A hill station five hours away from Urbania

Saputara and Hatgad at our state border are great places to visit any time.

We went to Hatgad from Urbania in March 2017 for a cool stay in summer though the place was cooler in the evenings.  We took five hours to get to the Club Mahindra Hatgad (CMH) resort, where we stayed on our trip. 

The road journey up to Nashik is fast, but after that, the two-lane road though good, slows down the journey.  En route is oxen-driven wooden crushers that offer cold-pressed sugarcane juice.  The road to Hatgad traverses through the grape-growing country, and you can find villagers sell blue grapes, green grapes, and raisins along the road. 

Farmers along the road grow onions and offer it for sale in five kg. bags.  We were most surprised to find strawberries for sale in boxes and transparent containers.  At first, we thought the sellers were offering Mahabaleshwar strawberries, but it turned out that the area surrounding Hatgad has strawberry farms where villagers were harvesting fruit for sale.

As you drive to Hatgad from Nashik, if the gently rolling hills, vineyards, and strawberry farms make you feel you are in California, it is natural.  You also have the option of shopping for locally grown vegetables from the Monday market that comes up at Hatgad.

The only tourist worthy place around Hatgad apart from Saputara is the Hatgad fort.  You can go on walking tours to the fort from CMH for an hour's journey each way.  You can access the fort by car through an unpaved motorable road leading from the highway right up to the fort's entrance. 

You have to carefully park your car at the fort entrance as there is no fencing and little room to maneuver a car.  Hatgad fort has very little to show but has spectacular views of the surroundings, including neighboring Saputara town.  During our visit, work was on fixing steel barricades at the periphery of Hatgad Fort, which has no amenities. 

The sheer cliff of the hills has served as fort walls, leaving the fort's builders to focus on securing only the entrance.  It is unlikely the enemies breached the fort by scaling any of the natural rock walls.  From a distance, the fort looks like a flat-topped hill. On the road leading to the fort, your learn Hatgad is rich in fauna, particularly raptors or birds of prey. However, you are unlikely to spot most animals and birds in summer.

Saputara is a quaint town in the western Indian state of Gujarat bordering Maharashtra and few kilometers away from Hatgad.  Saputara is 1000 m above sea level and is cooler than other areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat.  Being at the northern end of the Western Ghats, it has the hills and vegetation like in the Ghats and has its distinct physical features. Saputara's trees are deciduous and shed leaves to become bare in summer.  Further, the hills are not all rich in vegetation, and when they do support plant life, it is sparser than one sees in the Western Ghats in Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra.

Saputara has the usual suspect spots of Indian hill stations.  There is a Sunrise Point, which I trudged up much after the hour for such occurrence.  Saputara administration was paving the road to the hill summit, so I parked our car at the foot of the hill and walked up.

Saputara's Sunrise allows wonderful views of the horizon and allows thousands to come and watch the daily Sunrise on hundreds of terrace-like benches interspersed with gardens. After its development, Sunrise Point would be a great place to drive up to enjoy the Sunrise.  The plants in the garden will make it extra special with the greenery of the foliage and the different hues of flowers.

Searching for the route to the ropeway in Saputara town, we chanced upon an apiary with bee boxes where you can witness the in and out movement of worker bees busy shoring up the colony's pollen reserve to make honey for larvae in the hive.  We purchased freshly bottled honey at the apiary. The apiary's shopkeeper was kind enough to wrap the two bottles we bought in the newspaper after taping the lid to ensure we could carry back home the honey intact in the bottles.  Barring the honey that we bought, there is nothing at Saputara that you can buy as souvenirs.

There is another tourist attraction ropeway in Saputara town.  Reaching the gondola boarding point, we realized we would have to wait more than an hour for the 2 p.m. post-lunch slot and decided to see the Table Top point in the time we had. 

Table Top is a flat hilltop with barricades all around for surrounding view and leads to a peak, which is the town's highest point.  You get ponies, camels, and vrooming mobikes at Table Top for whiling away your time.

Looking closely at the bikes, I realized they were gearless scooters souped up to appear like bikes that make a lot of noise.  Table Top also has a great view of Saputara town below, but its authorities have not maintained the washrooms.  There are numerous stalls selling gola, Maggi noodles, tea, pav bhaji, corn on the cob, and more.  They all do brisk business catering to hordes of tourists who visit Saputara for the great views in monsoon and the cool breeze in summer.

Saputara's ropeway has yellow, red, and green cars that move in a closed loop between Table Top Point and Sunset Point at sixty-two rupees per head for a person above three years.  Ropeways are an archaic thrill in an age of speed, moving few meters each minute, which electrically propels the cars on a rope back and forth. 

Gujarat state tourism authorities have developed Sunset point with well laid out paths for tourists to take in a panoramic view of the surrounding hills and vegetation.

One can get off the ropeway car and spend time at sunset point before heading back to the Tabletop point.

Sunset point has only the view of natural vegetation as it is on the wrong side of the town of Saputara.

Most tourist attractions of Saputara are likely to underwhelm well-traveled Indians.   The restaurants in the town serve only vegetarian cuisine, as is common in Gujarat.

The stepped garden maintained by the forest department is a case in point.  It is a natural park, like we have in Indian cities but with good views on the side away from the entrance.  A rose garden in town is just many rose shrubs beneath a high mast lamp post at the town center.