Where is the horse? Is a good question to ask in Amboli because the rest seems in place. The one road that runs through this town carries no name hotel managers look sweetly bewildered when asked for an explicit postal address which they patiently repeat Amboli. And Divya Bharati, the young actress who died in Mumbai a decade ago, still tops the list of what the young men of Amboli, refreshingly not up with the times, want most from the plains.

The British, always nostalgic for bad weather, had already declared Amboli a hill station by the 1880s. Even before them, Amboli's potential had already been discovered by the Sawants of neighbouring Wadi, within whose fief Amboli lay. The sky above this village in the Sahyadris continuously dripped for a good four months if not the entire year, making it the wettest place in Maharashtra. But the surrounding forests were so thick with trees and tigers at the time of the Raj, and Matheran so much closer, that Amboli remained unchecked on maps for a very long time after.

Amboli also suffered due to its proximity to Goa, only 80 km away. And despite its charms, tourism came here only when interest in Goa's beaches began to flag. Consequently, all the hotels here are under 10 years old and original forest cover rests, like a blessing, as far as the eye can see.