"भीवगड से एक रास्ता ढाक को जाता है. Bhivgad explore करके आ", गुरु म्हणाला, "मैंने भी अबतक नही किया है. पानी कैसा है, कितना time लगता है, देखके आ." Basically guru just gave me the name of the base village. मग काय? चला गुगलू या. So, with the Basic information from Google search, Blogs, Wikimapia, etc. Akash and I caught 6.07 AM Karjat local from Dombivli.
Train passed Badlapur and landscape turned from colored rectangles to green and brown streaks of trees. Temperature dropped down the mercury, air became lighter with drooping humidity. Fog and mist had occupied the horizon. First Malang Gad, then Peb, then Matheran, then Garbett Plateau, all on west of the railway line were all welcoming.
We reached Karjat and walked down to a bridge( commonly known as shri raam pul) from where we got a shared auto rickshaw to our base village Gaurkamath. आता इकडे रिक्षा वाल्याने थोडा game खेळला आमच्या सोबत. पण जाऊ द्या ते रडगाणं नाही करत इथे.
We reached base village at about 8.00A.M. we could see Dhak forest region of the Sahyadris and a small but prominent hill of Bhivgad. We realized that our destination was not at great height and I drew my route up from a trunk starting from the north side of the pen shaped hill. This pen is placed at northwest-southeast direction.
We started walking from the west towards the northwest side from where i thought the trail on the trunk upwards starts, but I don't recall if we missed the path going on the trunk but we were now following a well paved path keeping bhivgad to our right. After a walk with few ascends we reached a col. From this col the route southwards goes to Dhak mountain. This trail looked interesting disappearing in thick forest on the mountain. "One day", I said to myself and got on the way to Bhivgad.
On the slope we found two men paving a trail. They were members of a प्रतिष्ठाण. They had come for श्रमदान.
We reached the plateau. I found a water cistern. But the water was not potable. From here you see Matheran on the west. Giant pinnacle of Irshaalgad was on the outline of the horizon. I remembered my gurus words, "चढू नकोस अवघड आहे"
We went towards northwest to the edge. From here we saw our missed trail on the trunk, which I had read on blogs takes us to rock cut steps on the east. We decided to go there later. It was just 9.00A.M. Not much was visible due to the fog below. We sat on a rock facing Garbett plateau till we felt sunlight on our backs. That's when I looked down. Light green grasshopper colored fields with dark green spots of trees were spread all over. Time had cleared the mist and the fog.
It was time to explore rest of the fort. We headed towards the rock cut steps. There was one more water cistern on the east side. The water in the cistern seemed potable but was drying up. Near the steps, on the middle of the plateau, there is one more water cistern. Water in this cistern seemed potable but was drying up. On descending we found two caves dug in the stone. There was a somewhat difficult ( without strong handholds and footholds) 5 to 6 feet climb from ground level to reach the caves. We could hear screeching sound of bats in there.
We had our food on these steps. The श्रमदानी people were descending down by now. We headed back towards the col where we left the trail to Dhak to our left and descended down towards Vadap village. There is a huge waterfall to left while facing the village. A straight trail from the col will get you to a intersection on a dirt road which goes to Gaurkamath keeping Bhivgad to the right. We walked towards Vadap and reached the main road from where we got a 3 seater auto Rickshaw to Karjat.
