Sunday, December 23, 2007

Trek to ahupe ghat part 1


I had wanted to go on a trek / hike for a long time……since I had my last trek……so I was pretty enthusiastic about it when one of my office friends, omkar, organized a trek to a place called ahupe ghat. At least one, out of those ten ‘holiday plans’ made, seemed to be working. We decided to have the trek on a weekend. There were seven people from my office including me….. Omkar, rohan, sachin, tushar, satish and prashant. There were also two other fellows, amit and another satish (who were satish’s friends!!!).
I started from my house along with prashant and sachin and reached rohan’s house. Thankfully no one was sleeping when I called them up…..people were punctual for once (Omkar warned us that there was no flexi time for starting the trek!!!). The four of us traveled upto Kalyan by rohan’s car and parked it at a friend’s place. Target Kalyan station was achieved by 0730 hours. (please excuse the military language.) There we met the other guys. Tushar was hungry, as he always is, but no food was available so early in Kalyan , so we caught the state transport bus to Murbad. Once we reached Murbad, we had a traditional breakfast of ‘misal pav’ and ‘cutting’ chai. We hired a taxi to go to Khopivali village, the starting point of the climb. The taxi driver would drop us at khopivali village and would pick us up in the evening at 1730 hrs……that was the deal……do not ask me the commercial implications of this deal. We reached Khopivali at 1000 hrs and started the climb. The trail is through a forest which thickens as you climb up. The ascend was easy initially…..However very soon it became steeper. The weather was quite humid. After sometime, due to the difference in everyone’s climbing pace, three groups were formed…….one group which was ahead……..another which was behind…….and a third one who’s members were telling people of the first group to wait for people of the second group and at the same time encouraging the members of the second group to climb faster!!! If you have understood the above sentence…..I am happy to tell you that I was a part of the third group!!! On the way there were two natural water reservoirs at different places where we took our first and second ‘official’ breaks (We took many ‘unofficial’ breaks!!!). We reached the top at around 1300 hrs. It was sheer sense of achievement for everyone……we had reached the top of ahupe ghat!!!!

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