Rajgad Trek - 31st March 12

The first trek of 2012 season Trek to Rajgad was organized on the 31st of March 2012. Here is the report on how it went..

The trek invoked mixed feelings for us as organizers. The trip started on a very disappointing note, though we expected atleast 10 participants (as confirmed the night before) only 5 them turned up! I personaly was considering canceling the trek as advised in the initial advertisement of the trek that though there wasn't a limit on the maximum number of participants we needed a minimum of 10 participants, however we decided to continue with the plan.

We started off on our first trek at about 7:45. With a chai break while waiting for couple of participants at Katraj we reached Gunjawane - the base to the Rajgad trek, at about 9:30. We had a mini breakfast at the base and started our trek. The weather was punishing and the sun was beating us down. The walk up was tiring but we stopped frequently and kept a slow pace to the trek. On a lighter note we were looking for the next tree to make our next stop and later on we didnt even need a tree to stop under!!

We reached atop the fort by about 01:15 and our lunch was waiting for us. After splashing some water on ourselves from the Padmavati 'Talav' we had our lunch behind the temple near the 'deep stambh'.

After resting for sometime and regaining some strength we decided to explore the fort. Since we still were quite tired we decided against exploring the whole fort. Between the 'bale killa' and 'nedh' we decided to go to 'nedh' on the suvela machi. We climbed up the 'nedh' and the view from there was amazing. Even though the entire region was dry it still had a charm about it.

We decided to return by about 04:30 and started the climb down. The climb down though not so strenuous was hard on our thighs. As we closed in towards the base the walk became easier and reached Gunjawane by 6pm. After a drink from the community well of the village and a small tea break, rather a cold drink break we started our ride back to Pune.

The trek all in all was a good experiance and a good start to the season and we intend to organize a few more in the coming weeks and sure do hope better participants in the future treks!!

Participants

Ernest Christy, Ashutosh Kumar, Lovkesh Chaturvedi, Prasad Kulkarni, Vinayak and Joshua