Kaustav Chakraborty
4 min readJul 18, 2019

Bits and Pieces around Pune

Chapter 1: A monsoon evening at Alandi Ghat

A travelplanet view of Alandi Ghat

This is my first blog on traveling. I am an enthusiastic traveler who would like to see each and every corner of a city. Pune is one of the city which always creates an interest. It is because of it’s culture, food and mainly the eye catching natural view. This is a story about my first bike trip and enlisting a new chapter of my traveling experience.

I always wanted to be in Pune. I am having my small trips here from last 4 years. This time I wanted to explore the city in a wide eyes. So I moved here. That was the first step towards exploring this wonderful city. I was mesmerized by it’s heritage, culture & street foods. After spending few weeks in this lovely city, I started facing issues on my daily commute. Public transports are good here for longer distance, but for the shorter ones I started facing little difficulties and yes, it was a right time to start thinking about purchasing a bike. After a long 5 months of exploration (which was too much) finally I purchased a brand new Honda CB Unicorn 150 ABS edition. I always wanted to have a Royal Enfield, by which I can travel to most of the places seamlessly. But yaar, you can travel with the usual 150cc also if you have that intend. Yes, and here my first trip took place.

Alandi is a small town which comes under Pune district. It is around 22 km far from City Centre, Pune. The town situated next to Indrayani river known for it’s marathi culture, pilgrimage, Samadhi of Sant Dnyaneshwar and one of the pilgrimage point of Palakhi. The Ghat (river bank) and the Shri Sidheshwar temple on the opposite direction makes that place look more beautiful and attractive. The choppy Indrayani river adds the icing on the cake.

Alandi Ghat — Captured by me

On a fine monsoon morning few of my friends & I planned for a road trip to Alandi. The most important reason for this trip was to eat Misal Pav at Sahyadri Misal, Alandi. Definitely going to a place like this on a popular and most awaiting Pune Monsoon is always exciting. A 12.4 km of wanderfull riding experience on the wider Alandi Road from Vishrant Wadi till Sahyadri

Mouth watering Sahyadri Misal Pav
Sahyadri Misal — Image from justdail

Misal was a great first lap. It’s a time for us to fill some fuel in our stomach and move forward for the next stop. I heard a lot about Alandi Ghat from my friends. They used to tell the stories of them spending late evening there during their emotional situations, and how the view brings joy in their eyes. So it was always a curious place for me. It took another 800 meters ride for us to reach Vishva Shanti Kendra (World Piece Centre) Ghat. And yes, it was worth coming here. The calmness at the river bank, temple darshan made that valuable sunday more valuable. And then the next and the last stop of our Alandi visit for that day came. A small river dam next to Indrayani Nagar

Indrayani River Dam — Alandi : Captured by me
Indrayani River Dam — Alandi

Road, on the other side of the Ghat. Viewing the madness of the dam while it’s raining, definitely it is a different experience. These scenes asks you to stay back and spend more time. These are the never ending pleasure and the most needed ones when you spend most of your time in cities with traffic and the workaholic industry. The clock started telling us “Hey! this is the time to leave” and the beauty was telling us “We will meet again friend!”. On that note we waved and started our bikes. Closing the ride with a hot and refreshing Yewale Tea gave us a graceful memory. Leaving behind the natural beauty will always be a never ending fight with yourself. But you can always say…

“Fir Milenge…..”

Kaustav Chakraborty

I help early stage startups to set their infrastructure practices, Sr. Software Engineer @ HelloFresh (https://iamkaustav.com)