It was a very long time since i had been on a outing with my wife after we had our kid, after our trip to Goa last year, i was keen to visit Lavasa at Ekaant Resort, however when i checked in with the hotel reservation desk, they informed me that all their rooms were booked for weekends up to October, so i checked up other hotels in near vicinity of Lavasa and was also thinking of visiting Mulshi, i checked some info about Centurion spring hills holiday resort and decided to give it a try since it was on road to Lavasa, i could not find much reviews about the hotel, however thought to give it a try.
The drive to the hotel is just about an hour from Pune, taking the exit from chandni chowk towards the road to Mulshi, as you cross Manas lake resort, go ahead and once you spot a petrol pump, take the road left ahead which has a sign board indicating route ahead to Centurion Spring Hills resort, I took a holiday package inclusive of room tariff and food given on their website and was offered 20% discount on it, the hotel stay was good, our room was hygenic, with a good view of hills from the gallery, the hotel has a restaurant which has decent variety of food offered, Indian, Continental and Oriental food is available both veg and non-veg, however you do not have much variety in terms of Indian food. If you want to visit Lavasa and cannot get an accomodation there, this hotel is surely a very good option because the surrounding vicinity does not have much to see, but the drive through mutha ghats is very scenic and pleasent towards Lavasa.
It had rained a bit while we caught a nap in the afternoon, the sky was still somewhat cloudy, after we had our tea we set out just to roam around and check if we could spot some bhajiya's at some eatry in the nearby village which is 2kms from the hotel, the roads are very narrow and you need to watch the road while driving, herds of cows and bullocks would keep coming your way from the village, luckily the road condition was good and we stopped by a cliff on the Mutha Ghat road and took some pics from there of the village below, however we could not find a decent food joint to binge on a wadapav or spicy bhajiya's, we did sight some road side eateries but decided to give it a miss just not to take any risk eating outside food due to the on-going swine flu scare in pune.
We came back to hotel after a good drive, clicking pictures of sky turning beautiful by the sunset, we had our snacks at the hotel in evening and the next day after having our breakfast we headed towards Lavasa, the drive was very good throughout, there was lush greenery all around due to rain god's still pouring in the month of september, Mutha Ghat drive was really refreshing and as we approached Lavasa, we took a Halt near the dam at Lavasa foothills, and clicked pictures of the landscape for there, and while we drove few steep curves up towards Lavasa, we realised that we were already late and had to checkout from the Hotel, so we headed back again from the fourth turn i took at the Lavasa road, also i was bit low on my confidence to drive up on very narrow and steep curves to Lavasa, i had never driven in such condition also my car had frequent highway trips and was due for maintainance, i was not willing to take risks with my brakes, so i headed back downwards, rushing back to hotel, clicked some pics of some bird species spotted in the hotel compound, a Munia bird was actually building a nest behind the bathroom glass window, which i recorded in my camera, we had our lunch and checked out coming back to Pune city, the drive back to pune was also good as it had started raining on the way.
I'm planning to visit Lavasa this year maybe in November or December, had a really good trip which was long due for us, check out my trip pics here.
