Journey From Hyderabad to Bombay - Part 3 - The Ghat Section

The Khandala ghats are situated right between Bombay and all routes going outside of Bombay in the eastern direction. The train service has been running as long as I can remember. Right from 1970's. The older route which still exists today contains 26 tunnels through which the trains pass. The newer track built to accomodate the traffic covers sections outside of those tunnels but neverthless more often than not in parallel. The journey is a up-down. Meaning to a certain extent we go up hill from Pune and then its all downhill. You can actually see the extreme suburban edge of Bombay which still boggles my mind. The entire set of pictures here reflect the Khandala ghats. Oh! there are people who actually live here. And you will find some shots of goats running around near the tracks.


We are approaching a station called Lonavala. Lonavala is a beautiful place. Its usually touted as the summer resort for the people in Mumbai. Being high up on the hills, it has cool temperature and fantastic homes which the rich and famous have built for themselves. Many companies have their corporate retreat houses here. I myself have been a guest of Siemens Medical Systems in 1995 as my team was given a getaway gift from them.





I could only manage to get a sneak shot of this home quite near the tracks. Most of the track sections are between rocks and hence difficult to capture any pictures. There was a time where having a summer home in Lonavala was the ultimate thing to do. Now, I presume everyone has one and the prices are through the roof.





From the sign board, you can see some information regarding the ghats. A total of 24 kilometers from the start point which is coming ahead after a small station called Khandala.









And here's my trusty motor man pulling the train into the far end track which will then commence our descent to Bombay. Of course, we still have not reached the station yet. It is a difficult task to maintain these heavily used track sections. When we were leaving Pune station, there was already another train pulled into the adjacent platform which was the Chennai Mumbai express. The thumb rule is that if your train is delayed then you get lower priority on the route as they will not delay the other trains which were on time. So we were suckered into following the train that left just 10 minutes before we did.







The far end ofthe train as it chugs behind.
































You can see that there is a near parallell road highway that goes from Pune to Lonavala to Bombay. Technically, its a much shorter journey. But in terms of comfort and scenary nothing beats the train.









And from this point onwards the fun begins! My train halted for a few minutes to get the green flag from the dude on the station. Despite the electronic signal, there is always a dude with a flag to cut you loose. Right now this is a shot of the train at stop. Can you make out some people sitting by the door? You can see a few legs perched. Travelling on roof is not allowed in sections where the tracks are electrified. We dont want someone to get 20K volts of raw power to vapourise the fool!






From the clock you can see it was close to 1 PM. By actual schedule we should have been at this point by 10 AM. Talk about dumb luck.











The lenght of the train which I am still not able to capture fully.








Dude who waves us off holding the green flag. During nights he has a lantern! He just gave us the kick off and we started moving.
If you have been to India, then you know how we love honking our car horns! Well, these engines are equipped with air horns! Boy! when they blow, its amazing. The entire ghats will echo the sound of the horn!





This image here on the left shows the elevation statistics for the ghat section. This is the gradient chart for the ghat section.








And this is the first tunnel we enter. You can see railway workers doing some work on the tracks and tunnels. All the tunnels are cool and sometimes you have water trickling down the walls! Dont ask me, but I do believe thats fresh water that trickels down. It actually cools down the tunnel so much that you can feel the chill! From here on there are a few more tunnels which weave in and out. The train curves at every given opportunity making the scenary wonderful.















And there is light at the end of the tunnel! Pity I did not have a fancy camera and a foot hold so that I could lean further out to take a better picture. I think I lost the art of leaning out of a train which I used to do so well during my college years.








And like a trusty sidekick the highway still continues to run through the ghat's. To be really honest with you all, I have never taken the road from Bombay to Pune. I have always taken the train. As a kid, I had this fascination to trains. I used to recruit couple of cronies and we used to pretend to play train. Our imaginations ran amok. I mean we took an ordinary ladder and came up with ideas to convert it into a engine cabin and honk ourselves hoarse! Until of course, the elders used to chase us off to play cricket.



As the train continues it passes through more tunnels. Note the inscription on the pole to the left of the picture. Its says "120-23" vertical. This indicates that Bombay is 120 KM's and 230 meters away. Yep! Each electric pole is 100 meters apart and each have the distance charted on them. Easy to know how far your destination is. Although this rule is generic, they sectionalise the distance. Meaning, you wont find 7000/430 inscribed on the electric pole.




And the first shot of the scenary below. The train really winds itself down to the othe side of the ghat section.