Sarasgad.

So,

This all started on Friday 20th June when it was decided to have 2 treks to same location. One on Sunday n one saturday. Obviously I was in Sunday voters.

21 June - Saturday

After lot of additions and deletions what I came up with was 6 people confirmed for Sunday's trek. So getting confirmation from all of them and details from Shrikanth of the Saturday's trek I slept at 11:30 with alarm set at 4.45 a.m.

22 June - Sunday

To my surprise I woke up at the first ring of alarm. Got ready n called Apeksha whether she was ready. (The group list was with her so had to get her :D). First call I got was from Jayraj - who reached by 6.20 and did enquired about the bus. The enquiry was lot easy as we had past experience from saturday group. After reaching Shivaji Nagar bus stand - called rest of them checking about their arrival and then went for a brkfast. When i finished my brkfast n came for bus I found that bus had arrived n all were sitting outside waiting for me n apeksha ;which resulted in we getting backseats (Thought - Allthe Best for a Roller Coaster ride). So finally we were 9 of us with 3 girls in group when only 1 was expected.The team went like this Me, Apeksha, Jayraj,Deepti,Manasa,Uwaraj,Ishwar,Ashutosh and Abhijeet joining later at Khopoli.

The bus started 10 mins early (at 6:50) and everybody was with their own conversations (with their frnds) as everybody was meeting others first time. Abhijeet - even though I told him to reach Khopoli by 8:30 reached there by 7:00 and kept bugging me about whr did we reach n how much time more will be required. The group got alive at Khopoli whn Abhijeet joined in at Khopoli at around 9:00. Discussions started about past treks which had happen with someone or the others absence.

Finally we reached Pali at 10:10. We immediately started our march towards Ganesh temple (Ballaleshwar - one of the eight auspicious Ganpati). I was very happy to start the monsoon season with Lord Ganesh's place. But soon we got a bit disheartened to find that as it was Sankashti there was lot rush to get Ganesh's blessings. So we had to skip the Ganapati Darshan so as to avoid delay in our plan. We then had our breakfast(quite heavy; the one which some of us regretted later) at a nearby hotel taking our own time. Abhijeet got bit nervous about the relaxation and pointed about the situation and insisted on racing towards the peak now as we are already late.I thought this will be a gud one for Girls.

After getting a word about the route from Shrikant(on call) and a localite we started our trek at 11:30. But with lot of enthusiasm and energy in all of us everybody started in their own way. Ishwar,Ashutosh and Uwaraj were way ahead right from start. Getting inspired by them we(Apeksha,Deepti n me) tried to take a shortcut and found ourself engrossed in bushes. But we did managed to get on a path(which wasnt right again). Soon we found out that we were on the side of mountains where the climate was too humid and hardly any breeze blowing. We got exhausted too soon. Deepti was the first to suffer and started feeling uneasiness in stomach. Manasa claimed it next. Finally on the first plateau of the hill we all got together.

We did rest for a while. Here we all got introduced properly with everyone - lots of jokes, snaps and comments were exchanged.

Then we started for the war - united - with instructions to us "Nobody will stop till we conquer the fort". And really nobody stopped until we reached a higher plateau(after that rock steps were to be climbed). The rocky steps and the patch above though simple was too exhaustive to climb and we clicked lot of snaps on the steps(which meant unofficial breaks ).

We reached the peak at 1:00 p.m. Did a survey of fort which is fully destroyed by time and other factors, took some interesting snaps. There is a small shiv mandir over there. Most of us prayed over there. Then after roaming around there we gathered under a tree hosted by "Ashutosh the *****". See the pic

and then choose a name. NOM for Ashutosh ;-). We had our lunch cum snacks. There were some other groups

too - some of who were surprised to see Ashutosh on the tree in such a pose while some praised about his heroic task. The menu for lunch included "Arabi" and paratha from Ishwar, Dairy milk from Jayraj and butter chakli from Manasa.

We started for descend at 2:00 p.m. A couple other groups also did start at same time causing traffic on some of tricky patches. We were lucky enough that they rested on the higher plateau just before the steps (they were really slowing us down). Then it was just a race down till the base.

To add spice to situation Jayraj got his leg sprained(just a bit) and Apeksha tried to imitate me over a unnecessary jump and fell. She got slightly hurt on the left hand palm and right knee. Thought better should have caught her ...... neways at that particular spot we rested for a while till all got together and then started again. We reached the base at 3:00 p.m. We tried lots of juices before going to bus stand - starting from plain lime juice to cocktail of lemon,aawla,tulsi,jaamun(dont know what we call it in english).

Our direct bus was at 4:00 p.m to pune so while waiting there we sorted out the expenses. As the bus came we tried to jump in it with around 50-60 odd people doing the same and managed to save seats for the girls(thanks to Ishwar). Rest all were enjoying the stand out journey. Except Uwaraj we all got a seat at Khopoli who finally sat at Lonavla. We reached Shivaji Nagarby around 7:40 p.m. We parted at around 7:40 p.m to our places. Except bit of chats everybody preferred to take nap while the journey back.

So finally ending a extremely planned and successfull trek. The end results were the usual ones - new frnds, a happy weekend and finally one more peak added in my and ya our list.

Statistics:

Members : 9
Difficulty : Low - just exhaustive thanks to humid climate.
Distance: Approx 115kms as per Shrikanth.
Route: Sivaji Nagar - Pali via Khopoli
Trek time : Upwards: 1.5hrs Downwards: 0.75hrs
Amount: 190/-- BF,Juice,Travel ( Pune <–> Pali )