I went to Bhandardara on the 24th as planned. We caught a train to Kasara, early in the morning at about 7:30 from Ghatkopar. It took about 2 hours to reach Kasara. From there we took one of the local jeep / taxi services to the village, and in about another 2 hours we had reached Bhandardara.
Now the chief attraction of the place is it’s cool and pleasant climate (it’s slightly higher than Matheran) and the dam and lake present there. We were staying at the MTDC resort there. As with all MTDC properties, the rooms were clean and quite decent, unexpected though was the fabulous view of the lake from the balcony there.
On the first day there we went down to the garden at the base of the dam. The garden holds a spectacular view of the dam and in the rains when the water from the dam is let out, one can see what is called “the umbrella falls”. We also went to the Randha falls which are at about 10km from the dam.
On the next day I had planned to trek up to Ratangad or Kalsubai. However, transportation was a wee bit too expensive to arrange for just two people, so we dropped the idea. Hope to trek there post monsoons though, with a larger group. The rest of the day was spent hiking to the hills opposite the resort (on the other side of the lake).
Finally we left for Mumbai on the 26th on one long trip back home. Spent about 1 hour 30 minutes stuck in traffic on the ghats and another 1 odd hour waiting for the train (since I missed the one I was supposed to catch). Finally reached back about 8 hours after leaving Bhandardara. In retrospect, maybe going by train till Igatpuri would have been much better.
Technorati Tags: Trekking, MTDC, Bhandardara
Tags: Travel
I'm Elroy Serrao, a technologist, photographer, and part time blogger from India.
I love to design web sites, program in php and rails in my free time and of course go trekking and clicking pictures in the great outdoors.
I'm from Mumbai, and am an alumnus of Mumbai University and NMIMS. 
