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Date of the journey:- November 2019
Distance travelled:- 82 miles
Our next journey from Pune to Mahabaleshwar was completed on the bus. We chose to pre-book with an online booking portal called Redbus. Booking a semi-luxury bus with the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) as opposed to one of the tourist bus companies. The cost was 210 Rupees per person for the 3 hours 20-minute journey.
The bus departure was from the Swargate bus depot in Pune at 0942 hrs. Leaving our accommodation, the Hotel Centro, we took a tuk-tuk, booked through the Ola app to the bus depot. A journey of about 15 minutes. Swargate bus depot was no different from any of the other bus depots we had been to. Very busy, noisy, and manic.
There were sufficient people to ask where our bus was departing from. We directed by staff, to bay number 7. Backpacks loaded underneath and we boarded the bus.
Departure
Was on time and some 10 minutes into the journey, the conductor started the ticket inspection. When he got to us he started chattering in Hindi and shaking his head. With the conductor not speaking English and us not speaking Hindi we had a bit of a stalemate. Another passenger who did speak English told us the conductor was saying we were on the wrong bus.
Our hearts sank as we nervously tried to laugh it off. After some discussion we established the bus was going to our destination, it was just a higher class of bus than we had paid for. 🤣
The conductor made a bit of a fuss saying we needed to pay the extra. This turned out to be 40 Rupees, less than 50p for both of us. Apparently the semi-luxury bus doesn’t have AC, whereas the bus we were on did. Extra monies paid and our journey continued, taking us up into the forested Western Ghats. There were some stunning views along the way as well as some outrageous rally driving by the bus driver.
Arrival
At Mahabaleshwar, the bus depot was at the scheduled time of our original bus.
From the bus depot, we were collected by our accommodation, CP Cottage Resort. A short 8-minute transfer to the accommodation.
Read more about our time in Mahabaleshwar and CP Cottage Resort on our Mahabaleshwar destination page.