Weekend in Pune

Monday, September 04, 2006

Spent the weekend over at Pune (a.k.a. Poona). It's a small little town about 4 hours by bus from Mumbai.

Pune is on higher grounds so it's much cooler than Mumbai at night.

Basically, Pune is a smaller, quieter, less crowded, cheaper place than Mumbai.

We arrived in Pune on Saturday afternoon. After checking into the hotel, we went for a walk near the hotel.

We arrived at a park beside a river where people were gathering to celebrate Ganpati Festival. Ganpati Festival is in honour of an elephant-headed deity, Ganesh. The celebration lasts 10 days and one of the highlights of the celebration is when the idol of Ganesh is immersed into the river, lake or pond.

Some other places we visited were the Fashion Street Market, which is a smaller version of Bangkok's Chatuchak and with less attractive products on sale.

Then there is also a vegetable market where people shout at the top of their voice to get attention. You hardly see such a scenario in Singapore anymore.

I guess the place most worth visiting in Pune is the Osho International Meditation Resort. For 10 rupees, we get to watch a video about the place and go on a silent tour around the compound. All sorts of meditation are available here. The peaceful, quiet ones, and the noisy, energetic ones. Although how you meditate when you dance is beyond me.

After the tour, we headed back to Mumbai. The trip back warrants a blog of its own so stay tuned...