place. Fort Amla was a more than a pleasant surprise. The residence of an earlier small time rajah, now ancestral home of a prince who runs it like a 'homely' hotel. 'Homely' bcoz he considers u not as a visitor to a hotel, but a guest in his house and treats u that way. The rooms had the old world charm as did the fort which almost felt like we were in our own house in our native place. The high bed with the frame for the mosquito net, (we actually had to use a footstool to get on it) and the lavish bathroom almost took us back to the time when the maharajahs once lived there. Sadly we had only one night to stay there and the next morning we were back on the road, going to Maheshwar to stay & spend the night in the 'tent' accomodation which we cudn't give a miss. This too was the highlight of the trip and smit felt very much at home :) Sitting on the banks of the Narmada in the dark of the night, gazing at the starlit sky, waking up to catch the sun rising out of the water....... a perfect end and a perfect beginning.
6.30 in the morning back on the road,( this was the fourth time that we were on this road, the bystanders probably thought we lived there) this time seriously trying to reach Mandu which is what we had set out to do in the first place. Reached around 10.30, picked some breakfast and went straight to the ruins of the abandoned city. Mandu is witness to the love story of Raja Baj Bahadur who fell in love with a sheperd girl, who came to be known as Rani Roopmati. A day in Mandu in not enuf to live their love story and see the palaces and the other historic structures. Managed to see a few of them,went to see the sunset at sunset point(first time i saw sunrise and sunset on the same day in two diff places) got to the hotel to relax a bit and then dinner. Went backto sunset point to make coffee on our camping stove ( no trip is complete without that) Shivering a bit with a hot cup of coffee in hand, kids sleeping in the car with the heater on, not thinking of tommorrow when we wud have to leave for Bombay again..... a lovely end to a lovely trip.