All Star Trek
After plenty of scrapped plans, the bunch of us finally kept our date with each other and Mamabhanja on Sunday. It was a fitting end to a hyperactive month for me 
Mamabhanja is a lofty hill, part of which falls in Thane and the other in Sanjay Gandhi National Park. We agreed to meet at Teen Haat Naka at Thane. Sajan and I waited for Ravi (who is invariably late) at the station and ended up delaying everyone.
So just who were these stars?
To begin there was Abhishek – The man who was leading the trek
Sajan – the quite man who surprised us with his experiences of the outdoors
Ravi – the man who tried too hard
Anuradha – the naughty mommy
Mukesh – the strong man
Maanya - the youngest member of the team and at 1 and a half year old amazingly made it to the top
et Moi
I’ve been hiking with all kinds of people – inexperienced people, the kind who think they know what they are doing but don’t, the outdoorsy type who don’t care a damn about the rest of the group, the kinds that come on a hike dressed like they are going to a disco and the works, but I have never been up on a trek with a one and a half year old! That was a whole new experience – one that I enjoyed to the core.
We took a rick to the place from where we were going to climb and started our ascent. We stopped for breakfast- yummy aloo parathas with achaar (courtesy Anuradha) – about 20 minutes later. Poor Mukesh and Anu had a tough time carrying Maanya and making the climb. But there was nothing any of us could do because the little girl refused to come to any of us.
We reached half way up where we took a well needed rest. Surprisingly, there was a little tea stall and we sipped strong black tea and watched our monkeys climb a tree 
Then up came the sun and our little hiker began to cry and get very restless. I think she was feeling really hot and stuffy in what she was wearing, so we changed her into a cotton tshirt – my extra one which I had taken along to change later!
We finally reached the plateau of Mamabhanja and took some time to enjoy the view. For those who are familiar with the central and stallite suburbs of Mumbai, we could see the area stretching from Powai lake to Vashi to Airoli and Thane. While the boys visited the Dargh at the top, we girls played a while and caught 40 winks
While it took us nearly 2 hours to get up, we made it down in 20 mins, Maanya had long fallen asleep by this time and Ravi actually got his chance to carry her without making her cry!
Abhishek dropped me off to Thane station from where I got to Vikhroli and Ajay. Spent a quite evening with him and then headed to Gajalee for a fishy dinner.
