Happy New Year Maharashtra!

Well, we arrived on April 5th at midnight in Mumbai! We woke up and had a delicious breakfast of aloo paratha, mango pickle, homemade yogurt and coffee at the wonderful Grand Maratha Hotel. We started on our journey into Pune (Poo-nay) on the morning of April 6th to discover a parade celebrating the Maharashtrian New Year in downtown Mumbai. (Orange is the Maharashtrian color we learned.)

Below, you can see the end of the procession with the bullock cart.

After we passed the parade, we began the three and one-half hour journey to Pune on the Pune - Mumbai Expressway. Here is the traffic jam that proceeded the parade in Mumbai. It is kind of like a ballet to watch the cars, motorbikes and auto-rickshaws maneuver around one another so gracefully and not causing any major accident.

We finally got out of the traffic jam, which is unusual for a Sunday, and onto the expressway that led us out of Mumbai and into Pune. We first encountered a shanty-town before entering the beautiful Indian countryside.

Then, within a matter of seconds we were found ourselves following the highway that winds up the mountains.

We did see a friendly face along the way as we passed a petrol service station.

Yes, even McDonald's has infiltrated India. Don't worry they are not serving any hamburgers and orange drink here! French fries, McFlurries and Filet O'Fish are the only American items on the menu.

Then, back into the mountains . . .



We did finally arrive into Pune and passed this charming stream covered in lily pads. No, it's not grass folks. Those are in fact lily pads. Supposedly when the monsoon starts in June, these rivers and streams will fill up to the railings with water. After about 20 minutes more in the Tavera, we reached our friends home in Koreagaon Park. I took a really nice photo of the Pune City landscape at night, but it somehow inadvertently got deleted. All in all it was a day of interesting surprises and easy travel to our new home.