cope
Carry a good pair of comfortable walking shoes. Matheran is quite dusty and there is red soil everywhere.
The roads can be rough with many small stones in them, but they are not sharp craggy rocks. If you wear a good pair of shoes with thick soles you should be fine. Obviously, if you don't intend walking much then this doesn't really matter too much.
The weather is truly excellent as you can walk around even in summer without feeling too uncomfortable. Morning is the best time from trekking but be ready for a hazy view as the cloud covers the place at early morning.
You can trek right down from Dasturi to Neral station, either following the ghat roads or the toy train tracks. The best would be to combine both the routes for a spectacular view. This trek will take around 1 hour and you would find only 1-2 small tea stalls. Carry water.
Avoid carrying too much baggage with you. You can't take it up by car and need someone to carry it for you. Some of these porters are women and you may not feel right about a woman carrying your heavy bag. Anyway, it's quite easy to find a male porter also called "coolie" in India. They may charge around Rs. 60-100 US$ 1.5-2 for carrying your bags to your hotel depending on where your hotel is. Also they are reliable and you can safely hand over your bags to them and take any route you want. They will be at your hotel before you.
The charges for horses differ. The horse keepers charges anything between Rs. 100 to 500. You can bargain.
Carry enough cash with you, as there is only one ATM in Matheran and unfortunately it often does not work during monsoon.
There are monkeys around. Please do not feed them or play with them. Don't openly carry any food articles with you, as monkeys would definitely try to snatch it away. Sans food they are pretty harmless.
