Pune Excursion:Fort JadhavGadh n Peacock Village

While Burns was here in Pune,we had planned a trip to the places which are specific to Maharashtra,its culture and rural life. After lot of rounds of discussion Ashley,V and I finally decided on few places in and around Pune.

Fort JadhavGadh :            

Situated in the beautiful rolling hills of Saswad, located 22 km away from Pune on the old Pune – Satara Road.Fort JadhavGadh is the small fort(called as Gadh-in Marathi) which is converted into the  only heritage hotel in Maharashtra by Vithal Kamat group. We started our journey @ 10:30 am and reached the Fort around 11:30 am. At the entrance we were welcomed in a warm traditional Maharashtrian way (By playing Tutari and drums).

 There is an entry charge (cover charge) of 500 INR per head, which can be redeemed at hotel restaurants. This entry charge covers entry to the museum and guided tour of the hotel property.

 

 We missed 12′ tour by some minutes  and next guided tour was due to start at 2pm. So we decided to visit the museum, Aai(Mother) , which is a personal collection having artifacts and historical items collected by Vithal Kamat. The museum is hosted in a typical old style Maharashtrian house,called as “Wada”.

  

After exploring the museum,it was time for Pet-Pooja @ ‘Chhajja’ the 24*7 restaurant. The food was chosen,keeping Burns’ liking for Indian food in mind. Food was really delicious,and everyone really enjoyed it.

After the really heavy lunch,it was time for the tour of the fort. We were happy to see the great attempt made for keeping an age-old structure intact with the help and mixture of modern structure. Since this place is converted in a heritage hotel,it has all the five-star amenities including swimming pool and Spa which are in very good condition.

After spending more than four hours in this place,it was time for us to start our journey towards Peacock Village.

 

 

Peacock Village :

Barely 50kms away from Pune,Morachi Chincholi  is a peacock sanctuary on the Pune-Ahmednagar state highway.  This tiny village is surrounded by tamarind groves and fields of corns,sunflowers. It is said that the villagers and their ancestors always cohabited Indian National bird. This village supposed to have around 2500 peacocks. It took us around 1.5 hrs to reach this place.

Mayur Baug has a kids park,a puppet show a magic show, and a farm full of geese, turkeys, horses, camels and other livestock. We skipped the magic show and puppet show since we were more keen on watching peacocks.But we enjoyed the bullock-cart ride along with Burns.

The peacocks are best watched at the dawn and when the sun begins to set. So we were at the Peacock viewing gallery by 5:30pm when few peacocks began to make an appearance.  Everyone was very excited to see so many peacocks at one place.

This beautiful view was well complimented with hot tea,coffee and yummy kanda bhaji 🙂

The handsome hunks(Peacocks) which you are seeing in above pics are the male of the species, the ones with the flashy tails. The female and young males do not have the tail feathers but are still beautiful !!!

All in all, we ended Day-1 of our weekend trip on a very happy and satisfying note with a setting sun !