Makrandgad/Mahabaleshwar/Tapola/Pratapgad

Everytime after coming from a Trek, i use to decide "too much.. now i won't be going for a trek again" but as always ended up in going for one more trek. This time with buddies from my project in Capgemini DFS.I told everyone that there is a one day trek (Makarandgad) trekdi is going to organize everyone agreed to go for it, also way to Makrandgad is from Mahabaleshwar so we thought while coming back with trekdi group we will get down on Mahabaleshwar and will have night hault there. Next day we were planning to go Tapola and come back to Pune same day. Everything was set i did the booking for Me,Vivek (Kutti), Manish, Saurabh Shah (Shahji), Siddharth (Chakru), Srijib (Dada) and Pranaya for Makrandgad Trek on Trekdi site. Ankit (Pappu) and Saurabh Trivedi (Robo) were not interested in the Trek so they were suppose to join us on Mahabaleshwar directly.

As per plan we had to reach the FC Road (Meeting Point of Trekdi) on Friday evening, we were suppose to reach the base village of makrandgad at around 1 AM next day. We will stay at base village till morning and then start the trek and will be back by evening. As planned all reach the meeting point, had dinner on a hotel at FC Road. Now Pranaya told us he is not feeling well and having loose motions.. ha ha :-). He told us he will quit and won't be going with us, after some more time he came up saying he will go with us till base village but wont be going with us on trek rather will stay in bus. We all left by a private bus arranged by the Trekdi team, initial journey was OK but after some time ghat section started, snakelike roads and core jungle. I never had an experience of how the arrangements was done by trekdi group for a night stay since all my previous treks were a single day trek. As far as rest of guys with me, this was there first trekking experience and before booking was done everyone asked me how will be the arrangements for night stay and i told them it will be nice trekdi group always organizes the treks very well... later on everyone killed me for that sentence.

Ok back to the story since region was hilly and there was lot of fog during night somehow managed to find the base village. My friends were expecting that there will be some kind of rooms will be available to stay or will stay at house of some local people. I was expecting there will be some tents atleast... he he but there was nothing. Plan of trekdi was to stay all of us in the closed school, we were suppose to sleep in the shade outside the classrooms but that didn't happened because they were not able to find the school in the night because of fog. Finally they found a open place between two houses, choice was either sleep in this open place or in the bus itself. Me, Manish, Shahji and Chakru decided to sleep in the open place with the other group member while pranaya and dada decided to sleep in bus. Dada was all red hot... completely angry on me. We all slept asap since we had to wakeup early next day and had to go for trek.

We woke up early morning, all our bedsheet were wet because of morning dew.. :-). In the morning we found the school, since water was available near to school. We were searching for toilets but we didn't found one, finally we were told that we had to go in forest for that. Damn everyone was like burnt out, we took the plastic bottles and went into the jungle. Since there was no local shops available we had to prepare the breakfast as well, trekdi group bought the stove and packets of maggi. We all prepared maggi, and had it although maggi was not much tasty, it was nice experience. Also lot of school kids came while we were preparing for breakfast, all of them bought different colours of flowers since that day was Gudi Padwa. That made us remebering innocent school days, we took some snaps with the kids as well. After having breakfast looked at the makrandgad fort from base, completely covered with fog we were able to see only a bit of top. Climate was very nice and cool. We started the trek, most of the portion of trek was from the jungle and pinakin as always was sharing knowledge on butterflies, some stories of forest reserves etc. Trek was nice, it was bit dangerous just near the top. We stayed at the top for a while and then started descending down from a different route, after some time we were at the base. We had lunch at the base which was packed parathas, dada was angrier than ever. We started from the base towards the pune, as planned we got down at mahabaleshwar but manish and dada changed there plans at end moment and decided to go to Pune with the Trekdi.

Now Pappu and Robo joined us (Me, Pranaya, Chakru, Shahji and Kutti) at mahabaleshwar, we searched for the hotel first. We roam around mahabaleshwar for a while, at night we had beer and strawberry party. All Non drinkers had there mouthful with strawberries, i was one of them.Saturday came to an end.Next day we went to Tapola by ST Bus, Tapola is near to mahabaleshwar and famous for boat ride on Koyna backwaters. Its a 6 hrs boat ride, we hired the boat and took the permission from forest officer, it is required since we were going in the forest reserve. We did full masti in boat, guide showed us 4-5 points and at the end he took us to the forest camp. We went to the hanuman temple which is on the way from camp to vasota fort. I tell you jungle was very deep, and lot of animal sounds were coming in from every direction.

We came back to mahabaleshwar in the evening, we were suppose to go to pune that evening. We searched for some sort of vehicle but didn't got any, so we decided to go Pune next day morning, but me and chakru was in oppose and decided to go to pratapgad next day and pune in the evening next day. Others left for pune in the morning while me and chakru took pratapgad darshan bus from ST stand and headed towards pratapgad. This Fort is famous because here Great Shivaji killed Afzal khan using Bagh-Nakh. Very nice fort, we took some snaps of the fort and get back to mahabaleswar and to the Pune from Mahabaleshwar via ST Bus.

PS: Don't seek comfort while going on Trek.Its fun coming out of your comfort zone and doing all such stuff. Sharing and Trusting is the other thing which you will learn on such Treks, Plus you will get lots of friends.