A lot of trips, treks and excursions have been planned and planned and planned but never saw the light of the day; enough to earn me a repute for my planning skills. Well this one was planned and executed (literally) in style and with great panache. The plans were in place right one month in advance - reason - the one and only one being that one guy who's as enthu as me to get into thorns, get lost in the wild to sweat it out was getting back to the country after about a year and half..and yes this was ahome coming befitting Ajinkya. Luckliy for me, amey and sam jumped in wid the same enthu forgetting there aircnditioned comforts for the sunny sweating mountains.
Well our (mis)planning was evident here as till 10'00 p.m. not everybody was aware about the next days plans and amey had even wrote off the trek....but a round of phone calls and evrybody was at my place at the crack of dawn. To say a little about the trek...harischandragad is one helluva trek evry enthu trekker treking in the sahyadris wants to do. If I believe some words its the second higheest peak in maharashtra next to kalsubai and has got the most awesome overhanging precipise - konkan kada. It lies in nagar district and is near ozar - one of the asthavinayaks. Well the confusion starts here...the road to be taken! After consesus was arrived we hit of towards chakan on the bombay blore bypass. Ten minutes into the drive and road blocked. Apparantly a truck had overturned...cursing a bad start and after a long detour we were on the track only to be confused again at a fork..initially we took the wrong one and got back on track again. At the end of the drive u reach a village khireshwar at the foot of the fort and a long ardourous drive over a bund wall gets you to there
e with every bone inside you tossed to a different place, begging to be put back in its own. A quick round of tea and we were off!
An interesting thing which we laughed our balls out aftrewards worth mentioning - a group of college goers joined us at the hamlet. they had walked there way down wen we were about to start. My friend Amey
with the 'never-trust- pushkar' caution at the back of his mind asks these guys for directions and times. These guys are aghast about our intensions to start climbing pretty late and warn us about "difficlut rock patches" and with an air around hm one of the guys exclaims - "if u guys are pro, its 5 hours ahead of u" and sarcastically signs of with an all the best kinda message. This 'pro' thing got us laughing like anything and we must have pulled the guys leg a good length i would say. Taking "we were here' kinda snaps we wound our way up. At one paricular point ajinkya gets the nerve to negotiate a difficult rock patch and land me and him land up in good mess. Meantime amey and sam proceed by the humane way. unable to get through we wind back scraping our bottoms but loose amey and sam in all this. Now once u get up the course takes u over and above 7 hills till u readch the
god damn place. Its thick with vegetation and sound echoes over valleys. Our cries were met with replies that appeared to come from totally different direction which we know was wrong. The game of anxiety begins. Finally trusting their sane intellect me and jinks start trotting and sight them after a long time. Reaching the place we find evry single cave taken up by trekkers. We revel in our new found "pro-ness" as we completed the climb in three hours falt.Its holiday season and there are four caves, one temple and lots of cold wind under the dark starry sky to house you. We head out to Konkan kada.
Its brilliant and sheer height with the strong in your face cold stingy wing gives you goosebumps to last forever. Back to the the house hunt we are lucky to find a cave - the catch to it though is its got a puddle of water in the middle. We settle in. the fire is lit and a brass pot is out with lip smacking 'khichdi' getting cooked over it.
Here i learnt why the story 'birbal ki khichdi' found its immortality. Done we go to bed on the hard poky and cold stone floor. Its pitch dark and next morning all talks are about sounds that kept one awake (snoring, teeth ratteling with cold). a quick tea at an small shack and visit to temple we are on the way back.
The only thing worth mentioning on the way back was how evry climber we met on the way back wen asked us about the time left ahead wud meet with a grin ( we were reaallly laughing the balls out thinkiing about the 'pro' statement) and get a very optimistic time from us...and yes living to my stature of being injury prone i had a fall and with a very sore body full of scratches am here writing out the first blog. in the end all's well that ends well. SAM, AMEY and JINKS u guys made yet another trek memorable.
