Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The Slide And The Tick

I haven't written about my past two hikes. Laziness, mind  bogged up with other earthly things at sea level, “ I don’t know”. So today I said to myself, “ let's write “, and what other to write than my last hiking experience.

Anil joined me this time. This was his second hike. One day hike plan to Mrugagad was set, To be executed on 26th January. The republic day of India.

26 January in Dombivli means there will be noise in the city. Republic day कम और सत्यनारायण की पूजा day ज़्यादा। तर चला ट्रैक करुया.

We fuelled up my bike at about 6A.M. and headed towards the base village Bheliv, which is about 25 kms from Khopoli. Road to this village goes through Jambhulpada on Khopoli- Pali Highway.  This was my fifth visit on this highway, 3rd time on my bike, so we reached here without any confusions and wrong turns. बाकी Jambhulpada to Bheliv was done with the courtesy of Google Maps. Road was undergoing a huge repair, so we lost speed, mileage and some spine on the way. But the welcoming Sahyadri Range made us forget the pain.

Moradi pinnacle which looks like a giant water slide grabbed my attention from the road. In front of this giant slide was our destination of the day. It looked like bunch of giant oval rocks were rolled down the Moradi pinnacle slide.

We reached Bheliv village at about 9.00 AM. We parked our bikes and found the marked trail. The trail starts with a mild ascend through the plain fields of the village, slightly angling into the forest cover, towards the hill. So keeping the hills to our left hand side we started walking through the forest.
We reached the rock cliff ascend in about 20 minutes. There is a way going between two giant rocks, known as chimney ascend. After climbing this we reached a plateau. I checked on the east side of the plateau. There was one more hill to the east and there was a col in between but there was no easy way to get there. I reckoned that the view of moradi from that hill would be amazing.

So we headed towards the west of the plateau. Towards the west you face a stone cliff which seemed to me was almost 90 degree inclined. To the right and towards the north there is a cave, towards which there are more steps carved in the rocks. I decided to check that out while returning. The stone cliff on the east side has rock cut steps in it and they looked like a 2D game. So we became Marios and started climbing those steps. There are proper handholds at difficult places.

We reached up and found 3 water tanks welcoming us. But to my disappointment there was no water in them. च्यामारी आज पण without mountain water. We got a mesmerizing view of Sahyadris from here. The giant Moradi slide was right in front of us.

We walked towards the west towards the edge of the hill. There are more water cisterns here, but they were all dried out. From here we saw our base village Bheliv and another Village Falyan which was on the north west side of the fort. Immense silence was what I heard. It spoke to me as a friend.

After a while we had our lunch under shade of the trees and decided to descend down. Down on the plateau we saw a guy with village kids coming up. He went to explore the caves towards the north. Anil found the descent to be a bit tricky, on reaching down he looked up and said, “I don't believe that I went up there! “.
The guy with the kids returned from the cave and I headed towards it. Anil decided to skip it. It was a bit difficult and tricky to walk on those steps. I reached the cave. There was some carving at its entrance and it was very moist and dark inside. From here you face the Sahyadris and the village Falyan below. I came back which was more tricky, thanks to the gravel on the plateau. I looked at the cave and said, “ I don't believe that I went there “.

We started our descent which was a bit strenuous because of the gravelly trail. घसरगुंडी करतच खाली आलो. It was about 12.30P.M. when we reached the base and started our ride towards Dombivli. I was sitting at home in the dark when Anil texted me that there was a insect dug into his hand which he doubted was a tick. He pulled it out and sent me it’s image which I forwarded to my guru who confirmed that it was a tick.