Had a bit of a panic leaving Pune when an enterprising autorickshaw driver almost convinced us that our bus was leaving from another town and not from Pune station…luckily we’ve been here long enough now that we decided to check first… Only about 1 hour late (not bad for Indian transport by all accounts!), the bus was a ‘luxury’ coach with TV! We experienced our first Bollywood movie, which was surprisingly easy to follow considering it was in Hindi! The volume, however, was set so loud that it was completely distorting as it blared out of the overhead speakers – but luckily, armed with our trusty earplugs, we managed to muffle it to about twice as loud as you would have your TV. In this peaceful setting we wound our way up to Mahabaleshwar, high up in the mountains, its lush jungle in stark contrast to the pre-monsoon landscapes 2000 ft below – real Rudyard Kipling country! Famed for it’s berries and jam, Mahabaleshwar is where the middle class flock to escape the heat and it’s also school holidays so it is HEAVING! It’s easy to see why though – it’s lovely and cool and the scenery is stunning! Our room, however, is far from stunning! The one that we thought we were staying in is pretty nice, but after we’d handed over the money, the owner explained that he actually didn’t have room for both nights, so for the first night we’d be staying at his friend’s hotel – by the time we got there and realized how filthy and disgusting it was, we were too tired to do anything about it and figured it was only for one night and although we’d paid about 20 times too much for it, it was still less than 10 quid…and we have our own sheet and mosquito net… As it turned out, it wasn’t the mosquitoes that kept us awake but a donkey who went totally mental for some reason at 2am – then we couldn’t get back to sleep for ages as we were giggling hysterically about how crazy the day had been! Just managed to doze off when at about 6am there was a loud banging on our door when our bucket of hot water was delivered, to be poured into our empty bucket (read shower) in our bathroom. Oh well, at least we had hot water…and it forced us to make an early start! A lovely local guy, Santosh, took us on a tour of all the lookout points in his little van, including Monkey Point – the three monkey shaped rocks from which the ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ story came from! Santosh was amazed that we’d heard of it and I don’t think he believed us when we told him it’s known all over the world!