Even as two prominent hill stations near Mumbai – Matheran and Mahabaleshwar – have received more rains this monsoon compared to Mawsynram, ranked as the wettest place in the world, locals said the downpours have resulted in overflowing lakes, thus severely hitting the monsoon tourism this year.
Both these hill stations are extremely popular monsoon destination for Mumbaikars who prefer to spend their weekends or public holidays to enjoy rains amid nature. However locals from both these places whose economy mostly depends on tourism claimed that given the severity of rains and constant news of flooding, tourists decided to avoid them.
As per the data compiled by Vagaries of Weather, an independent weather forecasting blog run by weather enthusiasts, between June 1 to September 9, while Mahabaleshwar recorded 7877 mm of rains, Matheran also known as the smallest hill station, received 6559 mm of rains. Mawsynram received 6400 mm and Cherrapunji recorded 6218 mm for the same period.
Wetter than wettest
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| Mahabaleshwar and Matheran have got more rains than Mawsynram, world’s wettest place this season |
| Few places in Karnataka have also received surplus rains this year, said Rajesh Kapadia, a weather enthusiast |
Rajesh Kapadia, a weather enthusiast who founded the Vagaries of Weather blog, said that given areas in Konkan as well as Karnataka have received surplus rains this monsoon season.
"There has been a very active offshore trough and its interaction with several systems coming from Bay of Bengal has resulted in very heavy rainfall especially in the wind wardside of the Western Ghats where both these hill stations are located," he explained.
Kapadia added that given how transportation and other facilities gets hampered during rains, it is pretty obvious that tourists avoided going to these two extremely popular places given the heavy downpour.
"We were hoping for a good tourism season this monsoon but due to very heavy rains almost 30 to 40 percent of total bookings done were canceled by tourists during weekends when it rained heavily. Also due to the fear of being stuck in floods and difficulty in travelling around Matheran itself tourists who even visit Matheran for a day or two also avoided coming here,"said former Matheran Municipal Councillor Manoj Khedkar
According to a popular resort in Mahabaleshwar the number of tourists saw a major drop this monsoon. "We have a huge number of tourists coming from Mumbai but since Mahabaleshwar was always in news for heavy rains, tourists were actually worried about coming here. So being one of the wettest place in India worked against us this season," the manager chuckled.
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