Rajmachi,,, Longesssssst One

Rajmachi... heard about the stories of this trek from my previous Team Lead Sandeep Ratan. I was always fascinated by the endurance required for this Trek, it's really a very demanding one. Four years later finally i got a chance to go on this trek with my team mates in Office. Nilesh initiated for this trek, initially we planned to go for Lohgad as most of the people going for this trek were first timers. Then we had a formal meeting in conf room for the discussion :D.. later it was finalised that we will be going for Rajmachi Trek. Initially there were lot of enthusiastic people for trek and count was suppose to reach 20+ but on the day of Trek we were 10. Me, Nilesh, Praveen, Bhandari, Chits, Paddy, Sushil, Pavan, Sukhi and Mihir. As planned we were suppose to catch local from Akurdi stattion, except Sukhi and Paddy who were suppose to board train from Pune Station.

Woke up early morning at 5am, missed Anki :-( she use to wake me up daily calling from US. But she was travelling to philadelphia over the weekend, so she could not wake me up.I Reached Nilesh's place in indrayani nagar by 6am and we left for akurdi by his car, reached Praveen's place where we need to pick praveen and mihir. We waited for around 15-20 mins as Mr Praveen were taking bath after ages. Finally we reached akurdi on time, Bhandari and chits were already there. Bhandari already took tickets for us, rest of the guys also joined us and we boarded the local at 7:05 am. We reached lonavala, climate was bit sunny and everyone was hoping for rain. First thing we did was to have breakfast bcoz, we knew that once we start trek there will be nothing in between. So ound one hotel and everyone had Masala dosa. We also had sheera, later we left for the trek. After intial confusion we were on right way.

We enjoyed initial trek a lot, at first we halted at tungarli dam. We had good photo session, there was a guy who was doing fishing at the dam. We troubled him :) took his fishing stick and used it for getting good snaps for FB, Orkut etc etc. We moved on after 10 mins than we stopped at the waterfall, again everyone was full enthusiastic for photographs. We had fun at the waterfall, this was the place were bhandari skid for the first time :). We started the trek again, upwards the mountains, downwards from the mountains, through the grasslands, crossing the rivers , through the jungle,, this trek had every type of section you can imagine. After almost 3 1/2 hrs of trek saw huge waterfall, Nilesh took some snaps and here suhil got his shoe stuck in mud. We made fun of him and after some time bhandari got his shoe stuck in mud again. It took lot of time to get his shoe out, everyone cheered as his shoe was coming out of mud. We stayed near a small water source where bhandari was cleaning his shoe and here he got skid again ha ha :) . He had real badluck that day.

From here we could see both the forts, we moved ahead and after some time we found small snacks shop as we reached rajmachi village. We asked him for the way towards the fort, once confirmed we moved ahead again. Later we reached a temple halted there for a while and started trek again. It took us 6 hrs to reach at the top of fort, it was 3 pm. Last leg the trek was very dangerous, which made us remember our gods.  But at the end it was amazing feeling to reach the top. We stayed at the top for a while and started descending down, after some time we reached the snack shop where we asked for the way. We had Poha and tea at the snack shop, here chits and sukhi were attacked by mosquitos. We coated our skin with mosquito repellent, but it didn't worked. Around at 4:30 pm we started back, as slowly we made our way forward, length of our footsteps was decreasing and breadth was increasing :D.

In last two hours of trek we took break at every 15 minutes, there were loads of funny incidents while coming back. Praveen and Paddy made me remember Vikram/Betal, Sushil who was jumping here and there while going towards rajmachi was half dead by now. Nilesh and Me might have the funniest of all walking posture. Soni brother's (Mihir and Pavan) were leading the trek now, we took rest everywhere possible. Somehow we reached lonavala, had dinner in a hotel and walked till station (this was not easy as it's sounding). Finally reached station, i was praying "God.. please local should be from platform -1" as i don't wanna cross the stairs to reach other platform but to my badluck local was from platform-2. Somehow we managed and got local train, i slept on one of the seat. Each portion of my body was in pain like anything, we reached akurdi station by 11pm Night. Then me and nilesh left for nilesh's house where i parked my bike, took my bike and reached home.It took me almost 15 mins to reach till lift of my building from parking :D,, security guard burst into laugh looking at my walking speed and posture,, damn me. But this trek was really amazing one, everything went as per plan (except loads of body pain which took almost an week to recover completely) :-)

-Jyotin