Trek to Sudhagad

Since the monsoon has arrived we were planning to go for a trek, there were options, which we were thinking of Purandar, Sudhagad and Harishchandra Gad to name the few. Our first choice was Harishchandra Gad coz its long time wish to visit this fort. As we learnt from various sites, Harishchadra Gad is astounding fort and it required a night stay. However, eventually we drop the plan coz of climatic conditions and we zeroed on Sudhagad, Pali for one-day trek. We were total six in number out of which Abhijeet and Pranav had a bike and knew how to drive a bike so we had planned to experience public transport instead of bikes.

Nikhil, Sanyogita, Harshada and Myself gathered at Pranav’s place on Friday night. We had little chatting, watched movie and slept for couple of hours. Abhijeet had joined us in the morning at Karjat Bus Stop at around 6.45 am. We supposed to take a Pali bus that was scheduled for 7 am but as public transport were unpredictable; the schedule bus did not arrived on time. Therefore, we did the break journey, from karjat to chowk- shil phata-khopoli and from there to pali to pacchapur- thakurwadi. The journey was only 45 min – 11/2 hr but due to breaks by bus- auto it took us 41/2 hrs to reach the base village, Thakur Wadi. With small break at Thakur wadi, we started to climb the Sudhagad.

The way from Pacchapur- Thakurwadi was little bit exhaustive but we mange to climb the fort in 2 hr. The fort was 590 ft high and the view from the plateau was amazing. There were no waterfalls due to lack of rains. The places seen were Paacchapur Darwaja, Bhoarai Mandir and Tak mak tok. We did not go towards Dindi darwaja due to short of time. To our bad luck, there were no rains through out the day. It was all dry picnic in the rainy season. At Bhorai Mandir, had some food, and headed towards the Tak mak tok. This end of the fort was magnificent, there was a small flat terrain where we sat for a while and experienced the sound of wind, silence, and eco. The view from Tak mak tok was miraculous.

After this, we started our jounery back to home, this time I was little upset, as we were not visiting the Dhindi Darwaja. Abhijeet and Pranav tried to cheer me up but they forgot that their behavior was loud and earsplitting. We reached at thakurwadi at around 5.45 pm as our last bus was at 6.30 pm. We waited at the bus stop, had some dry snacks. As the bus at thakurwadi came late, we reached Pali behind schedule and we missed our last bus to Karjat. From here, the actual thrill of the day had started, as there was no facility of transportation. We took lift from truck driver; the charges were very low. Some of us reminded the Jane tu ya Jane na movie because of truck safari. It was the nice experience for all of us except Sanyogita as she was worried because we were getting late. Finally, we reached at Panvel, from there Nikhil, Harshada and Sanyogita took bus to Thane and we (pranav, abhijeet and myself) took auto to karjat. The Auto ride was none less than a roller coaster ride. At 12.00 in the night, we reached karjat.

This was the good experience but not as great as our other treks. With the plans for next trek to Harishchandra Gad, we dispersed.