Deepavali wishes to you! Heres wishing the cheer and spirit of the festive season stays with us all through. Lightening up our futures and lightening down our loads.

The mobile phone companies thought it fit to announce ‘the person you are calling is out of coverage area’ to everyone who called us during Deepavali. Mobile companies do this as whimsy would fancy on any other day, is but a non issue, when you consider that we weren’t really complaining this time around.

(Thankfully, they are yet to spill the beans like’The person you are calling is beyond redemption’ or something to that effect).

Yes. Dear reader. I was traveling again. To a place that was indeed ‘beyond coverage area’. I must confess, as usual, I have an ocean of stories to tell with a sea of snaps to choose from. Alas, there lies the cesspool of choice and the consequent ideal condition for an air of general laziness to survive thrive.

Well, that will be worked upon.

Maharashtra has a platter that can satiate a traveler’s hunger by filling him / her up, right till the first molar! The veritable challenge therefore is much like a ‘multiple choice question’ in an MBA entrance exam. Every given choice, seems to make perfect sense and as was told to me several years back, half in jest, the best way to crack these multiple tests was the propitious ‘inky-pinky-ponky’ method.

Oops. I deviate. Sorry. As usual, that was a paragraph of verbal diarrhea to let you know that a traveler in Maharashtra is spoilt for choice.

There are ancient temples in such glorious extravagant offering of simplicity and peace. Right beside there is nature bathed in portentous silence of all urban noise. Scattered en route are forts that majestically shoot out into the sky, each with a story to tell and a tale to recall. A surfeit of beaches that beseech your soul and peaks that seem to power into the sky.

Add to that: flora and fauna that you can fawn over a lifetime.Rivers that flow and insects that glow. Not to mention, the acres and acres of paddy, vegetable and sugar cane fields, farmers and others with warmth that is well beyond a city dweller’s realm.

For a traveler that likes variety, this presents an opportunity beyond parallel to hoover-up all that comes by just having to take one road and experiencing everything. Rather nice. To put it mildly.

This time around, the sights were set in a new direction.

“No phones. No TV. No air conditioning. Just about basic facilities. You still want to go there?” was a question that was propped. It would have taken a starving glutton longer to have said ‘yes’ to food, than it took us to agree to this proposition.

Off we went. Driving through meandering roads and relishing every sight possible. Walking into villages, having tea with strangers and trying our hand at herding cattle. Not to mention pulling by the roadside to admire the Western Ghats, and the moments in prayer and points that we pondered over!

Moments slipped away as we sat in the stillness of the dawns and dusks listening to an orchestra conducted by beings that we couldn’t see, long before the first rays of the sun showed up and forever after the sun disappeared.

We are still a trifle tired in the muscle and bone but perhaps the mind is far too calmer. And that makes it worth it all.

Of course, you will hear more! Indulge me a few posts, if you will and watch this space !