Travel

Approximately 2000 feet above MSL as you cling to your dear life with those nimble fingers, along the crevices of a rock overlooking a deep valley; All you get to sense is the rush of blood across your veins up to your brains! For those few seconds, as you’re left with nothing but just sheer gut instincts to guide you through, you’re stupefied by the way Mother Nature whispers in your ears as to how important your life is! I guess at times, it does help to reason out how important that thin dividing line between life and death is! ...

If you’ve hit this page looking for directions on the Ratangad - Harishchandragad trek; I’m afraid, the bots have routed you to the wrong page. This is a travel tale of 30 wise morons from various places in India, on a mission to accomplish the R-H trek in three days as India rose to it’s 61st year of independence on August 15th. That said, you may want to refer to this link for more info and details. And if you just thought you’re going to find your way out and complete the R-H trek with the help of blogs and posts alone; Be forewarned, you’re surely in for hyper trouble and your close one’s would soon be contacting the forest gaurds to scout for yet another moron. Get the rules right and tread the path with someone who’s been there ample number of times! ...

The Bombayz had come down to Pune a few hours before I reached home after rappelling at Kondividi. 10:30 pm at night,Tiwari and Pranesh join us for dinner at Rasoi Ghar. It’s been close to a year that I’ve had dinner with any of my Engg. mates. This time during dinner, there are no tickets to ponder on, no actions items to be worked upon, no resolutions to be done; Just plain simple talk pulling each others legs! This would probably be etched as one of those few dinner’s I’d remember for quite sometime. We reach home at about 11:30pm. I hit the ground with an aching knee reminding me of today morning’s incident while rappelling. At times, pain is pleasure! ...

The blue tarpaulin sheet suddenly gives way and my feet impulsively tries to gain hold on the rocks. I lose grip and one of my slippers hits the rocks about hundred and fifty feet below. Even before I have time to think on what’s apparently gone wrong I foolishly tag the rope in my left hand instead of the right. And just one thought zips in my mind.. Damn! I shouldn’t have volunteered to be the first one to rappel down! ...

[fruitful_tabs type=“default” width=“100%” fit=“false”] [fruitful_tab title=“Blog”] There are three reasons why I’d not forget this trek! The first being, I wasn’t the youngest member in the team; the second being we had a 10 year senior,quite oblivious to us, sitting silently listening to all the *facts* about organisations and policies that we were putting forward; the third would get pretty evident as the print runs through till the end of this post! ...

[fruitful_tabs type=“default” width=“100%” fit=“false”] [fruitful_tab title=“Blog”] Boy, Oh Boy! For the past two and a half months, I’ve been pampering hard ground every weekend ; but believe me, I’ve never been this satisfied as I am today after the trek. It’s been an adventure in the real sense! Walking through the dense vegetation with no idea where, when or how we’re going to turn up, not even remotely bothered of what could have been happening in the cities out there; losing paths and realising it after you’ve covered two or three kms;Tramping the 40+ kms in the splintering rain stopping just for nourishment en-route right from 09:00am all through till 09:00pm; taking respite in those scores of waterfalls rejuvenating our muscles and senses; crossing knee deep torrential streams just to find another just a few kms away; Groping to find directions in the dark.Phew! Indeed been one of THE best treks I’ve covered till date during my brief stay here in Pune. ...

[fruitful_tabs type=“default” width=“100%” fit=“false”] [fruitful_tab title=“Blog”] Dhok pings me and Vaibhav at about 4:00pm to let us know that we may have to get to Muralgad on bikes, as commutation by ST may become a problem. There were about eight of us and we weren’t really sure how many would fancy biking to the base. With all this, Muralgad as this weekend’s destination didn’t sound that interesting! I’m not sure whether it was me or Vaibhav who brought about the idea of changing the plan and getting Abhishek to agree on Torna instead. Couple of minutes later, Dhok sends out a mail to the Deccan Highlander group and by about 06:00pm the count stood at 7. Later, I get to know from Suhas, Dhok received a solid dose from him for changing the plan. I’ll let Vaibhav take that honorable priviledge :-) . ...

Last thursday, late at night as I check my gmail, I happen to get a mail from Shashi with pictures of Kalvantin Durg. Almost instantly I decide to re-plan this weekends trip to this place instead of the Raigad trek. A few minutes later, as I get out of the instantaneous glory; intelligence looms and I realise that the Hyd folks would screw me real bad had any more changes been made! Just a day back I’d changed the previous plan of the Lohgad-Visapur trek to Raigad as the previous one had very few takers initially. ...

I love Americans! Why don’t they have a lot many more National Holidays? The last week had been been pretty stuffed up with tickets and deadlines. And damn! Murphy’s always right - they pop up right at the moment you need to leave. Thanks to the American Independence day, this friday was a paid holiday. A much needed break! Done with some mundane work, I sift through BBC to catch up with some news.Sometime at around 4:00pm the much awaited mail from Rahul arrives - The latest count was 23! This trek was going to be a bit different. The positive response was probably because of the emphasis that was laid on the simplicity of the trek and the late start timing that was decided - But for a few nuts, who would like to wake up early on a saturday morning? ;) ...

June 27th I’m quite surprised! I seem to be the last person to wake up this time! Ideally Suhas was to drop by my house at around 3:30 am after his night shift. When my alarm hoots at 4:45 am, I sense the first drop out for the trek. I anxiously dial his number only to hear that he’d be reaching my house in a few minutes. The routine starts again. The next person on the roll was Rahul- someone well known in our group to doze in mighty glory when his presense is really required. Quite surprisingly, today he picks the call right at the first ring and he pretty much sounded alert enough. So i move on to the next person - Amrita. The call goes on but no one picks. A few minutes later she calls back telling me that even she was very much awake. Ashutosh too was almost set and he’d be reaching Parihar chowk in a couple of minutes.We’d to reach Shivaji Nagar Stn. by around 6:00 am to board the train to Karjat. ...