Gurupournima at Kinkar Sensei's Sankyu 2007 Batch

Yesterday on auspecious "Gurupournima" we had very good time at Kinkar sensei's class. We managed to get Kinkar Sensei sing a song for us. All the students took blessings from him.

Visapur Trek

Last week it happened to go for a Trek to Visapur Fort near Lonavala with enthusiastic group of trek-freaks. It was a splendid affair that I ever did in last 10 years. Here it goes how it transpired:

Manohar Joshi, who works with me in my company, a young chap with full of energy and always busy in lots of social affairs, told me about his group has planed to go for a Trek to Visapur Fort. I conveyed my wish to join and it got accepted.

On 14th July 2007 from Shivajinagar station we marched for this trek. I met all the group members over there first time other than Vishal Borgaonkar. I met Darshana, Kranti and Rohit. Now I can bet all of them are really very good trekkers. Prachi joined us at Chichwad station.

We reached Malavali station at 9:45 and started our walk towards Bhaje, a village on the way to Visapur. After half hours walk we reached a beautiful waterfall at Bhaje. We had some leisure time at that waterfall. Manohar did a dramatic incident with the Vishal’s expensive gadget over there :-)

Till now the road was normal road. After that we marched to the Visapur with the real thrill of trek by taking unknown and hilly roads to reach a junction. From this junction one can go to Lohgad or to Visapur. On that junction we had a beautiful and splendid view of Visapur Fort. From this point we started trekking Visapur fort.

After walking for 1 hour or more we reached a place where we could see no road, way, pathway to go further. Absolute mess we thought but it was not. That was the start of a marvelous journey to Visapur fort. There is no way to go to Visapur fort one need to actually climb a waterfall. Yeah yeah you read it correct “climb a waterfall”. And I can assure you that was an awesome event to perform. It can’t be explained in words, rather I’m not an author who can play with words and explain it, but I think no one can express that experience in words. One must experience it in reality.

Around 2 o’clock we reached on top of the fort, in fact we were on top of the world though we all were little bit tired. All of us were hungry. We found a shelter in the “TATBANDI”of the fort and had our lunch there. After lunch everybody was revitalized and was ready for expedition to roam around the plateau of fort.

We noticed the weather was extremely overwhelming. Tremendous wind was blowing, little bit raining and we were surrounded by clouds. For a while we all were numb. We could see nothing beyond 10 feet. But all of a sudden the weather was clear and we had a bird’s eye view of the entire Bhaje area. We could see the way we came to the place where we were standing.

We did not want to go back with the same route by which came as we knew that there was some other was to go down. We were in search of that route. For long time we could not find that. But what we could see an another short cut way to go down. It was again through a water fall.

We didn’t know that I could go down by that route. Manohar first went down for 10-15 meters and verified the route. He gave us the green signal in a very innovative way which stopped my heartbeat for a while :-). (I can bet now that only Manohar can do these things.)

Here manohar is showing from where we came down.

We followed the route for an hour and we were down and back to junction again. We had tea at world famous“BABA DHABA”and marched back to Malavali station to catch 6:30 local to go back to Pune.

How to reach Visapur (By rail way):

From Pune Station or Shivali Nagar Station catch a local train for Lonavala and get down at Malavali station. (1 hour 20 min. approx.)

From Malavali station cross the express highway and walk straight on the road which will take to Bhaje village. (Approx. 30 Minutes)

From Bhaje Village to Lohgad and Visapur Junction (Approx. 1 hour and 30 Minutes)

From Junctin to Visapur fort road will take backside of the fort from where one can go on the fort. (Approx. 2 hour and 30 Minutes)

For coming down once can return by the same route or by an innovative route that one can think of.