Participants: Mahesh M, Ramesh K, Amit T, Ashwin W, Brahma R, Sukhada J, Niyati B, Anuja S, Vinay S, Santosh R and Vikram K.
Rajmachi (Udhewadi) is small village it consist
of two forts Shrivardhan fort and Manaranjan Fort. It is about 16 km trekking
distance from Lonavala. Historically, Rajmachi fort was a strategic fort to
control Borghat (ghat between Khopoli and Khandala on Mumbai-Pune route) which
was a historical trade route. Rajmachi peak has two fortified structures.
Typically Rajmachi trek is done in monsoon season
or in night time. It’s almost a flat walk of 17 kms from Lonawala, one way! I
have done this trek 4-5 times in the past and is one of my favorite trek during
monsoon. This time, I planned the trek on Friday 11th March, again a
night trek considering the summer time. Initially, only 5 of us were ready, but
it turned out to be 11 at the end. We plan to go to Lonawala by 2 cars, 1 from
Ashwin and other from Ramesh. Ashwin and Brahma went to Satara in the morning
and would be coming late to Pune by 7 PM. Hence everybody decided to go home
early and join at one place. Otherwise the plan was to start from office directly.
But due to the scatter, our start time was 9 pm!!
Our car (Ashwin) reached first at Lonawal at
around Lonawala at 10 PM. Other car members joined us almost 30 minutes late.
We stopped at Ramkrishna and had a wonderful dinner. It was a big challenge to
walk with a full stomach now. Typically for this trek, we start walking right
from Lonawala station. This time, we planned to park our vehicles at Upper Deck
Resort, which was on the way. This plan worked very well and saved almost 5 kms
of travel in the night.
It was almost 11:45 PM when we reached to Upper
Deck Resort. After parking our cars and taking out our bags, we had first group
photo before starting the walk. Almost everybody (except me!!) was doing
Rajmachi and night trek, both for the first time. Hence we decided to walk
together, though Amit and Vikram were asked to lead the March and Santosh and I
remained at the end. It is my usual habit to be at the end and motivate, push
the people who gets tired on the way.
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| Start of the trek @ Upper Deck Dhaba |
It was a no-moon night and hence had an amazing
experience of sky gazing. As the trek is almost flat (no ups and downs), we
almost cover one-third distance in 1 hour. Here we took a short break of 10
minutes for water, chit chat and … It took us little more than 3 hours to reach
to base village of Rajmachi called as Udhewadi. There were couple of small
huts, which were used as shops during day times. We used one of the huts for
our stay there. We hardy had 3 hours of sleep, but it was very much refreshing.
There were 2 groups, one want to start back
immediately and other one wanted to visit the fort. There are 2 forts, taller
one is Shrivardhan and smaller one is Manaranjan. Kal Bhairav temple is
situated in between these 2 forts, from where 2 routes separates out. Due to
time constraint, we decided to visit the smaller fort i.e. Manarajnan fort.
After spending close to 45 minutes at the fort, we came back and had wonderful
breakfast (pohe with tea).
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| At Manaranjan fort |
At around 9:40 AM, we started our back journey. Return walk was too much for Vinay and we had to do some leg stretching as well !! We saw our own John Deere 5042D tractor on the way back and had a photograph with it! It was 12:50 PM when we reached to Upper Deck Resort. From there, we directly headed
towards old Pune-Mumbai highway and stooped at Tony-da-dhaba for our delicious,
heavy and awesome lunch. This was also our end of the trek!
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| Leg stretching to Vinay !! |
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| With JD 5042D Tractor |
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| Dinner at Tony da Dhaba |
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