Monsoon Treks...

Monsoons are surely a Gods way of reminding us of the beauty in the world and how we all would be without it. The barren mountains rocks of Pune were such a sore sight to the eye tat I was desperate to see some rain before I leave this place. And rain it did, continuously for the past 10 days, sure did feel like being in Heaven. Especially when u come from the barren desert world of South India (barring GOD’s (pronounced as G ”ODE”s ) own Country!) it definitely is a divine feeling to be driving in the rain.

If you r are familiar with Pune, you would realize that Pune has some of the amazing trekking spots on India. All the great Marata forts were always built on some remote locations that remain untouched by the commercial carnivores (i.e. except for Singhad). I have to describe trekking on Sahyadris as nothing short of a religious experience; to climb all that green and the towering mountains and to watch the entire valley below us as a distant flat land is simply breathtaking. God does exist and HE lives among these high mountains.

Anyways I always liked doing something that would exercise some of the muscles in the body, as my body doesn’t get to do anything significant in life other than typing documents!, I decided to take up trekking as a chief hobby. I had a cool gang of friends to hang out with who like me had nothing much do on the personal fronts (Single and needless to say frustrated J).

• My first trek was to Raigad, the capital of Shivaji’s empire. One of the highest forts and at a height of over 4600 feet. As this was my first trek was obviously excited and enjoyed it to the max, except for the fact that my back hurt like hell after traveling back and forth 200kms on ghat road. But the roads were a treat though, it was more than beautiful! Cant forget how we struggled to find our room as at 6pm without a warning the mist descended and visibility dropped to zero. And also cant forget the hot omelets we ate at some shop there. Especially HP who ate about 7 omelets in one go (Trekking Team: Me, HP ,Mandar, Harish , Sendil )
• Bitten by the trekking bug, I decided to conquer some other fort, but this didn’t happen for some time as project caught up with me. But somehow managed to go to Thikona, a small triangle shaped fort. This had been such a great experience tat even before we could climb this one we had promised that we would definitely climb its partner fort of Thung in subsequent week. Again HP made this trip eventful with breaking his specs and we had to retreat and wait till they open a optical shop to repair and then we started on our trek . (Trekking Team: Me, HP ,Deepak, Sunay , Sendil )
• Then arrived the best trek of my life. This I will cherish for all my life. As it had everything, Thung ,standing at 4700feet the tallest point in the entire Western India. The trekking team was predictably the same with Sunay giving way to Jeevan. But this time the route was a major disaster, there were no roads to drive through to the mountain. It seemed as if the mountain was playing hide and seek with us as every 10kms we moved closer to the mountain it would seem to us that we had gone farther and not nearer. Finally when we somehow reached there, it was pouring down like it’s a crazy day in hell. Mist covered everything and we could only see one feet above us and one feet below us. But such was the enthusiasm among us that we hardly felt anything and we had the climbed the tallest point in the shortest time ever (atleast for us in little over 30 mins!). And we figured out that we had taken the longest route to the peak when it was merely 15kms from lonawala and it would have taken only half an hour by that route from lonawala.(Trekking Team: Me, HP ,Deepak, Jeevan , Sendil )
• Then came the timid trek of Singhad. This was hardly difficult coz we didn’t trek it at all, we just reached the top by a jeep and then continued to sight see the fort. But the timing of the trip was bad as it was late winter and the greenery was already vanishing. But still atleast it adds to the total J .But we got bored with normal descent and we decided to come down by a pathway that was a kind of risky and steep. But not so difficult as the rest. (Trekking Team: Me, Manoj, Sourabh, Vijay )
• My most recent trek came in July,2005 when in the last weeks of my stay at pune, brought together some of my friends and pushed them to go for a fort. But for the first time as there were some of our colleagues (gals) agreed to come with us, we went for a less difficult fort called Purandar. The climate was inclement and the land slides were happening all over the place, so we didn’t reach till the forts peak. We had to stop short of it, it gave an incomplete feeling to the whole trek, but didn’t want to risk too much.

My trekking suffered this year because of my posting at Bangalore and also that most of my friends are now back in Bangalore doing what they do best(NOTHING!) .

YO! Sendil, HP, Deepak, Gopi , Jeevan, Harish !! It had been a thoroughly enjoyable and adventurous time with u guys! May b that some day we shalt repeat the process again.