Life Is - Nature's Beauty

Lohgadh - Nature's Beauty. We explored this beauty of nature in dripping rains this sunday. The experience - Awesome :-).
Started at 5 AM in the morning, we(deepali and myself) reached at the train station at around 5:20 only to figure out that venkat who
was suppose to join us has reached to pune station instead of shivajinagar which was the official point. prashant and deepali were worried.
Prashant, though, didn't reveal that he was worried (he did that later :-)). But venkat was intelligent to call up and we could explain him the scene.
He mangaged to board the train. I travelled in the old MEMU train after quite sometime (The last being in my college days when I use to move from Baroda to Anand regularly).


The journey in the train itself was simply fab. Nature was at it's best. Lush green sahyadri (mountain ranges) were decorated by tons of waterfalls to enrich their beauties.










We reached Malwali (near Lonavala) in around 40 mins. I wanted my boot-up tea and so did the rest. We had some good snacks and hot tea at the stall. Even before we finished, the rains gods were ready to accompany us on our trek. It started pouring heavily.

We reached "Bhaje".This is the place from where the real trek starts. We started on our way at around 8:00 AM. Just as we started we saw a real mighty waterfall gushing on the way. We were tempted ..... Lots of water and we wanted to get drained. But somehow we controlled ourselves promising the water to enjoy his company when we return (And we indeed did keep the promise :-)).

The fun continued. We continued moving ahead and enjoying the rocks and the greens......

We were accompanied by this tiny little dog from "Bhaje". Earlier we thought, he might be finding us newbies and might be following us. Little one was not ready to leave. He was determined to trek with us. This was indeed a different experience. He literally followed us and followed us right from the start till we reached the top... and the story does not end here.. he did followed us back at the foothill when we reached back. One very interesting thing happpened there was that at one place there was a very steep climb. Little doggie could not climb that.. He was not happy about it. He tried his best but could not succeed. There was another path-way to reach to the top though. We just signaled him about the alternative path and bravo.... He did understood and manage to catch up with us once again. Later we figured out that he had his home at the fort upstairs and that some fellow living them takes care of him.... So we thought, he might have appointed him as a marketing manager to attract customers to the top for snacks (Zumka-bhakar etc).

Journey is still on... we have now reached about the half-way mark and started getting exhausted.....And wow.. we had a drive-away there.... A small shop (tapri as we call) and we are all set for a cup of hot tea to feel some warmth from the pouring waters.... And there our hero prashant, got a unknown sms wishing him "Happy Friendship Day".... wow... Nobody did that to me ever :-(.... Prashant used all his memory to recollect and figure out who she was (of-course we take this by default as she ).... We had a good time pulling him while we had a cup of hot tea and continued on our way ......

Now we had reached the fort and we had to climb those big steps to reach to the top. We wonder how the kings and the soldiers in those old ages could have climbed the steps which were so big :-)

We reached at the top and now could see the clouds passing by. But due to the cloudy sky misssed the lovely view of pavana river and the dam......

Lots of greenary all around surrounded us......everywhere we went.....

On our way back we played a lots of games and sang some memorable songs....which might be quite a good memory for a few of us for quite some time.........We had good nagging between swapnil and deepali both trying to pull each other down and the result.... fun.......

We had some good lunch in a small hut who provided us with the extra facility of fire-place to warm ourselves.... Ajit was worried since he wanted to reach home before 6... Do you know why.... No... then ask Ajit :-))

Finally we arrived at the bottom. Of course had some real good fun in the waterfall before that. The whole experience was simply memorable.