Malshej Ghat & Bhimashankar Trip

It has been quite a long time since my last post. Last time it was on Bengali New Year. This time I am going to share my experience about a short trip to Malshej Ghat and Bhimashankar which was scheduled on 15th of August, 2008.On this day, we planned for a memorable trip to taste

our freedom in our own terms, close to nature, away from the routine life we are more familiar with and not spending it like a normal weekend. The day was a Friday. So I and my roommates planned for a long weekend, full of fun and unforgettable enjoyment.Monsoon is the perfect time to go to Ghats, to see nature bathing in the showers of rain like Goddess Diana in her alluring lure. The question was where we should go. The options that we had were Lonavala, too close to Pune and 3/4th of Pune habitat spend their weekend there. The other was Malshej Ghat, which is around130 KM from Pune and it’s on the Pune-Nasik Highway. It all started with conveyance, then accommodation. We all were very much keen to make a night halt. So, we booked a 14 seated bus for our trip. But, to our surprise we found that there is hardly any hotel in Malshej Ghat. There is the MTDC (Flamingo) resort in the Malshej Ghat, but it was already overbooked. This, I will say was growing like a big impediment in our trip. But we were inexorable. We kept our composure and altered our plan and included Bhimashankar in our trip, hoping to get a hotel, and craft the plans for a night halt there.Then came our much awaited morning, even the Sun felt new as if it was greeting us on this wonderful day. We were all set to go. We started our journey by 6:30 AM, full of energy and enthusiasm, and exhilarated and expecting to meet up with lots of fun and activities awaiting us there. We were a group of nine musketeers. Sourav, Arindam, Somenath, Maloy and me from Pune. Subhamoy, Devjyoti, Mainak and Raju joined us from Mumbai. This was our second trip. We took a short break for breakfast on the Nasik Highway. Then we started off for Malshej. Our first concern was to get a suitable accommodation for our trip. Luckily we got one (the Monika Lodge) in Junnar which is around 30 Km from Malshej Ghat. We took three double bed rooms, kept our luggage and started for our final destination for the day. Our first spot of interest was a dam. The dam was on the lake Kukdi. The Bus waded through the clouds over the dam for about 1 KM and halted for us to unboard it from its confinements to the vast expanse of nature.. It looked as if we were flying through the clouds. The clouds covered us like blankets in the wintry morning. Driver said that this dam is 4 KM long and on the other side there is village called Harishchandragad.It seemed that the route would be really perfect for trekking. But we were not ready for trekking. We stopped our bus on the dam and went down to the water and had lots of fun. It was continuously raining and the whole area was under cloud cover. Then we came back from the dam and on the highway we found one waterfall. There was a huge crowd enjoying the beauty of the waterfall. We joined them and spent quite some time in the water. We had our windcheaters on but Maloy could not resist the temptation of taking a dip in the freezing waters, he went directly under the falling water and had a wonderful icy experience. Even for a second I thought to join him but….. any way still we were 20 KM away from our final destination, Malshej Ghat. When we reached Malshej Ghat the scene was fantastic and none of us had any words to describe it. What I thought about Malshej Ghat is that it might be a hill point where we can park our bus and then we may have to climb up/down to reach the water falls, something like that. But the fact was that Malshej Ghat is not at all like that. It is just a chain of water falls finding its way through the roads.

There was no place for parking even. There were a chain of eight to ten waterfalls one after another. Each one had its one beauty. The most amazing one was the last one. Eventually for an awkward bent of the mountain the water was coming down at the middle of the road. Cars were passing through the water. This experience was really cool. When our bus was moving underneath the waterfall we were all spell bound. The weather also was awesome. The rain was playing hide and seek at its leisure. We got down from the bus wrapped with our windcheaters except Maloy. But this time I also joined Maloy and went under the falling water. It was a marvelous experience al together. No one from our group was ready to get wet. They chose to be within their windcheaters’ safe custody. The people there were laughing, jumping, and singing in joy. One point I would like to mention is that, the place is not a good one day trip spot for the families, especially for the ladies. Even we felt little odd among the drunk crowd. I am not saying they where doing something harsh to anyone, but apart from the scenic beauty, crowd was not good, at least for me. From Malshej Ghat we took a u turn and came back to the hotel for our lunch. We did literally nothing in the evening. As Olympic was going on, saw some events in the TV. We got to know that three boxers of India had qualified for the quarter finals. Next day morning we started our journey to Bhimashankar. We had our breakfast in a roadside hotel. By road Bhimashankar has the same distance from Pune as Malshej Ghat. But this road is not that good, so it took quite a long time to reach there. Bhimashankar is famous for a Jotirlinga of Lord Shiva out of the twelve. Apart from the Temple, the scenic beauty and the jungle experience is a special tourist attraction. While we were heading to Malshej through the national highway 222, the road was wide enough and did not have many deadly turns. But the road to Bhimashankar is quite narrow with plenty of sharp turns. When we started our ascent, the weather started changing. We took a break in between, a photo break. We clicked lot of photographs there. After reaching Bhimashankar, we parked the bus 2 km from the temple and started walking. Walking down the jungle roads covered with fog and the only sound that one could hear was our footsteps…. Oh this was the experience of our lives. I have never been to any jungle before, so this was a first experience for me at least. When we reached the temple we saw a huge queue of people waiting to worship the Lord. We preferred to pray from outside as we were running out of time. After visiting the temple we came back to the bus and started our journey back to Pune.

Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.

I enjoyed the trip so much that my words may not suffice my thoughts and experience.Here is the contact no for the hotel (The Monica Lodge) if anyone needs it.New Monika Lodge Ph: 02132-264343 Cell Number: 9730367445.