Camping Out

It was time for a little adventure for Tiku, my 5 year old son and what could be better than a night out camping. We packed our rucksack, tent and sleeping bags in the boot of the car and set out on a Friday afternoon to a campsite near Khopoli, about 100 kms from Mumbai. There are a few campsites around Mumbai where you can experience the thrill of camping with the family while being assured of some basic infrastructure and security. One such campsite is run by Big Red Tent near Khopoli.

Chugging up to Matheran

Portrait of the founders at Neral Station

During the Raj, the gora sahibs seem to have been constantly in search of places that even remotely resembled the climes back at home. Mr. Hugh Poyntz Malet, the collector of Thane, during one such pursuit discovered a flat wooded hilltop, close to Bombay that could provide the ideal escapade from the heat and dust of the port city. And so, with the blessings of Lord Elphinstone, the then Governor of Bombay, he set about converting Matheran (meaning Forest on the Hill) into a hill station. This quaint hill station, about 100 kms from Mumbai, soon became popular with both the white and the brown sahibs. One such brown sahib, Abdul Hussein Adamjee Peerbhoy took it upon himself to build a mountain railway from Neral at the foothills to Matheran, a climb of almost 760 meters to ease the rigors of travelling up the steep slopes of the hill. This extraordinary feat of engineering was accomplished between 1904 and 1907 at a cost of Rs 16 lakhs, financed by his father, Sir Adamjee Peerbhoy. The Neral Matheran Light Railway is just one of the two narrow gauge railways in the country, the other being the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. The Toy Train, as it is popularly known, more than a century later, continues to run regularly between Neral and Matheran for most of the year and not so regularly but determinedly during the monsoon months.

Neral Matheran Light Railway