Mahimatgad & Marleshwar

After spending around 6 Months in Bangalore, i was badly missing all those Trekking experiences in Maharashtra. I joined one mountaineering club in bangalore but never managed to go with them. Finally on a long weekend i planned to go on trek with Trekdi Group, this time to Mahimatgad and Marleshwar. Marleshwar is famous shiva temple while Mahimatgad is fort used in times of Shivaji Maharaj to keep an eye on Konkan Region.

I asked Anki if she will be joining trek, she said yes and i did bookings for both of us. I travelled from Bangalore to Pune, KSRTC buses are really nice. It was a Bangalore-Mumbai bus, so it dropped me at katraj. Felt great on being in pune, Anki was suppose to come by train from mumbai so i reached Pune railway station. We were meeting after really long time, after that short "Hi-Hello" on dadar station.  As she arrived we directly went FC road our meeting point for the trek. Had dinner and waited for other people to join as we refreshed our childhood memories.

We started from the FC road, stopped in between to had tea. I woke up in morning, we were at Hotel near Sangameshwar Road railway station on Konkan railway line. The Place was really nice, we all had breakfast and moved ahead. Atfirst we went to samadhi of Sambhaji and then visited the Karneshwar Temple. This is the only temple dedicated to "Karna". Architecture of temple was really nice and we had great time. Then on way to Marleshwar we stopped for Lunch, hotel was near to river where we played Antakshari on full volume.

We reached Marleshwar in the evening, Marleshwar is famous for Shiva Temple. We all visited the temple and then had bath at waterfall near to temple. Mann that was really relaxing feeling having bath in Waterfall after exhausting day, Full Masti we did. By the time we made lots of friends, Darshana, Harshad, Sumeet lots more. After visiting marleshwar we reach Kundi base village of Mahimatgad. We had to stay in govt. school of the village, first of all we all prepared for dinner. Trekdi team carried one stove and gas cyclinder, our dinner was hot tomato soup and Magii (Magii Magii... ) :). It was good teamwork.

It was really cold night of Jan, next morning we wake up, had tea and left for the Trek. Trek was nice without any surprises, as we were moving up we saw two police man carrying Indian National Flag. It was 26th Jan Republic day and the were carrying Flag to host at the top of fort which they do every year. We all happily joined them and hosted flag and sang National Athem. It was patriotic feeling and pleasent surprise as no one of us expected we will be hosting National Flag at the fort.

After exploring the fort we started descending down. By 2 Pm we started for Pune. As usual returning journey is always more fun as we all know each other after all that sharing and caring. We were back to Pune in midnight, then after "Bye- Bye" to everyone and giving each other's mail id's, i dropped Anki at her freind's place and i reached at my old house in pune in pradhikaran. This trip was really special in my life and it started a new chapter.

-Jyotin

Kille - Lohgad

Kille-Lohgad is one of the fort which is currently renovated and can be reached by Trek via Malvali or you can ride till its foot via Lonavla. We decided to go by Bike's via Lonavla. Our Group consists Me, Anoop, Candy, Guruy, Amit & Sumit. We started in the Morning, (Sumit,Guru) on Pulsar, (Me,Anoop) on Discover & (Candy,Amit) on Discover. If you wanna Trek to Lohgad then catch a Local from Pune Station.. get dowm at Malavali and go ahead with Trek. One can also visit Bhaje Caves which is on the way and worth a visit.

We had Breakfast in between and easily reached Lonavla within 1 and 1/2 Hr. Since we didn't know route via Lonavla, we asked the Locals for right directions. Lohagad is around 10-12 kms from Lonavla. But that route its very dangerous, roads are very steep and you cannot afford a mistake. We finally reached to Lohgad base village after 2 1/2 hrs of bike driving. We started climbing foot steps to reach at the Top. After reaching the Top we explored the fort, we went till the Buruj at the end. After having lot of photo sessions. We started descending down as we all were hungry.

View of nearby dam from top of the fort is excellent. After reaching back to base village we had snacks. Now here comes the twist of trip, Mr Guru left the key of his bike's Tank in the bike itself and someone took it... :). Now what to do, first of all we lashed out at Guru. We waited for help, one guy was going by his bike and his bike had lock in petrol tank and guess what we were able to open petrol tank of guru's bike with his keys. But waste, since he also need the key to drive his bike, we laughed @ ourselves. With no option, we somehow managed to go till Lonavla as most of the route till lonavla is slope. 

Guru pledged that he will remove that lock from his bike's tank .. ha ha. After reaching Lonavla, we got a keymaker, in no time he made key. Finally we started back. It was almost 8 in the night and everyone was damn hungry after that parade. We found one good hotel and then menu came. After reading menu we looked at each other, that hotel was verrrry costly. :) we had coldrinks and started towards home again, later found one dhaba and had dinner. Reached home at arond 10:30 in the Night, it was nice one day trip. 

Vaishno Devi / Patnitop (J&K)

M Back after a Long time... so much has happened in my Life in the past Six Months,I Got married with the "LOVE" of my Life "Ankita". Getting back to my Travel Experiences;.This one is special bcoz its one of the trips outside Maharashtra. All my trips which i have shared till now were weekend getaways.. this one was a long one. Me and Salil (my cousin) were planning for a long trip since college days but couldn't go bcoz of studies n all. But this time we decided we will go somewhere, i cameup with the Plan to go Vaishno Devi (in Jammu Kashmir) and Jwala Devi (Himachal). Salil agreed, we tried hard to make a group but no one came wid us so atlast we two went on.

As planned i went to Dadar station to board Train (Punjab Mail), Salil was supposed to catch the train from Kalyan station. I planned to board the train from Dadar bcoz Ankita (My Best Friend then) was coming  to meet me at Dadar. I reached dadar around half an hour before the arrival time of Punjab mail but Ankita didn't. I called her she said "I just Left.. ll be there" .. 5 mins .. "I am in Auto .. ll be there".. 10 mins "I just caught Local Train.. Don't worry i ll be there".. announcement of Punjab Mail coming @ Dadar... "M still in Local.. don't worry you go to Punjab Mail's Platform .. i will be there"..  Atlast i saw Punjab Mail coming from one side and from other side Ankita running towards me. We just said "Hiiii .. exchanged Smile... then Bye!!" and i boarded the Train :-). That was shortest possible meeting. Coming back to the trip, Salil boarded the train at Kalyan and next day around 10 Am (Sunday)  we reached Vidisha (My Native Place).

We stayed at Vidisha for a day, Salil's parents came to my place to visit us. Next day (Monday) morning we boarded Jhelum Express from Vidisha station. Journey by train is always a good experience, just before reaching Jammu we got our luggage, mobiles checked by securities. We reached Jammu next night ,around 8 Pm (Tuesday). Just outside Jammu's railway station you can easily get a bus to go Katara which is base for Vaishno Devi.  Got a bus, we reached Katara at around 1Am (Wednesday) Morning. Hotel condition was ok, that guy took 900 Bucks for a stay of two days . Slept for aroud 5-6 Hrs, we woke up early as we had to go for Vaishno Devi darshan. Take my words, bathing that early was the most difficult task :(, that too in. You need to get a ticket for the Darshan, around 15 - 20 Rs per person , then we started for Vaisho Devi yatra with the words "JAI MATA DI!!!".

We were already loaded wid cloths because f cold and to our surprise it rained that morning, so we bought temporary raincoats available for Rs 20 each. Now we were looking like eskimos :). To reach the Vaishno devi gufa you need to walk around 10 Kms. Initial 5 Kms you need to walk, rest 5 kms you can either go by "tattoo" via Ardh kuwari or tempo via other route. We decided to walk till vaishno devi. Vaishno Devi yatra is experience of lifetime man , from every possible direction you will hear  "Shera wali ki Jai.. " "Jyota wali ki Jai.. " "Pahadan wali ki Jai".. lot more. Your energy level will reach cross all the vertical limits. We reached Gufa somewhere around noon, had darshan and came back by eve. One good experience that there r huge numbers of photography studios on whole way, each studio has replica of vaishno devi gufa, you will feel like Devi is with you at every step. We came to Hotel after having dinner and planned for the next day.

We cancelled the plan to Jwala Devi, instead we plan to go Patnitop. As we both wanted see snowfall. Patnitop is a hill station on Jammu Srinagar highway, it is the highest point on the highway so there r very bright chances of snowfall. We got the bus from Jammu bus stop till Patnitop, as we were reaching our destination rainfall started, slowly rain drops were started turning more white as we move on to our destination. And after some time it was heavy snowfall, one of the breathtaking moment of my life. We reached patnitop in that snowfall, everything there was white and completely covered with snow.

Got an amazin Hotel; completely made of wood in kashmiri style. We kept our luggage and went out. All roads were empty but we played with snow like kids and explored the hill town. Stayed at patnitop and next day again came to highway to get bus to Jammu as we had catch the train from jammu. Got srinagar-jammu bus, entire road till jammu was full of scenic beauty of kashmir. We reached jammu by evening and got the Train Malwa Express. All I can say is.. Patnitop is a must visit.. Kashmir is truly a Heaven on Earth...

Ganpatipule... Ekla Chalo..!!!

After Alibaug Trip (My Second Post) a Big Success, we started planning for a Trip again. Searched on the net for some destinations and cameup with Ganpati Pule. Its a Beach on Konkan coast near to Ratnagiri. Ganpati Pule is also famous for Ganpati Temple from which this place got its name, temple of Ganpati is on the Beach itself. We did all the planning, as planned we were suppose to go by ST bus from Swargate Bus Stand on Saturday. As planned i reached Ashish's Place at friday night, but by then everyone backed out from the Trip. Now since i was all set to go, i thought lets have atleast one expierience of travelling alone.I got up early in the morning since bus was at 6:30 Am from swargate bus stand, i reached on time to the stand and got the Bus. Journey by bus was awesome, bus went from panchgani-mahabaleshwar way and joined NH-17 (Mumbai-Goa Highway).

I Reached Ganpatipule at around 3 Pm.. much more time than i expected, since the journey was amazing i didn't felt bored. Ganpatipule is small village, not very much options available to stay. So i started with searching for the hotel first, there is MTDC Beach Resort but that was out of my budget, then there are cheap room available in dharmshala of Ganpati Mandir samsthan but that is available only for married couples or family so i cant get it. Most of the hotels were full, at the end i got room in hotel. Since i was alone i had to submit my I-Card to get the room, thankfully i carried my PAN Card with me otherwise i would have to sleep on beach. Hotel owner took 400 bucks from me for the room for 24 Hrs, then i went ahead to beach for Sunset. I sat for long on the beach watching sunset,  very different experience, kind of independent feeling. On addition to that konkani food was delicious.

Next morning i got up early and went to Ganpati Temple to offer my prayers. There is small mountain adjacent to the Temple, it has shape as face of Ganpati, people use to take pradakshina of the mountain. I also went for the same, i also told my wishes in the ears of statue of mouse infront of Ganpati Temple. After taking the darshan i went for camel ride on the beach and then masti @ Beach as well. I disturbed lot of people to take my snap.. since noone was with me.. he he. I Returned from beach and check out of the Hotel. My Next Desination was Ratnagiri which is around 25Kms from Ganpatipule.

I got ST bus for ratnagiri, route to ratnagiri from ganpatipule was also very nice, you can view Sea all the time. I took almost an hour to reach Ratnagiri, first thing i did was to locate the private transport bus services to Pune. After sometime i booked my ticket to Pune in a Private bus which was at around 9:00 Pm. Now i went ahead to explore ratnagiri by myself. I hired an auto to go Ratnadurg fort, autowala took some 30 Rs to get me there. Fort was Nice and there is temple of Devi on the Fort. I saw the fort from every angle just below the fort was sea. After watching the fort i went down, there were lot of fishing boats, i sat there for a while and went back to city.

Since there was still some time left i explored the ratnagiri market. At around 8:30 Pm i reached the Pickup point of my Bus. Got the bus and reached Pune next morning at around 6:00 Am. GanpatiPule is amazing place, specially beach is very clean with white sand and konkani food is delicious.

-Jyotin

Shivtharghal.. Place where Dasboth was written!!!

I First time heard about Shivtharghal from my cousin Nakul, they had a family visit to the place. Nakul told me this place is full of Natural beauty with the Religious importance, i got this info when i was in College. Since then i thought atleast once i will go to this place. As per Religious importance this is the place where Samarth Ramdas Swami written book "Dasbodh". Now, since none of my friends heard of Shivtharghal i searched for the transport and other things. We five people (Me, Ashish, Ruchita, Deepti and Didi (Deepti's Didi)) were suppose to go for this one.

Shivtharghal got its name from Shivthar and Ghal .. Shivthar is the base village and Ghal means caves, Shivtharghal is actually huge caves where Samarth Ramdas Swami written "Dasboth". Just a day before the Trip was planned Ashish backed out, so me and the three ladies left and we went ahead for the Trip. As Planned we board a ST Bus to Mahad from Swargate Bus Stand at around 8:30 - 9:00 Am, condition of Bus was ok. Journey by bus was amazing, full of natural beauty, road portion near to back waters as well. Most woderful was Vrinda ghat, lot of Hair Pin bends and that ST bus will still go smoothly, hats off to the driver of Bus. We asked the conductor of the Bus to let us know where to drop for Shivtharghal.

Bus halt at Vrinda ghat we took some snaps there, after some time we get down from Bus, from there Shivtharghal was 15 Kms. Got one shared auto for some 15 Rs/head and we reached Shivtharghal at around 1 Pm. Nakul was completely right, this place has Amazing natural beauty, we saw the caves and other stuff and moved ahead for the waterfall. We walked for some time towards upper village and reached to waterfall. Waterfall was complete refreshment, we sat there for a while and moved back towards the caves, found some place to have lunch .. food was just deliciousss. We then planned to move back to Pune, got shared auto and we reached the same village on Pune-Mahad Road.

We waited for bus but not a single bus came for Pune. Atlast we gave up and moved towards Mahad in the hope of getting bus from there. We reached Mahad by shared vehicle, climate was amazing since it was rainy season. We waited at Mahad bus stand for a while and thankfully got a bus for Pune. We were back in Pune at around 9Pm. Shivtharghal is special because very less people knows about this place so no tourists, this place is worth a Visit.

-Jyotin

Matheran Trippp.. :-)

I always heard about Matheran in Magazines, TV Shows but never got a chance to visit it... Finally we made plan to visit this clean hill station. This time we office buddies planned to visit Matheran which includes Me, Mahendra, Dada (Yes same dada from last post :-)) and Sumit. Since Me and Dada are travel freak we made the plan, we were suppose to board express train from Chinchwad Railway Station (Pune-Mumbai Track) early morning saturday, we will go till Neral nearest rail head to Matheran. From Neral we planned either to go by Toy Train if available else by four wheeler. I got up early morning, dada and sumit also reached to my place in time.. then we called mahendra again and again but Mr. Mahedra was sleeping with his mobile on silent. We went to Mahendra house and get him ready by then we missed our train.

We changed the plan and rush towards Akurdi railway station, got local train till lonavla. We had tea/snacks at lonavla and got a passenger train from lonavla till karjat had breakfast at karjat and then finally got local from karjat and we reached Neral. By the time we reached Neral Mahendra was almost killed, because of him we missed the direct train and had to break the journey. Since no Toy train was available at that time we went for an Auto, Auto wala said he will take 30 Rs till waterfall which is midway to Matheran and some 60 Rs till the Matheran. We thought we are travellers yaar we will drop at Waterfall and walk till Matheran from train route. He dropped us near waterfall, we found the railway route and started moving on it after a while some 10-15 dogs came and started barking on us.. we just ran away to road.. ha ha. We move ahead on the road for a while and the saw village from which rail route was going.. we changed plan again to move on rail route from that village, but as we reached in the village same dogs came in and started on us again.. Now we gave up and walked by road only.

Scenic was awesome around, lots of waterfalls, we took lot of snaps and walked around some 1KM, we asked one person how much far is matheran now he said 4 KM, we started walking again and moved around 1KM ahead and then asked some person again... he said Matheran is 4KM from here... ha ha we then forgot our traveller thing and searched for some shared auto finally got one and reached matheran. Matheran is special because this is the only Hill Station where vehicles are not allowed either you have to walk or hire an horse.  Main Matheran city was still 4KM (:D) inside from the point where auto wala dropped us. We searched for some hotel and found one for 800 bucks for 24 hrs. By the time we took some rest in the hotel rain started, we waited for the rain to stop and moved out to roam around in matheran. Around 5PM we moved out we decided to walk, we saw some 4-5 points at the end we reached echo point.

That point was scary full of fog, no one was there except four of us.. we shouted our names and heard the echoes from every direction for a while. By the time we started towards hotel it was dark, we started sharing stories of ghost and all. It was fun sharing all those stories because atmospehere was already there, it was dark, fog was there and old bunglows which we use to see in ghost movies. We reached back to the hotel at around 9 PM had dinner and ended our day with some more interesting ghost stories. Next day Me and Dada wakeup early and moved to see some of the points leaving sumit and mahendra in the hotel. We saw some points.. lot monkeys were providing there company to us everywhere.. we came back to the hotel after 2 hrs, mahendra and sumit were ready by then. We had breakfast first and hired four horses, me and mahendra specially went for the black horses and i give 50 bucks extra to get some tips of horse riding.

Horse riding was fun that too on a Hilly area, our guide showed us lot of points and we covered most of matheran. After having Lunch it was time to move back to Pune, we decided to go back by toy train so we reached the railway station. Dada took 100 Bucks and went to the ticket window to get the ticket, but ticket was some 250 bucks per person. Dada came and we counted the money remaning with us which was some 800 bucks and no ATM was there... so we dropped our plan and came back by Auto to Neral. From Neral we got a direct train to Akurdi and we reached home at around 6 PM.. Matheran Trip was fun..

You should go Matheran Post-Monsoon, Natural beauty is best at that Time..

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.