Tuesday, August 5, 2008

SCENELESS: JULY 2008

Hi All,
Surprised with the title of Life ho to aisee !! Any guess why ? No.. OK here it goes. Rainy season is very good for trekking purpose and you all know that the rain this year in Maharashtra was very poor, which resulted in the reduction of trekking . So no trekking and no photos. Hence the title this time. I was eagerly waiting for the rain. You can see this eagerness through my title on the gmail chat. There is a famous song in Marathi from Sandeep and Salil. So I put a sarcastic one as my title.
So what happened then in this month.. nothing.. is it possible?? NO.
This month, I visited Kolhapur to attend my BIL's engagement. He got engaged with Dr. Manasi Vaidya on 11st. Sunday (13th) I and Anagha went to Jotiba. It was a small trek of around 1 hr. Jotiba is a famous holy place in western Maharashtra. This is the only activity as far as trekking is concerned.
Eagerly waiting for your valuable suggestions/comments as usual. It inspired me to write more and more. See you next time. Till then stay tuned.
Thanks,
Mahesh Masurkar
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Forthcoming attraction:- HISTORY REPEATED AFTER 12 YRS

Monday, June 23, 2008

Life Ho To Aisee - June 2008

Hi everybody,Its long back when I interacted with you.In one of my earlier emails, I mentioned that there should not be long breaksin between the communications. But it was and I do apologize for the same.In the mean time, many of you asked about me and about "Life Ho To Aisee" in particular.
Life Ho To Aisee was (and is) going at its own pace, but I was not able to update the readers.Now its a good chance to update. Yes, You guessed it right. Its the season of monsoon and ....And I love trekking.
Our planning was started in first week of June and date was finalised as 21st.Location was not fixed, when Jogi sent a good photo and I decided to visit that place.Everybody was agreed and trek was planned to Prabalgad.We have very little idea about the place as the location was new and nobody has gone there.Then google, google earth and wikimapia helped us. Few webpages were very useful in locating the exact place.
Coming to the members. I, Anagha, Anant and Tejas were the permanent members.Then at the last moment, Tejas had cancelled owing to his bad health.We never had shortage of people as there are so many interested in John Deere.But as Prabalgad is nearer to Panvel, we planned to go by Tavera which put limit on the final number.We were total 9 altogether as Mahesh, Anagha, Anant, Asit, Milind, Nikhil A, Nikhil J, Sam and Mukund.Last 4 were new to "our trekking club."
We started on 21st at 6 AM (in Acchut Maharaj's word 'Early in the morning before sunrise'). Our driver must have seen F1 the night earlier as it was clear from his driving and maneuvering skills. We reached to the base village Thakurwadi at around 10 AM. To go to Thakurwadi, one can take the Shedung exit near to Panvel. Thakurwadi is hardly 10 kms from Shedung exit.We left the car at Thakurwadi and started walking. Our first target was to reach at Prabal machi which is nearly at the half way. We heard that the road is not so clear and one might get lost in the dense forest.We inquired at Thakurwadi and got the info that road is pretty straight and clear till Prabal machi.And so the road was...The atmosphere was dry, sky covered by dark clouds most of the time, but no chance of rain.It made the trek little tiresome. We had several breaks on the way, including the golden break where we had alphonso mangoes. After walking for almost 2 hrs, we reached at machi. Life at machi was very troublesome. Its a small village with may be 10 homes. People have to go to base villages for their weekly markets, doctors and anything you say. Two boys from machi helped us to identify the path till Prabalgad. There were arrow marks on the way which guided us till end. Those boys told us that these arrows will lead us towards water tank, but there was no water on fort. There is nothing much to see on the fort. We went to one end from where one can see the Kalavantin burj and Matheran.

After a short break, we had our lunch mix of parathas, chapatis, bread etc. After taking a couple of photographs of the only view point, we started to descend. On the way back, we dropped Nikhil J. to Panvel as he wanted to go to Mumabi. Then our driver took a wrong side and a policeman caught us. He took Rs. 100/- to free us.On the way back, Anant, Asit and Mukund were on seventh heaven as they sung few beautiful compositions.
(Photos:- http://picasaweb.google.com/mahesh.masurkar/Prabalgad)
Only bad news is I was carrying camera and a water bottle in a bag and after some time I found camera floating in water. So camera is no more. I'll buy a new one and let you know when I do.
Presently thinking of canon SX100. If anybody has any opinion on this one, pls let me know asap, Thanks.
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On 29th June, Anagha and I went to Sinhgad. We asked few of our friends, but nobody was seen interested.Though Sinhgad is a routine now, I have one wish to be with Anagha at Sinhgad in the monsoon. We started at 7 from home and reached on top at 10 am. Weather was very good, no sun only clouds and a little shower. Atmosphere was superb around, everywhere lush green. It was a wonderful time to go to Sinhgad and yes, it was full packed, more than 2 thousand people. After enjoying the bhaji(pakode), dahi (curd) and zunaka bhakar, we came back to home at 2 PM. (http://picasaweb.google.com/mahesh.masurkar/Sinhgad29JUNE08)