Last October, I was able to take a nice overnight excursion to a small resort on Mulshi Lake, near Pune, about a 100-mile (165 km) drive from the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai. We departed from the hotel just before lunch, having just arrived from Ahmedabad that morning. Our route took us on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and we left early enough that the traffic was not bad.

Our travelling group took several cars, each leaving from different locations. Our past trips of using a bus taught us that the logistics of getting everyone to one location to start, along with the slow pace of the buses themselves, make a car trip more practical. India has a relatively new policy that requires for-hire cars to have a speed governor that limits the maximum speed to 80 KPH (50 MPH). Our driver’s car did not have a governor. There were several times we wished it did, as he drove very fast and aggressively. It kept us alert.

Upon reaching the outskirts of Pune, we turned off the highway and headed southwest, navigating the difficult Pune traffic. Once out of the city area and into the country, the traffic lightened up, but the road significantly worsened. It was a bumpy ride but quite scenic. After a couple of hours of driving, we arrived at the Residency Lake Resort & Spa, our accommodations for that evening. The resort is about 2 miles (3 km) past the Mulshi Dam. The view from the resort is quite pleasant.

Mulshi Lake holds about 42,420 acre-feet of water (per Wikipedia 0.0523 km³ [0.0125 cu mi]). An acre-foot is the amount of water that would cover an acre (0.405 hectare) to a depth of one foot. It is about 325,853 gallons (1,233,489 liters), the approximate amount of water a US household uses in a year. For comparison, Shasta
Lake, the largest reservoir in the California State Water project, can hold 4,552,000 acre-feet. Mulshi Lake is about the same capacity as the Ice House Reservoir on the American River west of Lake Tahoe. Since the monsoon had just finished when we were there, Mulshi Lake was very full.

Mulshi Dam produces power for Pune with a 300 megawatt power plant run by Tata Power. It was built in the 1920s.

Here is a shot of Mulshi Lke from our hike the next day, and the teaser to get you to keep reading beyond the fold.