Biking & Trekking : Sinhagad

Right after the previous trip to Bhandardara, we had decided to go on another such expedition soon. Pratul, Lolo and I decided to extend it to two days as the previous trips had made our return rather cumbersome. This Saturday it was Sinhagad, a fortress strategically located at the center of a string of other forts during the maratha rule. One of the most famous battles for Sinhagad was fought to recapture the fort by Tanaji Malusare, a general of Shivaji Maharaj in March 1670. Its 35kms off Pune and we decide to stay a night in Pune at our friends's places.

Deovrat was kind enough to lend his Unicorn to Pratul once again and we picked his bike up from his residence in Thane on Friday night. Deovrat was suspecting a puncture in his bike and had intimated us to get that fixed before we start. We found the bike to be ok, with only slight lesser air than normal. Since it was getting late that night, we turned lazy and decided to go ahead without checking it. This time Baba joined us instead of Bittu, who had gone to his home. We finalised our destination and maps to the place as usual and decided to pack up in the morning when we get up at 4:00 AM.

An unexpected start

We got up at 4:45 and finished packing by 5:30 and went down to start. A really hilarious thing happened here. There was someone cleaning the car, whom all of us started staring in an awe from far. She was wearing a rather small skirt with absolutely fair pair of legs :). I looked up to Pratul, who was too busy staring the chick. And right then, when we all would have been grateful for such a great start to the day, we found out that SHE was a GUY !!! It was a middle-aged person in his shorts cleaning up his car. All of us were so full of laughter when we left the building and headed for the call center for our first chai.

Barely 5 minutes after we started, I got a call from Pratul who was left behind. The bike had a puncture :(, Deovrat was right !!! Now where to find a puncture repair shop in the morning at 5:30. We asked some people and headed for Sakinaka to find a shop. To our fortune, there was a shop open. I filled up my pulsar and we had our chai here while the bike was getting fixed. By now, the dawn had broken and I was getting wary of being late and caught up in the city traffic. We finally started the journey at 6:15 AM from Sakinaka. Amidst the city roads, I was trying to find the Eastern Express Highway. After a bit of getting lost and a mix-up, we were on our track and cruised ahead towards Panvel via Chembur. It was my first time in Chembur, and I found the place to be quite beautiful with clouds surrounding the tip of the peaks in the area. I wanted to capture one of them, but we carried on as it was already late. I was ahead on the Pulsar with Lolo as my pillion and Pratul & Baba on the Unicorn.

Panvel-Lonavla-Pune

We kept it pretty slow as the road was quite slippery from the showers the previous night. As we crossed Vashi on the highway, the peaks were all surrounded by clouds and it was overcast thoughout. We all knew that rains would welcome us for sure at some point or the other. We too were prepared accordingly as I had asked Baba to manage 4 raincoats for all of us. We reached Panvel at around 7:30 and decided to halt for a breakfast and chai.

Another funny thing happened here. While we were having the ommelette and sipping the tea, Lolo took quite long for taking a leak. Turns out he went to a wrong place and had to pay Rs3/- for the same. So he decided to "make the best use" of his money and use all the facilities that the place could offer :D.

Lolo (given the kameena he is), took over the Pulsar from me after I had driven through the city traffic. We carried ahead and took NH-4 as bikes are not allowed on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Anyway, the NH-4 is a better treat for eye for the bikers if you're a serious one. The Sahyadri peaks started greeting us one by one, many surrounded in clouds. It wasn't raining in this part, nor the roads were wet, so Lolo revved up the Pulsar and cut it loose. As exited I was seeing the curvy roads and the peaks, I was a bit pissed at Lolo for taking away the fun of driving at this road from me. So it was me and the camera now and started scanning the landscape.

We stopped and went off the NH-4 before Khopoli to capture the view of a peak amidst the clouds that I saw from far away. Apart from the peak, there was another view of a temple that caught my eye. We moved on and soon we were climbing the Lonavla-Khandala ghats. The roads were a treat for a biker and the guys enjoyed every bit of it.

We halted at this place for a snap from where we could view Khopoli down below the valley. I captured an MSRTC bus over one of the ghat's curve.

Soon after we drove ahead, the road merged into the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. I was not sure to go on, but Lolo knew that this portion was common for ALL vehicles. So we carried ahead till Lonavla on the expressway at a greater speed.

The ghat here was all surrounded in the clouds and the visibility was low. I captured one snap of the foggy road here of the road from the moving bike as its not allowed to halt on the expressway. Another one was this great waterfall that I saw across the mountain were on. I captured the view while moving, but could have surely managed to take a better one had we halted.

Shortly after this, we took the exit leading into Lonavala city and kept moving without halting as we wanted to reach Pune early. The climate was quite cool with overcast all over and we were lucky not to encounter any rains except for slight drizzling showers for 2-3kms.

We reached the outskirts of Pune where I had a plan to meet up with Gopal in Wakad, which was on the way if we carried on NH-4 (which actually leads ahead to Bangalore, skipping Pune city aside.) He we had a mix-up in finding our way here. We moved towards Pune via Chinchwad skipping a road which Lolo thought was the entry to the Expressway(which was infact the NH-4). After moving quite a while, Gopal called me up and asked for y location. He informed me that I was on the wrong way and had gone quite long on that one. I took over the bike from Lolo and we went through the interior of the city asking here and there for our way to Wakad . This cost us an additional 45 minutes or so. We halted for some tea and meanwhile Pratul called up Murarka to meet up. Pratul and Baba were to stay in the night at Murarka's flat where I and Lolo had planned to stay at Gopal's. Murarka had initially planned for a 2-day trip to Alibaug with his flatmates starting the same day. So we went to see his flat and get the keys so that we could stay over.

Approach to Sinhagad

Around 11:45, after getting the directions from Gopal, we set out for Sinhagad via Khadakvasla where prestigious NDA is located. The NDA sure is located in a great scenic place (well so is IMA Dehradun), with the Khadakvasla dam nearby.

I captured a picture of the dam and could see the maroon colored NDA Main building far away across the dam. There were lots of people and specially couples by the dam and the smell of roasted corn was just amazing as we passed by. We carried on without much halt as it was already late. The Sinhagad fort was 12kms from here, and we could see a high peak surrounded by dense clouds which we thought was our destination.

We got off the road by 200mts to capture this first view of the fort. We halted for some snacks as it was lunch time already and we were a bit hungry. All of us were clear to not to stuff up our stomachs full from the previous "puking experience" at Mt. Kalsubai. After asking the locals, we found out that we could either take the bike way up to the fort or we could park them at Paytha village and trek up. Given the time we had, we decided to trek up. We reached Paytha,parked our vehicles and filled up our supplies : Water, Five starts, Perks, Kit-Kats and Lolo's Thums up.

I captured ourselves before the trek started and a small village farm which was just beautiful. After all this drama, we commenced our trek up at 1:45 PM.

L to R: Baba, Pratul & Lolo

Trek to Sinhagad fort

The trek was quite easy initially, rather it was just a moderate walk uphill. I and Pratul knew that it would surely not be as physically demanding as Mt. Kalsubai which we scaled 2 weeks ago. There were quite a number of people moving up : families, kids, couples. An initial easy walk led us to this flat space where we saw these kids playing cricket.

We moved on and now the terrain started becoming moderately difficult. We found that there were multiple ways to go up and decided to take steeper ones to have some challenge and reach there soon. I captured ourselves at one such place and the view of the adjoining hill. We kept on moving the increasingly steeper terrains, no one really needed a break. The guys kept energizing by Perks and Five-stars and Thums-up.

One hilarious incident took place here. I dont know what that Thums-up did to one guy amongst us, or was it the sheer beauty of the nature that came across, he asked to halt and wanted to take a dump !!! Rest of us were laughing ourselves off while the guy took the mineral water and went aside. I put my camera to action and captured him duking (name withheld on Lolo's request). I wanted to display the image here but someone in the group later requested me to keep the blog clean so that he could show the blog to someone else :).

All of us had a good break here. I kept on clicking the valley and hills to my either side suspecting that I wont be able to do it from the top as it was highly dense up there. We could not see the fort from below yet.

Lolo took a break here as his shoe's sole kept bothering him. He opened up his bag for the fevicol he carried (among "other" things that he always does, should the time come) but it was finished. We climbed up and reached a hut where this old man was selling taak (butter milk) and Nimbupaani. None of us wanted to drink the nimbupaani naturally. I asked for a rope from the old man to tie-up his shoe sole before having a glass of taak.

We captured the kids with him as well. Pratul just loves kids !!! He gave them HIS kit-kat and we moved ahead. Pratul managed to get in touch with a climbing family and was specially seen "bonding" with their small kids while climbing up. At some places he even lifted them up while they wanted to climb themselves :).

Moving ahead I clicked some mesmerizing views of the valley and the hills.

Another notable ones were a snail Pratul found out and a wild flower.

We were still some way ahead to go and the fort was still not visible due to clouds.

Finally we entered in the clouds from where I saw a hazy view of the valley and decided to click it. It was only here that we started getting wet, else the rain gods had spared us almost all the day.

The passers by told us that it was just a couple of minutes away and we continued to finish-off the rest of the climb soon. Just before reaching the fort, I clicked these last steps to be taken up which most of us covered running. We were at the fort exactly at 3:15 PM.

L to R: Lolo, Baba & Me.

The Fort

As I told earlier, the trek was not ardous as the one at Mt. Kalsubai, yet we were glad that all of us made it. At the entrance there were lot of people which I was not happy to see as I wanted my pics to have least no. of people. Up there, we were in dense clouds with low visibility of almost 30mts. We were encountering a chilly feeling owing to the cloudy drizzle and moderate winds. We could not see the valley or the landscape below as I had suspected.

I covered the fort entrance with least no. of people I could manage & ourselves at a place.

L to R: Me, Pratul, Baba & Lolo.

Further up, I clicked some of the fort views with almost no people and the guys by a narrow stream of water.

We wandered the fort randomly and due to the clouds we could not have a look to figure out as to how the fort was strategically located or its layout. By now, the water droplets on my camera lens started bothering me. I just hoped I could capture the already partially visible views decently. It was here that I thought that may be we were better off with some lesser no. of clouds.
I captured lots and lots of views of the fort, a couple of which are these.

We came to this open space further up, where we halted finally for some rest. I captured this place and the view of a pool below.

Some more excellent views that caught me were these. At this open space I set my camera timer and asked the guys to jump at best as they could at my count. They did almost perfect in the first click :)

L to R: Lolo, Baba, Pratul & Me.

We were getting chilly to the bone and we desparately wanted some tea now. We sat at this place at the edge of a cliff with our feet hanging down. I covered the adjoining views again. We sat up there chatting for a couple of while and wished if we could see the view of the valley below.

The Trek back

By now it was getting late and we decided to get back.

I captured us at a place and couple of more views of the fort. We stopped by this place for corn and mangoes before starting the descend down at exactly 5:00 PM. The climb down took longer than expected, with us being careful at the slippery terrain due to the rains. I captured just one view on the way bach which I had in mind that I had missed. I had captured most of the views on the way up. My nail was bothering me a lot while I was getting down. Its always strongly recommended to get your nails cut before any such trek. It sometime causes a blinding pain should your shoe be inappropriately fit. We tried to take less steeper descends due to the slippery area and kept on moving without any break.

We were finally down at exactly 6:10 PM, it definitely was a longer time than our previous descend. We rested at the place where we had kept our bikes. We had had a lighter meal at lunchtime, naturally we were hungry. We had some ommelettes and special tea. Lolo refuelled himself up with his Thums up again. We sat there chatting for some time and looking up the pics that we had taken. This last rest after is always the most satisfying one where you are relaxed, both physically and mentally. The feeling was just awesome. As we prepared to get back to Pune, the clouds had descended down and we saw a heavy drizzle with chilly breeze. It was time to put our raincoats on and we cruised back with moderate speed and glancing back the peak that we had just scaled.

We still could not see it and it was just amazing as ever :)

We reached back to Pune by 8:00 PM and the next day headed for Lavasa (details to be posted soon)