This week’s been pretty tiring. Moving over from KT phase to Secondary support, solving stuff which seems simple but turns out to be worse than what it shouldn’t be, filling the same old excel sheets multiple times for reasons unknown even to the person who send it, needless formalities and processes just to send a message across to the person at the other side of the globe…Boy, Am I complaining?

Believe me, I’ve never worked this hard in the past few months! All this, just to make sure my work life doesn’t spoil my weekend. The Kundalika river rafting was planned for Sunday and the DH team had planned a series of treks starting this week. I’d decided that I’m not going to miss even a single trek. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why I got myself transferred to Pune on a short term basis for!

15th June

01:20 hrs: I hit the bed after finishing some personal work. The day’s been real long and eventful and a proper sleep is all I need. The sound of water gushing through gorges and sound of rain drops spluttering all about is all that I hear and in moment’s I’m totally blacked out.

05:00 hrs: The Continental music hoots from my mobile to remind me it’s time I get up. My back’s aching real bad and arm’s aren’t any good either. Yesterday’s 10kms of Oaring is slowly taking its toll. I snooze the alarm and get back to sleep. Fortunately, I realize the pain is only going to get worse if I rest longer. I Jump out of the bed and rush to the restroom.

We had to reach Swargate by 06:30, the latest. Ashutosh, Hitanshu – my roommate and Akhilesh - a friend of his would be joining me from Aundh. Vaibhav, Siddharth, and Rahul Nair, were to join us at Swargate. I call up Rahul and Ashutosh to wake them up. Rahul wasn’t really sure if he’d join us. Ashutosh said he’d be meeting us at Bremar circle. We leave for Swargate by around 5:50 and reach right on time to board a State Transport bus to Bhor. Bhor is about 65 kms from Swargate, so that effectively translates to about an hour and a half’s travel. The ST bus picks the Kolhapur route to NH17 through the old Katraj tunnel and after a kings ride ;-) we reach Bhor at about 08:30 hrs.

With not much scope for a proper breakfast, we hit on a VadaPav stall. A kid about seven years old was running the shop. The way he was handling his customers was an interesting sight. Something I’m sure he would beat most of us at! Had hot tea and Vadapav’s and also got some parceled.

For the base point, we had to reach Bajarwadi, a village about 9kms from Bhor. Vaibhav and Siddharth spoke to a few localites and arranged for a Jeep. We reached Bajarwadi at about 08:45 and started the trek at about 09:00hrs. The destination was visible right from the base and it looked pretty easy a trek. The weather got better the higher we climbed. Intermittent showers and heavy winds were consistent company all through the trek. It’s surprising how Nature keeps ridiculing you every time you think you’ve achieved something, always warning you to stay within your limits and not crossing that dividing line!

By 10:00hrs we reached the fort entrance. The fort had three consecutive entry doors and right at the entrance was a board put up by the Govt. explaining clearly in Marathi, the history of the fort. Vaibhav translates each word of it and then with that gyan we keep moving across the fort’s various points. Plausibly, the fort was built by Adil shah, then moved over to the hands of Shivaji and finally came uder the control of the ruler of Bhor. I believe, Aurangazeb too was involved in control flow somewhere in between. This is the first time ever that I’ve spent so much time understanding the fort’s history , walking across all the Burj’s and exploring each part of it.

We finally decided to stop over at one of the Burj for a quick snack. Just moments after we finished munching, the drizzle started all over again. At about 12:30 hrs we decide to start our descent and get back to Pune. The descent was much easier. At one point, we noticed that with some miniscule element of risk we could find our way to a waterfall. Ashutosh, Akhilesh and I decided to take it up and we did finally reach the cascade. The towering fall was all we needed to remove any body pains! Having had a wonderful massage from the falls, we moved towards the base where Vaibhav, Siddharth and Hitanshu were waiting for us. While we were basking in the waterfall, the other three folks were whiling away time near the Bajarwadi temple watching the village folks playing cricket. Later we got to know that Vaibhav and Siddharth had come almost half way up again searching for us :-) !

At about 14:00hrs we got to get into a jeep back to Bhor. At Bhor we had another round of Vadapav ( and not to forget the Spiced up Channa Mix ) and got back to the ST stop to board a bus back to Swargate. Thankfully we didn’t have to wait for long. At about 16:40hrs we reached Swargate and from there boarded a bus to Parihar Chowk. Ashutosh would be in a better position to explain how we boarded the bus ;-) .

The week was tiring, the weekend even more! But I believe, that is what keeps you on your toes and when you hit the bed, pains and aches apart; you know you’ve done at least something worthwhile in life!