Tiger's Point, Lonavala

It's really disheartening to find tourist places being badly maintained. Tiger's Point in Lonavala is one of the places which most visitors traveling to Lonavala visit and every inch of the view point is spread with glass pieces. On our Tata Bolt drive, we drove to Tiger's point and were really disappointed with the situation.

There are few eateries and non of them serve quality food, so better don't expect anything at Tiger's point and pack your snacks and water bottles, from Lonavala itself. The barricade as well is broken and if you are visiting with kids, better be careful.

Being summer, there was no good view, I had visited few years back during monsoon and it had beautiful view with all greens. The weather was no better than Mumbai, it was very much hot, humid and foggy as we visited in the afternoon, might be it gets better once the sun sets. Heard from few fellow bloggers, they go for a late night drive from Mumbai to Tiger's point.

Shivalinga Mountain

Travel Info: 

The best way to reach is drive in your own vehicle, as there are no public transport available till this point, nearest bus stop is INS Shivaji around 1.5km. The other option is hire a taxi at Lonavala to visit all of its touristy places.

By Road: Lonavala is 90km from Mumbai and 75km from Pune. You can take the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, or old Mumbai-Pune road to avoid the heavy toll, but expressway is always better for its road condition.

By Train: There are many trains playing on the Mumbai and Pune route and most of them halt at Lonavala.

By Air: Nearest domestic airport Lohegoan Airport in Pune and nearest International Airport is Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport in  Mumbai.

Bolt Drive to Lonavala with Tata Motors!!! #BoltDrives

It’s that time of the year I eagerly wait for to plan my travels. Kiddo starts her summer vacation this month end and lot of travelling lined up for the coming month. Meanwhile few of we blogger's were invited last weekend by Blogadda for a drive to Lonavala. What better way than escape to a nearby hill station, to beat Mumbai's summer. The drive was to test and experience the drive with the new Bolt by TATA Motors.

All we bloggers joined at Cafe Infinito at BKC, for a presentation and breakfast. We were briefed about the features of the New Tata Bolt (you can go through my previous post on the features here) and the schedule for the day. Blogger's were divided into groups of three with a supervisor in each team, and would drive the Bolt, Revotron or diesel version (which would be exchanged in the second half of the drive). I was in Team D1(the diesel version), and flagged off at Cafe Infinito after which we had the first activity for the day, the Suspension and driving test at the test track created at MMRDA ground. Even before we were flagged off, Captain Bolt, our guide for the day, an unseen, mysterious voice, called on the Tab assigned to our car and made us comfortable about the drive and the activities for the day. The Suspension test was to trace the dots creating picture of a car on a sheet of paper while the car was undergoing the suspension test, to show the balancing ability of the car, even while driving on those bumpy roads.

Then we started our drive to Lonavala. What better road can you expect than the Mumbai-Pune Express Way to take a test drive?? While its ePAS(Electric Power Assisted Steering) with speed sensitivity and active return function, made the driving comfortable, its superior cabin space added to the comfortable drive. We tried all the features of the car, throughout our drive. Its multi mode feature, ECO, city and Sport modes. The voice command, which recognizes most of the Indian accents and controls most of the car functions, like the temperature control of your A/C, the volume control of your audio system, even sending SMS, calling a person from your phones contact and many more. The car has also been given a sporty exterior style with smoked projector headlamps, flame-shaped tail lamps, dynamic alloy wheels and Floating roof.

Drive through the Mumbai-Pune Expressway

There was lot of tweeting and facebook updates going on throughout the drive and Captain Bolt was in constant touch with all the teams. Though we initially lagged behind the other teams, we joined them at Triose at Lonavala on time for the lunch. Had lunch, some chit chat with the blogger friends and then drove to Tiger's point. There was lot of photographing, clicking selfie with the Bolt, with the fellow bloggers, the group pic and lot of pics of the sexy Bolt at the Tiger's point, before we started our return drive.

Our final pit stop of the drive was CCD on the Express Way, where we rounded up the event with the social media contest winners declaration, refreshments and lot of memories from the day. A Sunday well spent at #BoltDrives with Bolt from Tata Motors in association with Blogadda.

Summer Slam Party at CCD!!! #CCDSummerSlam

Its summer and the weather has got really worse this year. Is everybody feeling the same or is it only me, because this year my kiddo started her afternoon session classes and heading out of the house at noon, really burns her out. Am sure most of us try everyway to keep ourselves cool, by wearing comforting cotton cloths, escaping to the near by cooler places, spending lot of time in pools, visiting water parks or slurping cold and refreshing beverages. And if you fall in the last category, then here is a good news for you, CCD has come up with their Summer Slam refreshers, a mouth watering range of chilled smoothies and slushes.

Few of we bloggers from Mumbai were invited for a Summer Slam Party at Cafe Coffee Day, Bandra for a funfilled afternoon and to taste their Summer Slam beverages. The event had fun games, photo booth to get our pics clicked with summer props and also a guessing game to taste the flavours blindfolded.

My kiddo who got along with me for the party, loved their Strawberry POM smoothie and Strawberry Blast slush, for their Strawberry flavours. And me being a lover of slush, loved their Pink Lemonade Slush, a blend of sweet and tangy flavours. 

 
The Summer Slam Range:

The smoothies are a range of a divine creamy concoction with bite size pieces of the key ingredient immersed. Rasmalai Smoothie is the royal Indian mithai re-imagined as a rich, creamy beverage. It carries almond flavours with the very prominent bite of a rasmalai. The Strawberry Pomegranate Smoothie is a delicious cool creamy mix of strawberry and pomegranate, a perfect tease to ones taste buds. Mango Peach Smoothie is the king of fruits blended with the best of peaches guaranteed to satisfy the most intense of fruit cravings.

The slush variants include, the Strawberry Blast Slush which consists of strawberries blended with the goodness of pomegranates. The unique Tropical Spice Slush the strangely wonderful mix of jalapenos with the tropical fruit. The Pink Lemonade Slush a sweet and tangy and loaded with the goodness of pink grape fruit.

Being the IPL season, these beverages have been named by the IPL teams, relating them to the region, that is Kolkata Rasmalai Smoothie, Mumbai Strawberry POM Smoothie, Bengaluru Mango Peach Smoothie, Rajasthan Pink Lemonade Slush, Chennai Tropical Spice Slush and Delhi Strawberry Blast Slush. Rush to your nearest CCD and beat the heat this summer, with #CCDSummerSlam beverages.