Harishchandragad Trek - 2-3 Oct 2009

This trek was planned in a very short time. Atul and Milind from John Deere showed interest to join. Mukesh told he will be joining along with his friends from Fluent. Then this detailed plan was made for the trek. But unfortunately, Mukesh had an accident (funny one though.. He stroked to one of the electricity poles while walking) causing severe pain in his already troubled knee. He had taken pain killers, but not of use. So he opted out from this trek at 10:00 pm Thursday and so did his friends.
Finally, we three were remaining. After doing a small sms chat, we decided not to cancel and to proceed further.

First Journey
I was not sure about my (oops.. Its BILs(1) bike) bike, but no option than to take it. It had been serviced recently, so no issues. We met at the Nashik phata at 7:15 AM, late by 15 mins than schedule. Milind had already reached at that point. Then we started towards AaLe phata, our next milestone. The target to reach there was 8:30 AM, but it was quite sure that we were going to miss it out because of wrong estimation. Distance from Nashik phata to AaLe phata is around 75 kms. We had our breakfast at Narayangaon at 9:30 AM. Atul did not have a torch. He got a good quality 1 LED Evereay make torch costing Rs. 95/- which was OK. We reached at AaLe phata at 10 AM. We reached at Khireshwar when the clock was showing 11:30 AM.. 30 mins ahead of the scheduled time. After parking our bikes and refreshing, we ordered Pithale Bhakari for our lunch. It took a little long time to get it prepared.
When we were having the beautiful lunch, a group of 5 reached there and they were tired at time. They neither knew anything about the trek nor any plans of stay. 2 guys from that group demoralized with our preparation and info of the trek. I did not see them anytime anywhere for next two days. Surely, they had gone back.
Herbie(2) & Drum beater
We started towards the fort at 1:00 PM. (It meant, we were on time !!) Seeing the past performance and growing age, I was quite sure that I'll be Herbie in this trek. Usually I was Herbie in all treks, but due to other novices, it was not so prominent. This was Milind and Atul's first trek to Harishchandragad. I was the only one, who knew the route. So I asked Atul and Milind to play the role of drum beater and to push me if I were taking more breaks than required. But surprisingly.. yes surprisingly.. I had not to play Herbie. Atul took that role. Milind and I were shocked.. Atul pointed that this was the post marriage effect on him. :)
I,then, had to beat the drum to keep him motivated. This time locating the marks were easy. Normally, we say, "TeJa (3), mark kahaa hai?" (TeJa, where is the mark?). But this time, it was different. We said, "mark idhar hai, magar TeJa keedhar hai? (Here is the mark, but where is TeJa?). We reached our next milestone, Tolar Khind (pass) at 3:00 PM.. not to mention, but again on time.
Final touch up
After a short break, we crossed the rock patch and we were on the top of the hill in less than 1 hr. Then we needed to cross 7, but small hills on the way. We had our bath on the way in a small stream of water. We reached to the caves well ahead of our planned time. There were 3-4 groups already present there. We got one of the caves for our stay at 5:45 PM and then we ran towards "Kokan Kadaa" - the most fascinating location on Harishchandragad. It was clear that we were not be able to see the sunset, but the view there was truely awesome. After sitting and enjoying the scene and the nature for more than 1 hr, we started back to our caves. Though we had torches with us, the full moon did not allow us to use them. The dinner (paratha and dashamya) was very delicious and best. At 9 PM, Atul and Milind were ready to go to bed, when I dragged them forcefully outside the cave. We spent 1 hr gazing at the stars and the sky.
2nd Day
We woke up at 6:30 AM, refreshed ourselves, had milk and biscuits and started towards Kokan kadaa at around 7:30 AM. Fog had filled all the surroundings and we were little nervous thinking whether we could get the view of kokan kadaa or not. But everything was started clearing slowly and finally we had the beautiful, wonderful view of the Kokan kadaa and the hills nearby. We had lots of photo shoot at this place. We started back at 9:00 AM. Nobody was interested to go to the highest peak, Taramati. So we dropped it from our plan. Last time also, we did not visit it. (TeJa.. we have one more reason to visit Harishchandragad again, right?)
We had bath followed by snacks and tea. We then packed our bags and went to visit the Harishchandreshwar temple.
Harishchandreshwar
This temple is marvelous example of the fine art of carving sculptures out of stones. It is about 16m high from its base. Near the temple, the river Mangal Ganga originates. There are three caves near the temple. The cisterns near the temple provide drinking water. Here another temple called Kashitirtha is located. The fascinating thing about this one is it has been carved out from a single huge rock. There are entrances from all four sides. On the main entrance there are sculptures of faces. These are faces of guards of the temple.
Kedareshwar
Going rightwards of Harishchandreshwar temple, we came across a huge cave. This is the cave of Kedareshwar, in which there is a big Shivlinga, which is totally surrounded by water. The total height of the base only is five feet or may be more, and the water was waist-deep. People were going there to make a round to the Idol, but we, after lots of "Ayes and Noes", decided not to go.
Descent
We started to descend at 11:00 AM, setting a target to reach Tolar Khind at 1:00 PM. We were little delayed.. delayed by 10 mins from our goal.. courtsey to our photographical adventure. We had our lunch break here. Few villagers who were travelling thru that khind accompanied us for lunch. By 2:40 PM, we were back to Khireshwar, our base village. We decided to refresh ourselves in the dam water, so we started quickly from Khireshwar and haulted at the dam. At 4:00 PM, we started back to Pune. There were no rain in our entire trek, but we were welcomed by rain in Pune. We reached our home at 8:30 PM, making a successful end to this trek.

Click here for photos of this trek.

JAY SHIVAJI, JAY BHAVANI !!

- Mahesh Masurkar

Note:
1 - BIL - Brother-in-Law - Ankur Tade
2 - Herbie - Slowest moving guy in the trail in 'The Goal' by Eliyahu Goldratt
3 - TeJa - Tejas Jadhav - our regular trek member