kothligad trip

        A  Trek  To  Remember !!!

3rd July,2011.
Okay, so it is FOUR AND A HALF HOURS  past midnight, a damp SUNDAY morning (yeah ‘Sunday’ morning!), when WE (me + 3 friends) wait patiently for the rest of OPERATING SYSTEMS OUTDOOR COMPANY at DADAR  Stn.  for the 4.55AM  KARJAT  bound  train! As SIX more friends ditch their Sunday morning slumber and join us along, the TEN of us reach KARJAT Stn. at 7.30AM!
Munching on the popular Karjat ka vada-pav, we bargain with the rickshaw-walas to take us to Ambivli  gaon, but to no avail! Finally we take the 8.15AM  ST BUS to Ambivli village which is a 90MINUTES bus ride! Ambivli is kinda base-camp for all the trekkers, where we fuel ourselves with tea/coffee/biscuits and armed with hope, confidence, courage, determination(and of course, windcheater and lots of H2O), we set out to conquer Kothaligad aka Peth cha gadh! It was 10AM then!
The was pretty simple (or so it felt for the first one hour!), only a little steepat times, path was broad and hence no risk involved! Shortcuts although tad bit challenging were fun!! The weather was humid, plenty of clouds sans the rain, no wonder every stroke of wind made us thank heavens!
Posing  for pics (loadsa them!), taking tiny haults sometimes out of exasperation, sometimes for water and sometimes for friends lagging behind, listening to music we beat gravity! By noon, we could spot a few scattered huts, it was 12.30PM when we reached Peth village! People there were humble, a young boy even offered to help our way to the top! Surprisingly, none of us were hungry although a bit weary! Our aim to make it to the TOP kept us going!


Truly speaking, it was NOW that the real trek had begun! With no definite path as such, we thrust ourselves trees and steep rocks and even before we realized it, we were on our limbs using ALL FOUR OF THEM! Defying gravity’s every trick to pull us down, slowly but steadily we made our way up!
There’s this amazing CAVE atop the fort with huge winding steps to lead to the top and a large WATER TANK over it! Yes! This was it! We had scaled KOTHALIGAD!  It was TWENTY PAST ONE! The view from THE TOP was breathtaking!
We could see the BHIMASHANKAR WATER FALLS and the windmills atop the RAJMACHI PEAK! FOG  had roofed everything around! DITCHING THE 4.00AM SLUMBER WAS COMPLETELY WORTH IT! We enjoyed the locale for about an hour, had snacks and began our trek down, for we intended to catch the 5.15PM bus, the last one for the day from Ambivli !
On our way down to Peth village, we experienced a few drizzles and we’d to be careful over the rocks! The rest of the trek was done swiftly.  5.15PM on the clock we’d reached Ambivli  yet somehow missed the bus! So after a round of beverages we took a rickshaw to the Karjat Stn.!
By then it was HALF PAST SIX, a serene SUNDAY evening when WE (me + 9 friends) stood (dreading our legs might give away!) waiting for the 6.40PM CST bound train! 


article contributed by priyanka thakkar 

the panorama that greeted us

the village the fort and two lonely walkers

the greoup that made it

where it all began

how did they reach here so easily

the fort we had to capture

something our photographer vishal kokate will be proud of for a long time

the stairs to the top