Monsoon Getaway To Garbett Plateau

Garbett Plateau is a popular trekking spot visited by hikers from Pune, Thane, Kalyan, Navi Mumbai, and Mumbai. Garbett Plateau is located near Neral-Matheran. Being one of the largest plateaus of Maharashtra, it is one of the top-visited places in Matheran Hill station. The nearest railway station to reach the Plateau is Matheran or Bhivpuri Road station. Apart from railways, one can choose by road options to reach the place known as Diksal (base village). The Plateau covers large jungles as well as beautiful valleys and waterfalls around it.

  The terrain while ascending the trek is quite steep and one needs to be careful when trying this trek during the monsoon. One of the important reasons for visiting this place was many people challenged me that this is one of the most difficult treks and I won't be able to complete it. Being a monsoon and nature lover person, I wanted to explore this place and take this opportunity to experience one of the most adventurous treks of Maharashtra.

I started my journey from Kamothe, Navi Mumbai. The trek was organized by the What's Next Travel group which popularly organizes treks and camps. Reaching the base village (Diksal) around 08:45 am, we had a brief introduction about the place and then had our breakfast. The village serves authentic Maharashtrian food.

Starting our trek around 9:30 am we headed towards the Garbett Plateau trek and first, we encountered the beautiful "Dhom Lake" which had budding flowers around it. This was our first point where we took a short break by having famous Lonavala Chikki's. The lake was had tall trees towards its left.  After taking a rest for 15 minutes, we started our trek again, and trust me, the paths were muddy and moist. At this point, I realized that I should have heard from my elders and wore better trekking shoes instead of wearing basic trekking shoes as the paddy fields were one of the drawbacks I regretted. Talking about our trek, we were around 60 people divided into 3-4 batches.

After covering around 1.5 hours of the trek, I was eagerly waiting to reach the point as I could see fog and clouds touching the top of the Plateau, and I expected to reach there within a few times.....But as it is said The Most Beautiful View Comes After The Hardest Climbs, so the Plateau was far away but so close to our eyes. Some of us got tired and took a 10-minute water break, we did not fear the directions at all as the locals were very much helpful with the directions. The Sagachwadi Village during this trek had a fabulous view, with greenery spread across the farms and natural water refilling wells and waterfalls.

The Sagachawadi Village also had beautiful terrains but just after crossing this village, there came the most difficult part of the trek. Further to this village, we faced a very steep path, foggy weather which made us quite excited to reach the point. As the weather became quite adverse in between we took a 20-25 minute break to enjoy the trek with safety. As close as we were, the path became more steep and narrow, and no two people could walk together at the path, it was one by one path and there was a direct around 1000 ft drop next to us.

Finally, after reaching the top of the Plateau, we did not recall anything. We didn't realize that it took around 5.5 hours to reach there, but all our struggle to visit the Plateau was worth it. We all were just living the moment, windy weather, fog around us and a plate of Maggie made it more magical. The beautiful hill stations valleys and lakes around the Plateau were as beautiful as a painting. We all opened our arms and enjoyed the breeze.