Trek with URJA @ Sudhagad @ 13th July 08

This was my first trek with URJA whose coordinator is Yatin. I guess he is the only “Karta-Dharta” of this team. One thing good about his organizing trek is comfort he offers. We went to the destination via bus from Thane. But of course nothing comes free, I guess charges were really high and we were not even provided evening snacks (because of time scarcity, we were already late so how 20-30 minutes would have made a difference…. I don’t know….). This time I was on time and I know no one will believe me but I was the first person to reach the destination :-). We started our journey at around 7:30 am which was late considering we gathered at 6 am. We boarded the same bus which carries Patni employees during weekdays. Some of the Patni employees were disappointed to see that :P.

Bus journey was good, as weather was cool and it was drizzling since early morning. I tried to keep my eyes open but I was really tired, slept for almost half of the distance. In the short span in which I was awake I noticed that we were going in Mumbai-Goa highway (Karnala route) and we took a right turn after we were 60 kms from Panvel. The destination was Pali and from Pali we were supposed to go to Thakurwadi (I was confused with “Thakurwadi” as this was the name of village in Sarkar Raj, but this was not the same village. This proves that lots of Maharashtra village have same name :-) ). As soon we finished group introduction and started for trek, it started raining heavily. (another warm welcome :D.)

This trek falls under easy grade so it was a leisure walk for me. My eyes were constantly searching for some waterfall. I can see one from the base village itself but it was not in the route to the top. I was ahead of the whole group, so I decided stray a bit and look for the route. I almost found it but it was far away and would have taken another 10 minutes. So I decided to return and join the group. I guess I was not energetic enough that day. We reached the top very easily. The top of sudhagad is a “big” plateau with some water cisterns. These are big in size and were causing formation of waterfalls. One of the fall was in our route and as usual I was below it to take some rest. I thoroughly enjoyed it and soon other group also joined me.
We waited for others to reach on top and then we went to see other spots of this trek. MahaDarwaja, Temple, 1-2 more points. But frankly speaking I was not very impressed by any :-(. The one reason I was enjoying fully was my shoe. The frictional sole of my shoe was completely gone and I was walking on slippery surface. I fall once while walking on slippery rock. I hurt my knee and was seriously disappointed and low that day. We all descended pretty soon, as there was nothing else to do there. I even slept for 45-50 minutes. I was not taking any chances while descending and walked very slowly. The whole group was really slow and we were late by the time all came down.

While returning we went to Pali temple which was one of the best part of this trek . After that we were supposes to have “heavy refreshments” but what we got was like “jeera in my mouth” :D. After Pali our bus journey started again, we reached Thane at around 11 pm. Overall it was trek for begineers and needed good planning which was completely missing.

Blogging after a long time…Peb completed

I am really sorry about this but I don’t know why writing my experience got delayed. I will try to summarize them form here onwards....

After unsuccessful trek to Peb, I took rest because of my own reasons. It felt very dull the whole week after that. That means trek are exhaustive but w/o them life is “still as rock”, not solid though :D. This week was I guess 28^th-29^th June 08. The week after that (5th-6th July 08) no good trek was organized. So I decided to complete the unfinish trek to Peb. I had planned to start early but it got delayed (as usual ;-) ). I started very late, I caught a train at 8:50 am in the morning. After getting down in Neral, I bought some stuff and started the trek at 10:45 am. This was late but as I was alone and half of the trek was known to me so I pace it up. The good part was the rains, they were welcoming me and I kept moving w/o any halt. I reached the point from where we backed off in 1hour 30 minutes.

After reaching that point I met four guys who were standing in front of a dead rock. The only way to go ahead was to cross the rock, and it was easy to cross it. As always I volunteered and asked them to wait for me. I crossed that rock and went ahead to check the route. (Btw I was already sure of this route as I have checked the other routes last time and this was the only one left.) After walking for 5 minutes, the wall of fort was visible. I returned back and conveyed the same message to the group. I helped them to climb the rock and we moved forward towards fort. We rested in the caves for a while, I told them about what I have read. I told them if we will keep moving and cross this hill we can reach to Matheran-Neral rail route.

Those guys were really enthusiastic, they agreed to come (one of the other reason was that they did not want to go down through that rock again :P ). So we started again our journey. As always w/o a guide it was confusing, but I was trying to use my experience and was leading the others. After reaching a diversion, we were really confused to which way we should go. I asked one guy to go in one and I went to other. The route towards my side was flat and looked as if it was crossing the whole mountain range. The other was going to the top of that range. I wanted to follow the flat one but I was not trying to dominate either. I listened to the other fellow and we started climbing the range. To our surprise, this route has ropes tied to tree at top so that trekkers can use them for climbing. We reached to the top safely and from here view was simply breathtaking.

From here we started walking in the ridge towards downside. After a while we saw a hut which we discovered was a small temple. The guy offered us the tea but his partner forgot to prepare the same (ho gayi googly :D ), so we avoided wasting more time and went ahead. I observed that the flat route was also meeting the hut from other direction. But the views made it worth to climb the range :-). After getting some idea about the direction we went ahead. In the way we descended a ladder, which was very safe as compare to described in the internet. After walking for 15 more minutes we reached the railway trek. Here we had our lunch and then we moved forward. While walking on this path, we found many waterfalls, which certainly I enjoyed the most :D. The railway route pass through the road many times while moving towards Neral. So decided to get into the road from the very 1^st intersection.

Luckily we found a empty cab going downwards which agreed to take us down. While returning I was looking for one waterfall which many people have told me about. To my surprise it was huge and seems really very good. I wanted to stop but others were exhausted and leaving the cab would have caused more walking. I did not want to hurt them and feel selfish, so I also didn’t insisted. We reached station in time and caught the train at 5:30 pm. Overall it was a good trek and I felt relieved after completing it :-).