A short trip to Saputara

We went on a short one night trip to Saputara in the middle of the week. It was a holiday for Independence day and the school was on a 4-day short break combining Independence day and Parsi new year.
The three of us, along with my in-laws left from Thane around 6:20 am. My parents were going to reach Saputara from Gujarat. They started at 5:50 am. We stopped at 7:30 am at Shree Dutta snacks on the Nashik highway for breakfast. It is famous for their Maharashtrian food. And Maharashtrian food is usually spicy. So, I and my daughter stuck to plain idlies and bread butter. The others enjoyed sabudana khichadi, upma, and sheera.
We left around 8:30 and headed towards Nashik. The route to Nashik is very scenic and especially so during monsoons. We were in Nashik around 10 am and took the diversion towards Saputara.

The road becomes a narrow 2-lane road once you divert from Nashik towards Saputara. This time, the road was quite bad with really huge potholes in some places. It might be due to the rain because when we went two years ago, the road was good. But the views were fantastic. As we were nearing Saputara, we were literally driving through the clouds.
We had stopped for a short tea and bathroom break at around 11:30 at a small restaurant on the way called Hotel Sylvia. It is a nice place with polite staff and clean bathrooms. I had jeera soda there and it was very tasty. We bought almost all the bottles there to have in Saputara. :)

We reached Saputara around 1:15. The last part of the road slowed us down considerably with its frequent potholes.
My parents reached around 2:00 since they had taken a pitstop at Navsari to visit the eye hospital where my father had taken his first job.
While waiting for my parents, we completed the check-in procedures. We had booked at the Gujarat Tourism hotel Toran Ambika. The check-in procedure has to be done at Toran Hill resort. There is a free meal and breakfast included with the room booking. The meal is also served at Toran Hill Resort. It is a tasty Gujarati meal served buffet style. We were happy campers after a stomach full of delicious food. We went to our hotel, which is a 5-minute drive, and rested for a while. Then, we got ready in the evening. Toran Ambika is right next to the parking for Sunset point. Cars are not allowed after that point. It is a steep climb up. I, my husband and daughter decided to trek up and the parents decided to drive up to Saputara viewpoint (some also call it tabletop point). The whole of Saputara was enveloped in clouds and the visibility was very low. The drive up to the viewpoint is very steep and with such low visibilty, they had to drop the plan midway and come back. They also experienced some dizziness when they got out of the car there, possibly due to the difference in the air pressure inside and outside the car. I guess drive up with the windows rolled down a little.

We, on the other hand, were able to walk up the steep path and reach the Sunset point. There was no way we could see the sunset; because there was no sun, only clouds all around us. A different experience.

Such pristine beauty and unpolluted mountain air were being ruined by groups of youngsters. They had small motorbikes, which they were also offering for 150 rs per ride to the top. For a short while, all we could smell was the pollution caused by the motorbikes. These groups were also drinking and playing music. It was so sad to see nature and fellow travelers being disrespected like that. If they wanted polluted air and loud noise, they should have stayed in any of the cities around instead of coming to a mountain!
It did get better once we reached near the top. We spent some time there. Ate a sweet roasted corn. And climbed back down.



Back in the hotel, the moms told me that they had been to an exhibition and there were some good things there which I should check out. So I went with my mom and daughter. We bought a couple of pants for the daughter. Then we went to Hotel Sejal for dinner. It is next to the Toran Hill resort. The others came directly from the hotel. The visibility was extremely low and it was difficult to drive the car to the hotel but they managed.

After a dinner of khichadi and roti with dal fry, we went back to the hotel and retired for the day.
The next morning, we got ready and had a breakfast of poha, upma, bread-butter, and tea at the hotel. Then we checked out of the hotel and went to the Saputara Lake. This day was even cloudier if that was even possible, and it was also raining. It was a good thing we didn't reach today otherwise we would have had to sit in the hotel room the whole time. We sat there and shared some roasted corn and tea. The guys there make really good tea. After spending some time there, we said our goodbyes and headed our opposite ways.


On the way back, we stopped at Hotel Sylvia again. They were out of jeera soda since we bought most of the bottles the previous day. :) We decided to stop at sadhana misal in Nashik for lunch. The Google map took us on a very bad road and a fellow car told us not to go ahead as it was too bad. We turned back and went ahead and somehow reached the sadhana misal around 2 pm. It is a large area and they keep some animals like horses, cows, sheep and some birds in cages there. With the wet weather, the animals and birds didn't seem very happy. I hope they care for them properly.


The husband and in-laws had the misal. I and the daughter had the papad and jalebis. I also had sol kadhi. Everything was great; I especially loved the jalebis.

Then we went to Sula vineyards. I and the daughter thought we could get a more proper lunch while the others explored it. I don't know if it was because we arrived late but the wait staff at Little Italy basically ignored us for a good 20 minutes. The daughter was so hungry, she even went to call them twice to take an order. Finally, someone came and took our order. The food was nothing great but good enough for us hungry people.
By the time we left Sula, it was already 5 pm. Google maps again wanted us to go through small winding roads and wasted a lot of our time. I don't know what was up with Google maps that day.

We stopped at Mcdonalds just outside Kalyan at 8 pm for a quick dinner and reached home around 10 pm.
It was a long day.
Although the trip was short and we didn't explore much in Saputara, it was overall a great trip for unwinding and relaxing in beautiful weather.