Woodlands Matheran - the Queen of Hill Stations

An oasis of tranquillity with healthy and salubrious climate, UN-polluted air, beautiful surroundings, charming shady walks, magnificent panoramic views, all these make Matheran the favourite holiday resort of thousand of visitors.

Bombay's nearest hill station is Matheran. This is a very popular holiday resort, the crisp clear mountain air is free of petrol fumes and the cacophony of cars and buses - real treat after the noise and congestion of Bombay --is the best visited during the season from October to May. Many visitors come to this lovely hill station to get a new lease of life charmed by its refreshing atmosphere. It dense forests, cool climate and the lines of hills scattered on all four sides, has a healthy and therauptic effect. It takes only a few minutes to realize why Matheran has this untouched, pristine quality about it. Automobiles and vehicles of any sort are not allowed into Matheran. This little hill paradise has been left largely undisturbed, since the time an Englishman, Hugh Mallet, Collector of Thane, discovered it in 1850 and declared it a fine place for shady walks.

The inhabitants used to fish and keep goats; they still do, though today the tourist trade takes precedence over everything else. Monkeys are your companions wherever you go. They sit in your verandah and on your porch, hugging their babies, combing their hair, squabbling occasionally as humans do. As you jog along in your buggy, monkeys dangle themselves strategically, one paw hanging free to grab your packet of chips. You could wave your crooked pandhari stick (a kind of walking stick) at them, but their mournful expressions would melt the sternest heart.

The red soil is everywhere. Matheran is a continuous poem of shady, thickly wooded paths of red mud and velvet moss, stretching endlessly. Getting away from a city is not always possible on a holiday, it travels with you to the most unlikely places and is heard blaring from portable transistors and motorcars, merging with the raucous of streets overflowing with thoroughfare. But in Matheran it is possible to forget that cities exist, it is possible to believe that you are ensnared in a time web from which release is not desirable. Such is the balmy calm of the place, the quiet and the green of the woods that seem to transform the most strident noises in to gentler sounds.

The name of this hill station refers to the dense growth of jungle as its head. Matheran means a place topped by a jungle. Matheran (literally "mother forest") has been a popular retreat from the heat of Bombay since the nineteenth century, when it was an exclusive bolt hole for British families. These days, however, few foreign visitors venture up here, and those that do only hang around a couple of days, killing time before a flight, or to sample one of India's most charming colonial-style hotels, like WOODLANDS. The season lasts from mid-September to mid-June (at other times it's raining or misty), and is at its most hectic between November and January (Diwali), April and May, or virtually any weekend. There's really nothing to do but relax, wander the woods on foot or horseback, and enjoy the fresh air and views. Matheran is undulating hill top covered with full of beauty. The journey involves an adventurous two hours ascent from Neral in a delightful little toy train or by car; with the panoramic view of the plains as the train chugs uphill towards Matheran