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.

Vairatgad Trek.. Pleasent One

Vairatgad is a small fort in wai region, as far as History is concerned this fort was built in 11th Century. Great Shivaji Maharaj used this fort as a Military station. This Trek was also arranged by Trekdi Group, we (Me, Guru, Nilesh and Sandeep) participated for this Trek. Me and Guru has BIG kida of travelling, we always use to roam here and there. Nilesh was my onsite-cordinator just returned from US 2 that time and Sandeep was my offshore lead in the project. This was Nilesh's first time while Sandeep had huge trekking expierience.

Eventhough i had a Night shift i was all excited about trek next morning, Nilesh picked us all and we reached FC road meeting point of Trekdi. We kept our bag in bus and all four left to had a tea in nearby stall. We were gossiping at the stall, than we saw a bus passing from nearby road. Me and Guru saw the bus, looked at each other, i asked "Is that our bus", then we saw the place where our bus was standing, nothing was there. We were like Oh Shit!!!, we ran behind the bus,  thankfully i had the number of Shridhar Group leader of Trekdi. I called him and  ask him to stop the bus on next square. Finally we got the bus, face of shridhar was all red that time when we entered in the bus.

Jounery through bus was good, no sign of rain only clouds. One uncle bought mouth organ with him and played very nice old songs like "hai apna dil to awara.. " quite amazing. We had breakfast on the way and reached the base village within one and half hour. We started the trek, lost the way as always while going up. Some enthusiatic uncle's in there 40's found the way somehow , trek was quite easy except one slope which we had to cross carefully. We all reached the top of fort helping each other after two hours.

Everyone had the look of fort and had food together. Best thing is everyone used to share food with each other, its like lot of different dishes. Fort was small just having some remains and one old shiva temple. After some time we all started descending down from the fort, within one and half hour we reached the base of village. Nilesh took some amazing pics of the surrondings with his High-End Camera, Sandeep was sharing his stories of past trek. 

We started back by bus again, antakshari on Full-On. We had snacks while coming back. Vairatgad Trek was quite pleasent, made loads of friends.

-Jyotin

My First Trek Sinhgad

Sinhgad.. One of most famous fort of Great Shivaji Maharaj & most popular weekend gateway for Puneri Paltan!!!.. We all room mates (Me, Amit, Anoop , Chintu & Sumit(anoop's cousin) ) planned to visit Sinhgad on last day of year 2006. All reached Shaniwar wada where we got PMT bus for the base village of sinhgad fort.. It took almost an hour from Shaniwar wada to reach the base.. time was arnd 2:30 pm. At the base we had snacks and Anoop generally asked the shopowner that how much time it will take to trek fort?.. answer was 2 hrs.. We all were like "What!!! " its 2:45 pm now and it will take 2 hrs to reach the top and we have to see the fort, we have to return back and also we need to celebrate New Year @ Home..

We started the trek, it was pleasent trek and we managed to reach the fort within one and half hour (Big Achievement :-D ).. we saw the fort, it's a Huge fort but we covered the most within 1 hour.. watching Sunset was the Best thing..We came down by shared Auto.. back to Base village around 8:30 pm ..

Now here comes the twist of the Trip.. we were waiting for the bus from base village to pune.. we waited, waited and waited but no bus came.. :-) Finally we decided to walk till next square which was 3 km ahead... after lot of suffering we got bus and reached nigdi at around 11:15 pm.. Bought one Cake from Bhelchowk and finally reached home at 11:45 pm and Celebrated "NEW YEAR 2007" @ 00:00 .. Full fun!!!

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-Jyotin