It was truly one hell of  a ride that we took. A trek that we won’t forget ever in our lives. One filled with beauty, nature, compassion and so much of freshness that you would think twice about living a life anywhere else in this world. Truly, these eco-trails, nature hikes teach a lot of patience and a lot of compassion for the gaya. Indeed mother earth has had a lot of patience in tolerating our non-sense for such a long while… Sometimes I keep wondering how life would have been if there was nothing else but nature. No gadgets, no hi-fi, wi-fi.. just the plain serenity of this beauty surrounding you to the core. Think about it…

Well we decided to camp at the base the night before. So we headed off for the trek as planned on Saturday night. We got a little lost.. It’s easy to get lost before you go ahead on the Asangaon flyover. Make sure you turn left towards the Manas camp/temple. Ask for the Manas temple and you should be fine. So once we took the left, we saw the accomodation/hostel etc of Manas dharamshala. We headed ahead a straight road in the dead of the night. The silence of the eerie night was really haunting us in the pitch dark night on that day. We followed the straight road kept looking for a base camp / temple which we were supposed to look for… but damn, no clue.. So we had almost decided to head back.. when we found a bunch of say 25-50 guys just walking towards us. First instance… Shock! What are they?? Zombies??? Villagers??? Creeps?? A closer look tells us they were trekkers just like us. So finally we headed on and in 15 minutes after crossing a bridge we got to the base camp.

What followed next was chill out time, camping and some rest before we headed off in the morning. The rain had started pouring while the mountains covered with fog laid out its beauty, almost inviting us to conquer it. We decided to start at 7:00 AM in the morning. While the trek was just about 2800 feet.. the climb wasn’t that easy.. slippery muddy tracks made it a lot more difficult and rocky terrains at the top were a little tough on us. But after a gruelling stop and go trek for about 2.5 hours we certainly made sure that we conquered the beautiful fort of Mahuli.

What’s on top is amazing. The Shiva linga as expected in most of the forts of the great Shivaji Maharaj in the Sahayadri ranges was not a new thing for regular trekkers. But what was all the more beautiful was the wonderful waterfall below… So we retired there and enjoyed the beauty for a couple of hours, had our lunch on a really compact stove carried by one of our trekkers.

An experience that we would certainly remember. Certainly so, going by the pics you just saw!

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