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.