13th August, 2011, I all set to go out trekking with nine of my office collogues all the way to Bhimashankar, Karjat. It was my first experience, as it was my first experience; I had no idea of what all that I would be going through. But to tell you the truth, it was a wonderful experience, had one of my amazing experience there, a Place that look like Heaven, almost took us there, but I'm glad we went there, trekking at Bhimashankar was a wonderful experience, a big thanks to all the buddies who were there, had a lot fun.
After work, I went with one of my collogue and also the organiser of the trip, to his place at Bhandup. The others were to meet up with us, at about 11-11:30pm and we were off to Karjat Station from the Bhandup Station. We reached at Karjat Station at 2 in the morning, from the station we went to the Bus Stop to rest for the sometime. At about 4 we were all set to leave for Bhimashankar, We just couldn't get on to the buses as we only stood and saw both the buses getting filled up, off the buses went and we were now waiting for the Tum-Tum or the six-seatter to take us there, we had to switch to a van as the Six-seatter driver was not willing to take us all the way to Khandas village that was base of this trek. We finally reached Khandas village at about 6, then it is a mere 10 minute walk to the start of the trek.
Leval 1: The Ganesh Route to the Ganpati Ghata, only Narendra and Dharmendra had trekked this whereas the others were completely new to this, going from ground zero to the Ganpati Ghata was not that difficult had we taken the easy rout, we only got to know the actual rout after reaching there. The rout we went through was really difficult, I slipped a couple of times, but we moved on to the top at the Ganpati Ghata. A few of my friends offered their prayers there, then we set off to another level, the trekking had only just begun.
Level 2: For me the easiest way moving up, the longest one as it was almost a plain it was almost effortless to move along the way and through the jungle, and we took out small halts in between, click pictures, eat, drink, and just wonder at the view, the greenery, the gushing water falls, the depth, the view on top and at the bottom, and we also saw the monkeys.
Level 3: The most difficult way up, steep, narrow ways, the fog and looking down almost made you feel dizzy. It was the most tiring and the toughest way up, basically we had walked for very long and our legs were hurting like hell, but there was no turning back, we had to keep on moving forwards. But once we reached up it was like reaching Heaven on another kind, nothing heard of, and nothing like ever seen. We found peace, it had taken us more than 6 hours to reach this far and we were tired and cold as hell.
Now we had made plans of staying here for the night and leaving in the morning, but with all the tiredness, we wanted to leave as earliest as possible and get as much rest possible. So we decided to leave, only after having tea, Bhajiyas and Vada-Paw at a tapri over there at the top. It only started raining once we reached the top, and the whole place was foggy, we couldn't see a thing at a distance. A few went to inquire about the bus service that would take us down from the other side, but to out fate, the bus services were not running that day and we were left with no choices but to move down the very path we moved up.
And then the way down, it had taken more than 6 hours for us to come all the way up here and about two hours for to move up form level 1 to level 3, and for me I thought this was my end, because I found it very tough to climb up, I thought it was going to be even more difficult climbing down, and to add up to all this was the incoming traffic of people wanting to climb up. Ironically it only took us about an hour to climb down form level 3 to level 2, we took a halt just to look up and see how much we had climbed. From there on we decided to move quickly and reach Ganpati Ghata as fast as we could, it was hard, tiring, and so very painful for the aching legs. But we took less of water, more of walking and lesser halts, after reaching Ganpati Ghata we took another final halt, and then decides to go down following the proper way down and not the way we created while climbing up. Moving down was really long as we all were tired, out of water stocks and really needing a big rest. Slowly we moved down and finally reach Khandas, from there we got a Scorpio and went off to Neral station, and from Neral station, got down at Dadar and from Dadar caught the Virar Local for Home.
