Everyone nearly whooped with joy after reaching the top. The feeling in our legs had started to cease and the break was welcome. There was a big shady tree where all of us sat down for some time.....enjoying the light breeze and the sweet silence. The top of ahupe ghat is a plateau where you get a great view of the steep valleys and long stretch of plains below. Ahupe is nearly at a height of 3500 feet. We had our little photo sessions on the plateau, near the edges and under the huge shady tree. After this came the most important session…….the food session!!! Climbing makes me hungry (well, ok even sitting in one place and working makes me hungry but still…..!!!) The menu was a mixture……I had brought my tiffin which had baingan ka bharta and chapatti (normally, baingan ka bharta is a no no for me, but this time I was eating it like it was some kind of delicacy…..as they say…..hunger is the best sauce…..ill rephrase that…….hunger is the best baingan ka bharta!!!). There were a lot of things to eat…..one of my friends had brought a full ½ Kg tub of shrikhand, some people had brought khakra, some had brought sandwiches and some had brought……….cigarettes!! Normally I don’t have cigarettes for lunch, but then I didn’t have it even then!!! After this came the best part of the entire trip, I think, ……..We slept for under the shady tree……we caught our 40 winks in only 45 minutes …..but man!!! The way we all slept……like logs..... One of our friends woke us all up at 1530 hrs….we picked up all the litter we had made and put them in plastic bags to carry them with us……conservation of nature!! We started the descent and found out that, descending was much easier than climbing (obviously!!) However there was just one catch, people were falling on loose stones and dirt……..satish was behind me and I was afraid that he would slip and slide down the slope and either take me down along with him or squash me like a lemon!!! Anyway we all kept our footings firm and descended in less than half the time we had taken to climb up.... the total number of official and non-official breaks were only two!! So, at 1730 hrs we were again at the village where we had started…….I was just going to sit in the return taxi…..when I decided to just look back. So I looked back, and looked up, at the ahupe ghat peak, at a height of around 3500 feet from where I was standing. Standing there I wondered once again…….Did we really climb up till there?
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