The Ladders, The Sun, The Forest, The Hills

As usual the morning began with an harsh alarm. The unusual was that I woke up immediately without snoozing or waiting for the next one to go off. After packing the eggs, 4 litre water, in already packed backpack I ran off to catch 5.55 AM Khopoli local from Dombivli station.

As decided Sagar was waiting for me in first bogie. 

 

Reaching Karjat  at 6.55 AM. We took a Mheskarwadi S.T bus to Kashele village. From there after negotiating and renegotiating we took a shared tumtum to jamrung.

The air was humid, summer sun was already hot when we started walking from Jamrung to Kamathpada village. Jamrung pinnacle came into view like a bursting soda bottle.

From kamathpada, there are two routes going towards start Khetoba ghat on the lower plateau. One is from the north of the lower plateau, called the Shidi Ghat, other from the south called the Vajantri Ghat. 

 

As guided, I started walking towards the pinnacle to take the Shidi Ghat route. By the time I reached the route which goes towards left of the pinnacle, when keeping it on our right hand side, I realised that I had to keep my pace slow and steady considering the weight on my back and the summer sun.

After some distance and leaving pinnacle way behind, the route enters the Sahyadris keeping the lower plateau wall adjacent to our right. Then starts the ladders and snakes game. 

 

There were monkeys who teased us by climbing the rock face in 2 mins with their climbing ability, and after climbing the first ladder we realised that this is not just snakes and ladders but this is monkeys and ladders, it was a route made on almost straight rock face. Wherever there was absolutely no moderate way to climb there were ladders, and where there weren't ladders, there was a scramble on all the four limbs. One of the ladders although strategically placed, almost looked like a child’s drawing. 

Guiding Sagar on the scramble, and the four ladders we reached the lower plateau. When I finally reached an open ground, I saw the Sahyadri rock wall raising in the sky about 300 and more meters high. On this wall like Mario flag steps Khetoba ghat climbs adjacent to the wall towards north, giving ground to tall trees and forest on the steps. 

 

We entered the dense forest towards the edge of the wall and kept the wall towards left. After about 2 hours in sun from the start of our hike, we were finally in cool and dark shade. After a while the route started turning left and  the rockface came to our right hand side, towards start of Khetoba ghat. The ascent left me panting and breathing heavily. Having a couple of oranges made us feel like Mario with a mushroom. Taking short bursts of rests and water, we reached the mountaintop at about 12.45 PM. There is a small temple on the edge of the mountain here, in the temple, an unsculpted stone god named Khetoba, hence the ghat is called Khetoba ghat. There is no tree for about a hundred metres from here. 

 

After getting an idea from where we came, and where we need to go we decided to have lunch in forest cover patch of our route to Bhimashankar.. Keeping in mind strict instructions of not resting too much and of not getting lost we had lunch quickly and started walking soon. After crossing the short forest patch, which is actually a hill, we came across Lonavala Bhimashankar pathway which has stones laid across on both the sides. 

 

We took left here and started walking towards Bhimashankar. Here I felt the weight of my backpack and loosened the shoulder straps to put weight on the waist strap and started walking.

I had in my mind that the ascent part of the route had now ended and now there is just a long walk over the plateau to Bhimashankar, but Sahyadris like always, surprised me with quite the opposite. It was not just a walk but a hike along forest covered hills and barren- exposed to sun land.

 

After walking for about what felt like hour and a half we reached a place where the stone bordered pathway had abruptly come to an end near a small water pond. It seemed like truck or some vehicle had come upto the pond for some reason, the pond was bordered with stones. A small path was going north in the forest and was not looking like a beaten path. Other path went towards west near the mountain edge which didn't seem to be proper path either. I looked behind towards southeast to find a stone temple like thing with a metal board in front of it. On going there it turned out to be Kamladevi Maata temple, which was actually one of the milestones enroute. A sone unsculpted goddess resides in the stone temple. We again found the stone bordered pathway right in front of this temple door and started walking on it. 

 

Again a series of forest covered hills and barren lands. A ravine to our right and across it a dirt road running towards Bhimashankar, which I later found out was a road connecting neighbouring villages. Later the route joins for a while with this road and separate again a bit towards left and finally enters the dense Bhimashankar jungle. We came across the route to gupt-bhimashankar on our left and decided to explore it next time, considering time as well as our tiredness. From here the route has a mild ascend and we started spotting villagers who had come to collect wood, about half an hour later we saw the Mahadev temple right in front of us, suddenly after the end of the forest. 

 

Tourists, and Street vendors looked at us as if we were zombies. The trek had ended, but was not complete. This different experience of walking on the plateau had surprised me, the forest covered hills and short ascends and descends and the walk in the sun was what I saw when I later closed my eyes at night in that Dharamshala near the mahadev temple. Again I knew that the 7 hours of this trek were what I was going to see for years to come