This is a story of me getting to know the mountains for the very first time and what would be the best place other than the mighty sahyadri ranges to experience it.
It was a random decision taken by me and it was the most awesome experience I had.
It was the beginning of the monsoon period and I was just thinking of doing something with leaves that I took for no reason but just to relax and chill. I always had a deep love with the natural world and the mountains but never had the chance to do something about it.
But one day don't know how I got to know about a group who travels every weekend and goes to very surprising places which I had never ever heard of...so i thought you don't even need leaves to experience this.
So one day I just packed my back pack and registered for this two day camping and trekking to harishchandragad. I don't know how but I managed to convince one of my cousin to come along with me. Having zero knowledge about the trekking conditions and the route I just hopped onto the bus and went on the trek. So now I was with a group of unknown people about 25 to 28 people all set for the trek. I was so happy that I was doing something which I was crazy about all my life. There was a bus arranged by the trekking group for all of us till the base village. It was my first time ever going to an unknown place with a bunch of unknown people.
As an introvert I had quite hesitation in speaking but I managed it well due to the group as they were such a lovely group as most of them were unknown to each other. So now let's start with the journey..
There are several routes to reach harishchandragad. We took the simplest route which is the panchnai route as most of them in our group were beginners. The bus journey was frightening after crossing Igatpuri as the roads were extremely narrow and it was an essel world ride for me. This is a very stupid comparison I know:) but then who cares I was feeling so happy how the journey was going forward. We reached panchnai at around 5 am the next day. I was feeling very energetic even though not slept in the bus.
There was a family in the village who arranged breakfast and tea for us. The menu was Kande pohe and tea. After the simple but delicious breakfast We started the trek. The base village was so beautiful and scenic I was awe aspired by the surroundings. We started walking towards our journey. There were so many small waterfalls on the way which we saw. It was the first time I experienced it. And there was something called as a reverse water fall. I had never heard about this term which I saw from my naked eyes. It was so beautiful. On the way there were several wild flowers which I saw and also mushroom habitations.
After around 2 hours of walking we reached our first destination where we were about to stay at night and you won't believe it!!!! It was not the tents but there were several caves which could accommodate around 20 to 30 people. The caves were so clean and beautiful. We slept through the night in the chilled weather.
The next day our destination was the taramati peak and the Konkankada. The early morning weather was absolutely foggy and we could not see any thing further. We were divided into two groups and special tone of speaking was being done to find out the correct route and finding each other It was so much fun.
We were enjoying ourselves to the core and feeling lucky that the weather was so nice to us. It was drizzling and the feeling was awesome. The route to taramati peak is very hard and dangerous which is what I felt. But as soon as we reached the top the feeling was something different we didn't even had the time to click pictures as we were capturing the same with our naked eyes in our heart. So after this great experience our next route was the kokankada. This is the place which everyone was eagerly waiting for. Each and everyone had a picture in the back of the mind about this place. As soon as we physically experienced the place we forgot all that we had in our mind and were truly amazed by the view it had. The pressure in wind was so powerful that we were astonished and thought that we would just fly away. It's an experience that can't be put into words but can only be experienced physically. We had couple of hours just sitting on this kada and saving all the pictures in our heart. We had a great time on this trek and made so many friends on the way which is the amazing fact of travelling with unknown people and become friends for life. We started our journey back to Mumbai in the evening. No body was tired. Everyone was sad about leaving this beautiful place. I wish one day I could just quit my job and do trekking for rest of my life as I don't feel corporate world and enviornment is suited for my personality
I wish I wish and i wish again!!!!!!!
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