Vasota - The Jungle Trek

Its been a while since i posted anything here. If you have followed puneritraveller.com our pune travel guide you would know that we have been busy getting our readers more details about hotels and resorts around pune. It has been a busy quarter with us traveling to Panchgani Mahabaleshwar and Tapola more than half a dozen times not to forget the konkan beaches. We had camped in Dapoli on the beautiful Karde beach one of the beautiful secluded beaches amongst the dapoli beaches. For our reader we got details about resorts in ganapatipule also.

Anyway this blog is not about the dapoli beach or ganpatipule so let me come back to to the topic that i want to write about in this blog. Vasota , a lesser known fort inside the Koyna wild life sanctuary. One of the most exciting treks that i have ever under taken may be because of the legends of the place that i had heard before. Most of the stories that i heard was ridiculously unbelievable including man eating tigers, leopards coming out of bushes and even a story of a eight feet tall naked man in the forest! I dismissed the stories as bogus but even the things that we dismiss creates a kind of excitement when we actually do the thing doesn't it? It happens to me anyway, I know that its not true but a strange kind of unexplained excitement which accepts the possibility of the stories being true..anyway

Vasota is Situated on the western edge of the Satara District, covered in dense forest all the way through the trek shows you some very beautiful views of of the shiv saagar lake. Surrounded by the river Koyna, Vasota is definitely a special destination for trekking in Pune. The only to reach the base of the fort is by a boat and make sure you carry everything necessary for the trip along with you as this place is completely cut off from civilization. Prior permissions for the trek needs to be taken from the forest authorities, normally you can get that done the same day as you plan your trek.

There are two forts, juna Vasota and navin Vasota. juna Vasota on top of babukada - the second tallest cliff in Maharashtra is not accesible. There are two entrances to the navin Vasota one of which is in a dilapidated state as of now and the fort can be entered through only the second entrance. On entering the fort there is a Hanuman temple which is devoid of a roof. From here the straight path leads to the remnants of the fort. The left path leads to the Kalkaiche Thane. On the way is the Mahadeo temple and ahead of it is Machi with spectacular views of the surrounding region. You can also see the Babukada reminiscent of Konkankad of Harishchandragad. The mountain ahead of Babukada is the old Vasota.

The river camp in Tapola - Koyna Agro Tourism helped us in organizing everything for us and i would like to thank them that here - I would also recommend the place if you plan to go for this trek they will arrange the required permissions and also arrange for packed lunch from Tapola. There are a few other Tapola hotels like hotel shivneri also that you can try for stay in Tapola