Part1:Planning
When we planned for trek to prabalgad, I did`nt realized that the onstart was
same as that of siddhgad. We were 8 members to start with, but when the time
came to commence the trek, there were 3 members (Rahaman, maithil and me) left for the
trek. With heavy hearted we left the campus at 7 pm. Since this was happening
to be a night trek, I was bit dissapointed that we were only three for the trek.
Part2:Journey to Thakurwadi (the night trek)
We reached Panvel via Kurla at 9 pm. From there we took autorickshaw to Shendug.
From there we had to walk for 4 kms to vardoli, since there were not any means
left to take us there beacuse the night was already in that remote place.
Prabalgad was two step trek from there. We reached the lower plateau in 2 hours.
The time was 1 am. There were few houses (place is called thakurwadi) and dense
forest ahead. So we decided to stay and climb the rest as morning comes. That
night stay was really really cool. We made a bone-fire there. We had radio with us and becase of saturday night ,all FM stations were at their best. From there the mumbai city looked
like a huge black carpet with twinkling stars on them. Songs waving in air made
the atmosphere more exotic.
Part3:Day trek starting(lost in translation)
We started again at 6.30 am. The time was perfect to start the climb as the air was very soothing with surroundings very sceneric in morning charm. We asked about the way up from the villagers, but
because none of us understands marathi, many of the valuable information got lost in the translation.
The rock-cliff looked very steep from all sides. We moved ahead
making our way through dense forest. We tried every small pagdandi on our way leading to the rock-cliff so that we can see the way up to the fort. Finally we took a dried waterfall which was looking very probable the way up. But soon we got stucked as the rockclimbing gets more demanding. Suddenly we heared someone calling us. Here comes the guide. Since we had misfired once and having a first
timer(maihtil) with us, we could`nt afford to do rock-climbing.
Since we did`nt have enough sleep last night, we were feeling bit tired.
So avoiding further trial-n-error method, for the first time we took guide. The actual path consists of rocky stairs and is quite hidden in dense
vegetations. We took 3 hours to get to the top. The top was a huge plateau. There were absolutely no remains of either walls or entrance door or any structure. The place is like a cool hill station with commanding views of the
surroundings.There were several points atop that have chilling views of adjoining peaks.
From top, one can see Irshalgad, Matheran and Hazi-Malang.
Sitting next to prabalgad is Kalwantari durg. This is very much like
a watch post, but provides the climber extreme adventure and thrill.
One can even cover matheran from here, which is 3-4 hours walk from here. But we were very much
spent up by that time, so we decided to cover some points and get down.
Part4:Return(we shoot cliffhanger)
We were very tired by the 1 pm and the rocky steps were almost at the other end
of the fort. So we decided to decent from this part.
For the descent, we took a quick
short cut that was very dangerous at several points. We kept our cool and maithil kept his guts to get down. For some parts we were almost like hanging to the cliff. We were at the base by 4 pm. We took a little
nap and got down to vardoli by 7 pm. We were finally back by 12 midnight and decided to celebrate the successful trek with hot soup.
While having soup we were feeling very releaved, feeling proud and offcourse
were planning for the next trek. (2-2-2004)
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