Hooked a Thread

Rajmachi. A name heard over years. When I hear the word Rajmachi, a memory comes to my mind. An old conversation by an old friend about his visit there which includes lots of Forest officers, jungle and rain. So when I planned about this trek I was very excited.

This time the team was Sudhindra, Akash and me. With eggs, and fruits, and clothes and blankets, and water we caught Pune bound Indrayani express. This train always takes me back to my CDAC training days in Pune. The journey didn't take long and by 8.15AM we were at Lonavala station.

What a pleasant morning. The thrill of walking in this morning set a धधम धधम rhythm in my heart. Having सटर फटर breakfast we started our hike. On some enquiry we found our trail. Which was a dirt motor-able road along the beautiful mountain range of Lonavala. To our west was a deep valley which raised a mountain far away running parallel to our path. To our east was a huge mass of stone wall. Wow! Magnificent. The mountain on the west had a railway track running on its stomach. Like an ant line the train passed blowing its horn. There was no sound except the thud of the railway diesel engine.

We walked with a fair speed. There wasn't any ascend or descend. Plus the morning air with low humidity. वाह!!. We reached a clearance and we found four huge buses parked on the way. लफडा. Four buses, we thought our silence and peace was gonna ruin. On enquiring with the drivers, we found out that they were gonna return the same day itself. A relief!. So again धधाम धधाम we continued. Many bikes, cars passed us on the way.

Shrivardhan and Manaranjan which were to our north west magnified with our each step. We reached a fork in the road, left way was Rajmachi. We took it and the way entered a thick forest which curved the mountain range to left. Here there was a very mild ascend. We heard a very distant चपड चपड. Kids! We thought and there they came a whole bunch of 5-6 year old with their barbie and doremon zolas towards us. So they were the ones who came in those buses!. Akash waved the stick in his hand in front of a kid and did हहेहे. That kid angrily snapped back at Akash with a louder हॅहॅहॅ and an insulting ,” चल जा बे”. Further one cute little girl in the group said, “ hello, go and see the Rajmachi fort”. We thanked her and said, “ sweet kids”. “But not that other one”, said Akash. We successfully stopped him from complaining their teacher about that knucklehead.

Now the fort shrivardhan was to our right. We had turned over the curved mountain and the route we came from was to our left. It felt like we were heading towards the pointed end of a hook. A short walk took us to Rajmachi village. The village has a tourist air to it. The development was new and decent. The primary source of income seemed to be from the tourists visiting the forts. An hour long rough drive through forest has made tourism possible. We found our contact - Janire family's house and made dinner and stay arrangements at their place. We reduced the weight of clothes and blankets there and with food and water we went towards the forts.

The trail to the forts start from a col between the two hills. There is an ancient temple in this col. Or should I say was. Because the pictures I had seen of this temple were completely different. What I had seen was an image of a ancient stone built monument with silence of nature. What I was seeing was a shop, laid at entrance of a house, oil painted with yellow and pink. There was drunk मंडळी in its yard cooking food in a huge vessel. Their clothes and undergarments laid out on its roof and stones. Keeping that monument to see for some other time( without the undergarments but still with the oil paint ) I headed towards shrivardhan fort.

This hill is stone walled beautifully, the walls dissolving in the mountain do not make its existence known. Let's just hope buffoons don't paint this wall with yellow and pink, their underwear color. This fort has beautiful caves and potable water cisterns carved in it. Water in one such cisterns was so clear and tempting we just filled our bottles with the sweet stone juice. It cooled our bodies and soothed our muscles. The view from the top of this fort was tremendous. Mountains and mountains around. I was sure that all these mountains and hills had their names with numerous trails in their midst. But I knew none of them. I could just see but not know where I could go. But yes they were all welcoming. And yes some day from one of those cliffs and trails I would recognize the place from where I was seeing them.

We descended shrivardhan. None of us were hungry and in hurry for lunch as we had been munching on fruits and snacks on regular intervals. It was about 3 PM. We started to hike Manaranjan. It was a pleasant and a short hike. On Manaranjan there are water cisterns and some damaged house like structures. The reflection in these cisterns was another sky in the water. We hiked Manaranjan on along its edges witnessing a different view with each step. Rajmachi village looked beautiful with slanting roofs on its head, fields on its shoulders and a lake in its ears. We had our lunch in a stone walled house with no roof.

It was about 4.45PM when we came to the edge where trail towards the col starts. Seeing that we had time on our hands we laid down on a flat rock bed. I was seeing a tremendous vast sky with streaks of clouds, high in it. When I saw the sky and the mountains I knew that they will be there. The question is will we be there? Sun was slowly going down the sky to light new mountains and trees somewhere in the world. We descended Manaranjan quickly.

Reached the col and saw that बेवडा buffoons were now painting the wooden columns of the temple with pink. There was a different trail going somewhere. A man told us that there is a potable water cistern there. We went there and came back to head towards the village.

We relieved ourselves of our bags and shoes and rested for a while. Our dinner was being prepared in the house. We decided to take a stroll till then. Mountains around looked orange in the twilight. When it was dark we looked at the stars. Played with them actually. Mind was wandering towards everyday worries but stars brought it back to the now. There was singing and noise in the village. Silence was stolen by अंताक्षरीs and किलकीलात. It's OK I said to myself. It's still beautiful out there.

A group was sitting around a campfire singing. We went to our place for dinner. There was a group of middle aged बेवडाs swearing and cursing their fate. Apparently our hosts had not let them drink because they were swearing and disrupting others. They were furious. I was glad and felt good that commercialization had some ethics after all.

We went in for dinner. Such food!. अंडा कडी, तांदळाची भाकरी, भात, कांदा, लिंबू, ठेचा, आणि ते पण unlimited. Had a good conversation with Janire family and headed out. Akash and I decided to take a stroll in the night while Sudhindra decided he would go and sleep.

So we went out. People around the campfire were gone leaving sparks in the fire behind. We sat there and took some warmth off the hot extinguishing wood and went to sleep. It was after years, many years that I slept at 9.30PM. We woke up in the morning at 6. Again it was after years that I had slept for such a long time. We freshened up packed our bags and had our morning breakfast. कांदा पोहा cooked by Janire काकी.

We asked for directions to descend towards Kondhivade village near Karjat and bid our farewell to the Janire family. The view from the edge from where we were gonna descend was mesmerizing.

We kept our pace slow and had fruits on our way down. Our next stop was kondhane caves which I knew were somewhere on the right hand side while facing the valley. We went there and found that the entry was restricted on account of a film shooting. They said that shooting would go on the whole day. We decided to leave because the sound of their generator and restricted access was frustrating.

I don't know, if holding a public place, for a movie shoot or any such thing, where people come from distant places is right or not. But it's not good to make others adjust for your benefit either. I believe in, "your poop, your mess, your job to take care of it". We continued down. Many people were on their way to see the caves. They were either gonna be excited that they were going to see a film shoot or they were going to be pissed off. “Beauty lies in the eyes of the observer”, they say.

We descended down. Looked at the mountain we had descended. We could see the beautiful Manaranjan from here. About an hour walk from base took us past Kondhivade village to Khandape. From where we got a shared टम टम to Karjat station.

So we took a hook like trail from Lonavala to Rajmachi and tied a thread to it towards Karjat. GPS device clocked 30 kms of hike. This hike has again hooked something in me.

Elbowed away

Pleasant morning. Didn't feel like coming to work. Work? Stuck in abyss of blue desk partitions. Pinned and stickered  with other colours. Not everything is blue. Started a little late today. Actually started at proper time but slogged and dragged along the bath, the oatmeal breakfast and travel. If I was riding the train I would have dragged it too. Felt like train was in tremendous speed today. Got a seat too. Dozed off to wake up to अगला स्टेशन destination. Huh!! Destination.
Again dragged through the steps over the bridge. Through the walk towards the bus stop. Ahhh!!! No buses. Stood in the line happy that situation was dragging itself. But the bus came. Hopped in. Commuters had already occupied almost all the windows. Just the last row was रिकामी. Sat there. Bus का cushion portion was not screwed properly. Bus was decorated with plastic and paper decorations on occasion of Diwali festival but wasn't screwed properly.
Wait I got distracted. I was talking about the morning.
So a pleasant morning. Morning in which you wanted to go deep in till it fades away. Just go and go and go. With every step the morning would slide away like the sliding bus का seat. It was really annoying till another bunch of commuter asses put their mighty weight on it.
Now the seat was fine. It was bummed and didn't need screwing. But the bum sitting next to me was taking his phone , earphones, and what not from his bag elbowing the shit out of me. OK. He didn't settle but I got settled of his elbowing.
See I again got distracted. But then the pleasant morning was distracted too. Gone, elbowed away.

The Golden Canvas

This was an important trek for me as I had not done a long trek since Nane Ghat. Also my last two treks didn't go without any incidents. Of course it was well planned, researched and googled. There wasn't much information about the trek on the Internet. No GPS track file was available. But I got a rough sketch of a map explaining the route from a blog. So with this information and my gurus instructions I finalized this trek. which was going to Matheran Via Garbett Plateau.

One thing that I noticed from all the blogs I read was that everyone had got “lost ” on their ways. That everyone “should have” taken a different route, which “would” have been easy. Important thing for me from all these blogs was that all these people had finally reached to the top. So after Researching a lot, gazing at the map for hours I finalized on a rough route and decided to go for it.

Akash was going to be there for sure. Sushant was going to confirm me at,”the last moment” whatever that is!. Sudhindra was busy. Bagade was wavy.

Sonam expressed that she would like to come. My blog research said that this trek could be done as a first time trek. So I agreed. I knew somehow that she would be able to do it. So on the last day it was Akash, Sonam and Me,l

I decided that we would go by train as the trek starts from a place and ends at another, so public transport would be ideal. We all voted on the first CST-KHOPOLI train which reaches Dombivli at 5.42AM.

So Akash came by bike to Kanjur station and took a train to Dombivli from there. Sonam took the same train from Mulund station and came to Dombivli. Now the catch was that Akash wasn't knowing that Sonam was the third teammate. It was supposed to be a surprise for him. I had just told him that a girl is going to join us this time. So this guy अगदी केस-बीस मस्त वींचरून came to Dombivli station on perfect time hoping to meet a new girl. But then he saw Sonam and he was “WTF!!!”. So it was three of us very comfortable with each other. I just knew that it was going to be a wonderful trek.

Sonam got some batteries from a local shop near dombivli station for her torch, which is “useless” for a day time trek according to Akash. The train was on time. We hopped in it, and our journey together started. I took a short nap in the train while Akash and Sonam were चपड चपडing their mornings out.

I woke up and saw a beautiful mountain peak from the train near Vangani station. I supposed that it was Chanderi. We went to the train door when we almost reached Neral. Matheran lied right ahead of us and I started picturing my route from Garbett Plateau. I made a mental line of the supposed trail on huge canvas of the mountain.

We got off at Bhivpuri Road station. We were blessed with a beautiful sunrise. We had breakfast in a local hotel on Karjat highway.

The trail started right at the end of the Diksal village. There is a beautiful lake to right of the village which we traversed from its left hand side. Sonam lead us through here using her navigation skills. The lake water was clear and steady with tri colored reflection of the yellowish mountains, green trees and blue sky.

After hiking around the lake we came across a water stream. Its magical sound filled us with some enthusiasm. We cooled ourselves off with the cold water and started again.

A small ascend had started now. We came by a huge tree along the trail. It provided ample cool shade. We sat here for a while admiring the views, when we realized that we had missed a turn after the stream and were now heading towards Sagachiwadi village which was to the southwest from our base village Bhutivaliwadi. Again my research said that Bhutiwali wadi can be reached through Sagachiwadi too. So we decided to stick to the taken trail.

We reached to the border of village Sagachiwadi in a short time and I decided to pass the village from its east and not entering it. When a kaka carrying stuff on his head asked us if we were heading towards Matheran. He told us to go through the village. We listened to him and started walking through the fields. Different fields here were at different heights. We had to climb up and down to avoid getting our shoes wet in a water stream. Following a trail we reached at Sagachiwadi Public well. It was a huge well. A मावशी was filling water there. Akash and Sonam helped her fill the utensils using the rope to pull water from the well using their s"trong" hands. I refilled one of my bottles with the well water. Somehow water from wells/cisterns streams is more thirst quenching than water we bring from the cities. I asked kaku the way to reach Bhutivali wadi village when she said that there is a trail to Garbett plateau right from this village. She said that it's easier and marked. We agreed to take the trail.

So again we started. So did the ascent. Ascent was steep but was tiring for us. We took occasional rest whenever we spotted some shade. We were maintaining our pace slow but steady. At a point we had a quick bite of Apples and Bananas. View now was awesome. We could see the lake, hill from where we started, the lake which we crossed., the way to the village, and the well from where we came right in front of us, in a single sight.

After our quick break we were able to maintain a steady pace up. Garbett plateau was just five minutes ahead when we saw down the valley. Wow what a splendid view lay ahead of us!. We could see our whole way and also Bhutiwali, wadi village which we were considering our base village. Canvas was golden and red with streaks of green.

Then we reached the plateau. It's plain was vast and golden with grass. It was magnificent. To the north there was the Garbett point and to the west there was Matheran hill station. View towards east was of course magnificent but view to Matheran valley in the west was also mesmerizing. There were few houses in Matheran valley too.

We walked on the Garbett plateau towards the Garbett point. We had our lunch below shade of a tree near the start of Garbett point ascent. After a while we saw monkeys hurrying down the Garbett point towards the plateau. We were almost through our lunch, so we packed our bags and started towards the point.

Here the ascend is a bit steep, with rock patches to climb in the middle. Akash had reached up before us and was sitting on a rock. So we sat on an adjacent rock and there it was ahead of us, The Garbett plateau. Golden with grass and cool patches of individual green trees.

We were talking when I realized that Sonam was meditating, we stopped talking and Akash asked me if I have a pencil. I said no, but then Sonam the stationary की दूकान took out a pencil and a notebook from her bag and gave it to Akash. Then Akash converted the pointed pencil lead into mountains, valleys , plateau, and trees. Everything was quiet till he finished. A kite floated above us in the air, its wings spread, its eyes on the ground looking for what he wanted. He will be up there until he gets it.

We started off again, reached the Garbett Point in seconds. The point is guarded by a grill. It was ironic to climb the edge which was guarded by the grill so that people won't fall off the edge. On viewing the valley and the plateau from that guarding grill we started to walk towards Dasturi naka, Matheran. Here the forest started, shading us off from the hot sun. Walk was pleasant. I saw a crowd of noisy 10 people walking towards us, wearing jeans and formals. They asked us how far to get there? I asked genuinely where there? For me there was a huge infinity. For them it was an iron railing.

Ahead we reached our last landmark, A Huge Stone, which was mentioned by my guru. I was advised to take the rightmost trail. We took it and a long walk took us right above the Neral Matheran valley serpentine road. Where weekend tourists were hooting, whistling, their lungs out in their vehicles. After a short while we reached Dasturi Naka. We realized that we were inside Matheran Hill Station. While I had read that the trail would lead us to toy train track from where we would reach outside the Hill Station Checkpoint. Anyways we walked towards the checkpoint, took a shared cab to Neral and descended down the serpentine road.

I have read in books that Hiking is more fun and enjoyable when done with people you know well and are comfortable with. On this hike everybody was comfortable with each other. Every time I hike with these few people I understand it better.