A(nother) trip to Pune

I'm back blogging after a shameful four month hiatus...but I've been busy as baby Sarah arrived on 19 September.  Here she is!

Sarah at one month

I will blog about my experience of having a baby in Mumbai soon (quick summary - excellent healthcare and overall experience) but, for now, am trying to catch up with what we've actually been doing.

Owing to late pregnancy and Sarah's arrival, my last trip out of Mumbai (until last week) was a weekend in Nashik at the end of June.  Four months without leaving the city feels like a long time for someone who is used to exploring somewhere new in India every other weekend!  Phil went on a few short solo trips in this period (mainly focused on seeing lots of stepwells) but, otherwise, we've been doing local things only, though trying to keep ourselves busy in the process.

Last week, we escaped the city for the first time since Sarah's birth with an overnight trip to Pune which we thought would be an easy introduction to travelling away from home as you don't need to fly.  We booked a smart hotel (the Corinthians Club, which I would recommend) which had a large swimming pool, table tennis facilities and a brewpub onsite.  Quite enough to keep us entertained for the day.

Walking around the resort.  The temperature was lovely in the morning and evening - much cooler than Mumbai

Baby relaxing on the hotel bed

The journey is around four hours in the car so we knew that we'd need to stop to feed Sarah midway.  Unfortunately, even the best Indian highway services aren't remotely enlightened with baby changing facilities or breastfeeding friendly areas so a lot of this goes on in the back of the car (and we have a very small car!).  We were keen to feed Sarah before leaving at 8am but, for the first time ever, she determinedly slept in and in the end didn't feed until 10am, demanding food loudly and urgently whilst we were travelling down the Mumbai-Pune express highway with few stopping places!

Baby Sarah in a very deep sleep pre-car journey

We broke up the journey with a visit to a sundial and indoor stepwell (complete with foucault pendulum). This was Phil's idea rather than mine but it was good to stop on the way and the university staff were very friendly and welcoming to us crazy foreigners who had travelled all the way to see this.

Rather large and impressive sundial

Indoor stepwell and pendulum

The pleasant campus courtyard

The hotel itself was good and well kept.  Notable points included an amazingly big and ornate crib provided for Sarah.  It was much better than our bed and she seemed very happy with it too.

I have no idea where you would go to buy one of these!

Our other new experience was being disallowed entry to the pub, a branch of the great Doolally which brews its own beers and we enjoy visiting in Mumbai.  The staff refused to let us have a beer in the empty pub at 5pm because we had Sarah with us which was unfortunate, but they delivered beer to the room at least.  Sarah has done well by being barred from her first pub at 6.5 weeks old.

On the way home, we stopped at Pune zoo.  This covered a large area and the walking path is nicely shaded and a good place to stretch one's legs in a quiet environment.  As a park, the zoo did well, though it was rather lacking in the key components that make up a good zoo - animals.  We did though see a rather mouldy looking white tiger who was easy to spot though clearly geriatric and whose hunting days were long gone!

You can see the white tiger on the grass in the background - to the right of my head about level with my glasses

Our Pune visit was short but was a good trial run for us to work out what you need to pack when travelling with a baby (always more baby-grows than you think you could possibly need in my experience).  We'll be testing our travel skills more thoroughly next week with three nights away in Udaipur and Sarah's first flight on Tuesday.