Part of a Travel Series of my Phaltan-Khatav-Maan-Karad Trek – 10 Forts in 4 Days

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“We have to reach Pune by today evening!”, Anup Bokil’s (Bokya) familiar chat window popped up on my screen. I had just reached my office and it was 1100 Hrs in the morning.I was definitely not ready for this! I immediately called him up!

“What the…!!??”, was my obvious stunned reply to his surprise attack on my Pearl Harbor!

A typical Bokil laugh followed through the speaker of the phone before Bokil told me, “ Can we leave at 4 pm? Ajay says if we can reach tonight we can leave early morning tomorrow morning and cover one extra fort!”

“How is possible, Bokil? I have just reached office!”

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We were scheduled to begin our road trip/trek of 4 days at dawn on 15th August from Mumbai,reach Pune, pickup Ajay and Amit and proceed. From there we would travel over a thousand kilometres and cover 10 forts, some temples and a museum in a span of only 4 days!

Today was 14th August, 11 am, I had just entered my office  and had not even reached the ‘p’ of packing when Bokil sprung the surprise attack! He was suggesting we leave at 4 pm for Pune!

“No way! Lets leave late at night around 10pm!”,I negotiated.

“Arre try to understand, if we reach Pune tonight and leave early tomorrow and maybe cover one extra fort. Plus, the ‘pilot’ can get a good night’s sleep before the long drive the next day.And yes, all the people in Ajay’s house sleep early!”, Bokil put forth his terms.

Valid points!

Bokil 1 Wagh 0

“Ok Bokya, but I can make it 6pm, not a bit earlier!”, I said in the style of a typical negotiating shopkeeper making it sound like, “ This is my final offer! Take it or leave it!”

Luckily,Bokil agreed and we shot off in my Indica (रणगाडा- Tank) towards Ajay Kakade’s “Kakade Vishwa” in Pune.

Our ride was pretty smooth, the only exception being the malfunctioning windshield wiper blades which reduced visibility to zero when the heavens opened up in a foggy Khandala Ghat! Thanks to Pune’s traffic we reached, Ajay’s house at around 1130pm where he welcomed me with a traditional “Namaskar Saheb!” and my mouth just fell open seeing his awesome collection of books and knives!

“ We will pick up Amit in the morning and then leave for Phaltan via Saswad!”, is what I thought Ajay said as my attention was diverted by a Gerber Bear Gryll’s Knife complete with a sharpener and  a Magnesium fire starter! This was really great stuff! I would love to shoplift here!

After a hearty dinner and some talks about the route we were going to take, we finally decided to sleep around 1 am. I don’t remember when I dozed off, but the first sound of Bokil’s alarm opened my eyes at 04:45 am. I saw Bokil rise like The Undertaker through my groggy eyes in the dark and automatically looked at Ajay to see if he was awake.

A negative on that! I felt like I received a bonus when the company was about to be liquidated! I smiled to myself sleepily. It meant 15 more minutes of sleep till 5 am when we had to actually get up. Only sleep lovers like me will understand, the importance of those ‘2 minutes’ extra time in the morning!

We finally woke up after a ‘good’ sleep of 4 hours! Ajay brought us a really delicious and absolutely necessary cup of tea which I gulped down like a parched dog! With the Tea shaking awake our brains,we loaded up our vehicle with our bags and most importantly –Cameras! We also ensured we took the right road maps and books for reference (Courtesy: Ajay Kakade ) and were, finally,ready to go but there was one more thing to do – Clean the car windshields! In this operation, Bokil’s natural altitude above sea level was of a great use as it provided that extra reach to clean the windshields!

We set off for Warje, Amit’s House and after having another cup of tea, set off towards Phaltan via Kondhwa and Saswad. On the way, we would stop at Saswad to have a look at Sardar Purandare Wada, Godaji Jagtap Samadhi and Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath Samadhi and from there we would move forward to Santoshgad via Phaltan and then onward to Varugad. Thereafter at the end of the day, we would reach Loni, Ajay’s village and would reside at his house, more popularly known as Kakade palace!

To speak frankly, while these guys were rattling of names of villages and places which we would pass on our way like priests recite mantras during poojas, most of them were greek and latin to me! As I turned on the ignition key and my रणगाडा growled to life, I made a mental note to study all the maps whenever time permitted and get up to speed with the others!

As I put the car into gear and put the foot to the accelerator, I realized that today was 15th August, India’s independence day. In a way, we too were getting freedom today, that it was only for 4 days did not matter. The chance of being in the outdoors to us trekking fanatics, even for a day is enough. We love to be away from the civilized life, be away from the buzz of the cities, deep in the forests,valley! We love to  get lost inside the beautiful, thrilling and terrifying arms of Nature. For we believe, that getting lost in such a way will help us find ourselves in the depths of the mountains, find our lost ancestors who fought here making these very mountains their armor, who made the people rise like a glorious phoenix, fight for their rights, break the chains of slavery and achieve Freedom!

Sometimes, finding more about your country’s glorious past is, indeed, attaining Freedom!!

- Pranjal Wagh

01 Sep 2012

This work by Pranjal A. Wagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License

“The Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

I remember reading this thought a few years ago in a Johnny Walker print ad in the newspaper. I always thought Johnny Walker Scotch Whiskey was the maker of this thought until I googled it before putting it on this blog.

Turns out, it was Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, who penned it!

Anyways, our journey of a thousand kilometers – 1182 km to be precise – began not with a single step but with a chain of countless emails flying back and forth between us. Most of the times these emails had little to do with the planning of this trek/journey and more to do with making plans that would capsize like paper boats in a rain-water stream. We set out to plan something else and in the end, we ended up doing a totally different trek! (But atleast, we got something done! Move over, Montek Singh Ahluwalia!)

Our planning phase was like riding a roller coaster. Ups and downs made up the very soul of the plan. A team member quitting to go on another trek, an injury to someone, family issues and a thousand other problems made sure the days before our expedition were like an cricket match with India in it. Nail biting to the finish – no matter who the opponent is! We made sure the trek almost never happened before it finally happened!

So after many discussions and debates, we decided that we would set out to explore,experience and endure the shorter range of Sahyadris which spread out through Satara District.

We decided to visit the following 10 forts:

1. Santoshgad
2. Varugad
3. Vardhangad
4. Mahimangad
5. Bhushangad
6. Macchindragad
7. Sadashivgad
8. Morgiri – Gunvantgad
9. Dategad
10. Vasantgad

Here is a primary sketch of our route drawn by Ajay:

These forts are spread out from Phaltan which is south-east of Pune and then onwards move through Khatav-Maan regions and the chain ends at Karad.

To give a geographical description, the mountain range in this region known as Mahadevache Dongar – Shiva’s Mountains – is not high nor is it continuous. The mountains are scattered, some have plains on all sides as far as the eye can see. Since they are situated on the Deccan plateau they are already at MSL of about 1500-2000 feet and they do not rise much high in the sky nor do they have tall cliffs. Now due to this geographical characteristic of the mountains, the forts on them are heavily fortified. Almost all forts have a continuous wall along the perimeter and huge bastions, a feature which is absent in forts in the main Sahyadri range as the mountains there offer natural fortification in the form of vertical rock cliffs.  Many of these forts have an history ranging back to 1500-2000 years.

Finally, 4 of us were ready to set out. The team included Ajay Kakade, Anup Bokil, Amit Kulkarni and last but not the least, Me!

(L2R : Ajay Kakade, Anup Bokil, Amit S. Kulkarni) 

My posts in this series will share with you our experiences and enjoyment while exploring a whole new region in Maharashtra.

Do watch out for updates soon!

- Pranjal Wagh

This work by Pranjal A. Wagh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License