Fort name: Ratangad
Area: Akole (अकोले) Taluka, Ahmednagar (अहमदनगर) District
Difficulty level: Moderate
Route: Mumbai मुम्बई - Kasara कसारा – Shendi शेंडी – Ratanwadi रतनवाडी – Ratangad रतनगड
Mumbai मुम्बई – Kasara कसारा – Ghoti घोटी – Shendi शेंडी – Ratanwadi रतनवाडी
Characters: Harshal हर्षल (I), Sanyog संयोग, Himanshu हिमांशु, Sachin सचिन, Amit अमित and Pandharinath पन्धरिनाथ (Boatsman)
Trek is my passion. Now it was after almost six months that I was going for a trek and this trek was the most needed break from the daily office routine. Already eight people were ready to come for trek and still more people requesting to come with us. But as usual everyone started to back off from the last moment. I am now pretty used to people who back off at the last moment and then just before the trek we were left with the magical figure of five people. I say so because for most of my trek I had five people. But this time we suffered financially as we already bought necessary goods keeping eight people in mind. But we gathered ourselves from this loss and now were ready for our trek.
Waking up early in winter morning is always a pain, but we woke up early to catch the 6:18 train for Kasara from Dombivli. A friend of my friend joined us at the Dombivli Station. One more common thing about my trek is I am always accompanied by a beginner and this person was on his debut trek. In train itself we were hungry as we didn’t have our breakfast early in the morning. But in train itself we had wonderful breakfast of dosas, idlis and medu wadas, now we were ready for anything.
Reaching Kasara was just the start of the long journey ahead, but luckily we got a direct jeep for the Shendi at the rate of Rs.60 per seat. The atmosphere was cold and our spirits were high for a trek. It was really a long and nauseating journey. We all enjoyed the fresh air once we finished the journey as if we were imprisoned in some kind of moving jail. Shendi is really a small village on the banks of river Pravara. It has that typical village type look but only difference here was the MTDC resort. I was really surprised to see a resort in this kind of place. Even there were few tourist and not trekkers, that was a real shocker. River was silent with blue water. All we were doing was waiting for boat to take us to our destination.
While waiting for boat we met few tourist who too wanted to come to Ratanwadi. The boat was a small diesel run motorboat. Generally this boat runs two time in a day. One in the morning it comes from Ratanwadi to Shendi and then goes back in the evening. We were not ready to wait till evening and the boat owner was charging extra amount to take us now. When you are in difficulty people try to take advantage of the situation. In the end a deal was made acceptable to both. This was the first time we were traveling by boat. It was real fun to be in boat for about an hour. We reached Ratanwadi by noon and after refreshing ourselves we were on our trek.
The way to the fort is a three hour tiring climb. The route starts with river on one side and then during the climb it is completely surrounded by dense forestation. Many times there are only faint trails and there were many places where we could have got easily lost, but luckily we met villagers at these crucial points. We were trekking after long long time and hence the climb quickly wearied us out. The climb is not more than three hours but it took us four hours to finish the climb. All our water bottles were empty and it was getting dark too, so our first aim was to find the water resource to fill up our water bottles. Inspite of being tired we searched for water reservoir, filled up our water bottles and while resting saw the cave color changing from grey to dark black.
The night was not as cold as anticipated. We could hear the crickets making noise, wind blowing softly and few villagers visiting us every now and then. Slowly sleep took over me but at that moment I heard some kind of noise near my bag. I thought I might be dreaming, but the noise came once again and so when I checked for the reason I found that there were two rats who were responsible for this noise. Rats are not that dangerous but they are enough to keep you awake when they are aggressive enough to eat your bags and food. The whole night we were playing hide and seek with rats. Finally we gave up and went for sleep. But the moment we gave up the rats too gave up the game.[:D]
The next morning was really beautiful, blue sky filled up with light fog. We had our breakfast and were now ready to move back once we see the famous hole of Ratangad, which is even visible from Ratanwadi. We tried all the routes but we were not able to find route for the hole. In the end we gave up and started to climb down the fort. Climbing down is always a faster than climbing up. This time I used one stop strategy and reached Ratanwadi in almost one hour. Amit and I were first to reach the village and were supposed to wait till others came. During that time I inquired about Ratanwadi, its people and ways to return back to Kasara. We had light refreshment and phoned the boatsman Pandharinath Zade and understood that boat is going to arrive within half an hour. We hurried up with our refreshment and caught the boat right on time.
In our boat we had few local politicians, from the Sangamner area, which were on fort the last night and were responsible for converting the fort into a mess. We were hungry, as we didn’t had lunch but we all just wanted to reach home as early as possible. Now it was like we were in a race to reach home first. As soon as we reached Shendi we got a jeep for Ghoti. The village transport jeep is an amazing thing. In single jeep we had 20 people including the driver, five in first row, five in second, seven on the back seat, two hanging on the back and one on the top. These jeep rides are cream of every trek. Once we reached Ghoti, we were very happy to use our body in all dimensions. At Ghoti tension was building that we missed the last bus to Kasara, but we didn’t. After a long wait we saw the heavily crowded bus and though we were tired we caught the bus as this was our last hope to reach Kasara on time to catch the last train. Bus was moving slowly and we just were looking at our watches so that we don’t miss our train. The bus reached bang on time and we climbed in train, got comfortable seats and then train left in few minutes.
Now it was certain that we gonna reach home soon. But still we were very hungry. All thanks to the bhel-wala because of whom we could fill up our stomach at least for the time being. There is really no place in world like home. When I reached home mom as well as dinner was waiting. I didn’t had bath for last two days, so first had a nice bath and then hurried on to dinner. Soon I was taken over by sleep and was dreaming about all beautiful landscapes I saw during the trek.
Area: Akole (अकोले) Taluka, Ahmednagar (अहमदनगर) District
Difficulty level: Moderate
Route: Mumbai मुम्बई - Kasara कसारा – Shendi शेंडी – Ratanwadi रतनवाडी – Ratangad रतनगड
Mumbai मुम्बई – Kasara कसारा – Ghoti घोटी – Shendi शेंडी – Ratanwadi रतनवाडी
Characters: Harshal हर्षल (I), Sanyog संयोग, Himanshu हिमांशु, Sachin सचिन, Amit अमित and Pandharinath पन्धरिनाथ (Boatsman)
Trek is my passion. Now it was after almost six months that I was going for a trek and this trek was the most needed break from the daily office routine. Already eight people were ready to come for trek and still more people requesting to come with us. But as usual everyone started to back off from the last moment. I am now pretty used to people who back off at the last moment and then just before the trek we were left with the magical figure of five people. I say so because for most of my trek I had five people. But this time we suffered financially as we already bought necessary goods keeping eight people in mind. But we gathered ourselves from this loss and now were ready for our trek.
Waking up early in winter morning is always a pain, but we woke up early to catch the 6:18 train for Kasara from Dombivli. A friend of my friend joined us at the Dombivli Station. One more common thing about my trek is I am always accompanied by a beginner and this person was on his debut trek. In train itself we were hungry as we didn’t have our breakfast early in the morning. But in train itself we had wonderful breakfast of dosas, idlis and medu wadas, now we were ready for anything.
Reaching Kasara was just the start of the long journey ahead, but luckily we got a direct jeep for the Shendi at the rate of Rs.60 per seat. The atmosphere was cold and our spirits were high for a trek. It was really a long and nauseating journey. We all enjoyed the fresh air once we finished the journey as if we were imprisoned in some kind of moving jail. Shendi is really a small village on the banks of river Pravara. It has that typical village type look but only difference here was the MTDC resort. I was really surprised to see a resort in this kind of place. Even there were few tourist and not trekkers, that was a real shocker. River was silent with blue water. All we were doing was waiting for boat to take us to our destination.
While waiting for boat we met few tourist who too wanted to come to Ratanwadi. The boat was a small diesel run motorboat. Generally this boat runs two time in a day. One in the morning it comes from Ratanwadi to Shendi and then goes back in the evening. We were not ready to wait till evening and the boat owner was charging extra amount to take us now. When you are in difficulty people try to take advantage of the situation. In the end a deal was made acceptable to both. This was the first time we were traveling by boat. It was real fun to be in boat for about an hour. We reached Ratanwadi by noon and after refreshing ourselves we were on our trek.
The way to the fort is a three hour tiring climb. The route starts with river on one side and then during the climb it is completely surrounded by dense forestation. Many times there are only faint trails and there were many places where we could have got easily lost, but luckily we met villagers at these crucial points. We were trekking after long long time and hence the climb quickly wearied us out. The climb is not more than three hours but it took us four hours to finish the climb. All our water bottles were empty and it was getting dark too, so our first aim was to find the water resource to fill up our water bottles. Inspite of being tired we searched for water reservoir, filled up our water bottles and while resting saw the cave color changing from grey to dark black.
The night was not as cold as anticipated. We could hear the crickets making noise, wind blowing softly and few villagers visiting us every now and then. Slowly sleep took over me but at that moment I heard some kind of noise near my bag. I thought I might be dreaming, but the noise came once again and so when I checked for the reason I found that there were two rats who were responsible for this noise. Rats are not that dangerous but they are enough to keep you awake when they are aggressive enough to eat your bags and food. The whole night we were playing hide and seek with rats. Finally we gave up and went for sleep. But the moment we gave up the rats too gave up the game.[:D]
The next morning was really beautiful, blue sky filled up with light fog. We had our breakfast and were now ready to move back once we see the famous hole of Ratangad, which is even visible from Ratanwadi. We tried all the routes but we were not able to find route for the hole. In the end we gave up and started to climb down the fort. Climbing down is always a faster than climbing up. This time I used one stop strategy and reached Ratanwadi in almost one hour. Amit and I were first to reach the village and were supposed to wait till others came. During that time I inquired about Ratanwadi, its people and ways to return back to Kasara. We had light refreshment and phoned the boatsman Pandharinath Zade and understood that boat is going to arrive within half an hour. We hurried up with our refreshment and caught the boat right on time.
In our boat we had few local politicians, from the Sangamner area, which were on fort the last night and were responsible for converting the fort into a mess. We were hungry, as we didn’t had lunch but we all just wanted to reach home as early as possible. Now it was like we were in a race to reach home first. As soon as we reached Shendi we got a jeep for Ghoti. The village transport jeep is an amazing thing. In single jeep we had 20 people including the driver, five in first row, five in second, seven on the back seat, two hanging on the back and one on the top. These jeep rides are cream of every trek. Once we reached Ghoti, we were very happy to use our body in all dimensions. At Ghoti tension was building that we missed the last bus to Kasara, but we didn’t. After a long wait we saw the heavily crowded bus and though we were tired we caught the bus as this was our last hope to reach Kasara on time to catch the last train. Bus was moving slowly and we just were looking at our watches so that we don’t miss our train. The bus reached bang on time and we climbed in train, got comfortable seats and then train left in few minutes.
Now it was certain that we gonna reach home soon. But still we were very hungry. All thanks to the bhel-wala because of whom we could fill up our stomach at least for the time being. There is really no place in world like home. When I reached home mom as well as dinner was waiting. I didn’t had bath for last two days, so first had a nice bath and then hurried on to dinner. Soon I was taken over by sleep and was dreaming about all beautiful landscapes I saw during the trek.
