By road
~100 km from Mumbai
West India · Maharashtra
Matheran, Maharashtra
Asia's only automobile-free hill station · ~100 km from Mumbai
Getting there
By rail
Matheran has its own station, the terminus of the narrow-gauge toy train from Neral Junction (~21 km away, on the main Mumbai-Pune line, ~86-90 km from Mumbai)
By air
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai, ~100 km
Best time to visit
October to May — red-earth trails at their best
Don't miss
Panorama Point
Charlotte Lake
Echo Point
One Tree Hill
Things to do
Toy-train ride up
Point-to-point forest walks
Horseback trails
Where to eat
Sources: open-meteo, wikimedia, Photo: Nilesh.shintre · CC BY-SA 3.0
What to pack
Walking shoes (you WILL walk), monkey-proof bag habits
A quieter corner
Sunset at Porcupine Point followed by the lamp-lit walk back
About Matheran
- Hills
- Forest
Where it is
Matheran is a small hill station in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, on a forested ridge of the Western Ghats at about 800 m, east of Mumbai.
History
Matheran was developed as a hill station around 1850 by Hugh Malet, the district collector, as a summer retreat for the British in Bombay. The narrow-gauge Matheran Hill Railway from Neral opened in 1907, and cars are still banned in the town.
People
Matheran's people speak Marathi, and with cars banned, horse handlers and porters carry visitors and goods along its red-earth paths. Katkari and Thakar Adivasi communities live in hamlets on the surrounding slopes.
Known for
- Car-free red-earth lanes
- The Neral–Matheran toy train
- Charlotte Lake
- Horse rides and hand-pulled rickshaws
Did you know?
Cars are banned in Matheran, where only ambulances and e-rickshaws may drive, and the area was declared an eco-sensitive zone by India's environment ministry in 2003.
We haven't written a guide for this place yet — you can still plan a trip here.