The year was 2008, right after my final semester exams of my graduation when I first came to the city of Pune, the supposedly cooler cousin of the city of dreams, Mumbai.

I had written the Maharastra entrance examination for MCA admissions and had managed to secure a respectable rank in the first merit list itself. As per the next step of the process, I had to report to a college in Pune (the name of which I don’t remember anymore) for  counselling.

So, once it was decided that I was going there, along with a couple of more guys who were called for the  counselling, the next step was to look for accommodation for us in Pune.

Pune being a fast-growing metropolis, has a lot of hotels for every budget. Starting from budget hotels to luxury five-star hotels. Every type of accommodation is available.

For our stay, I started searching for hotels online. To begin with, I tried looking up for Pune tourism hotels. I was presented with a long list of hotels.

The best thing about the searching anything online is that in no time you have an ‘idea’ about what to expect. For example, when I did my searches for say, hotel bookings in Pune or best Pune tourist hotels, the list that I was presented by Google gave me a good idea about the tariffs of the various types of hotels in various parts of the city.

Photo credit: http://www.cr.indianrailways.gov.in/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0,6,1191,1195,1328,1543

We finally ended up staying near the Pune railway station which was also very near to the college where we had to attend our counseling so it was a more or less, ideal location for our stay.

Whenever you visit any new place, you always want to explore the place as much as you can, isn’t it? We were no different and so, once the hotel thing was sorted, we started to look up on google, about what else could we explore during the time we were there.

A simple search about the things to see in Pune again gave us a long list of options. I also checked about what local food we can sample in Pune.

I am someone who loves to try local delicacies of the place which I get to visit and Pune was no exception.

I got to feast on one of the best paw bhajis I have ever had. One more gem of a discovery was daabeli. I could not have enough of it.

In my first trip to Pune, I actually did not get to see much but another trip is coming up soon and I am sure I will get to explore Pune in a much better way this time around.