Moments...

Chindiya Adventure Presents Monsoon Track (Oops its Trek!!) Once again the gang of 6 leave early (very early) out of the warm blankets to be close to nature. Half sleepily we pile ourselves along with our bags into a Scorpio. But we never regret leaving the confines of comfort. We are cheered by the green expanse , cloud laden mountains, and placid waters! It was almost drizzling all along the route and for once rain didn’t dampen our spirits. Our first stop - Dhabha for hot Aloo Parathas and Tea. Refreshed we sped further towards our destination. Well we selected Malshej Ghats, 130 KMs, a paradise surrounded by mint green mountains with cascading waterfalls. Its nature at its best. And the best time to visit the place is, you guessed it right August and September and how can we choose any other time. Well before we reached Malshej, we stopped over at Narayangaon - famous for its vineyards. The wine shop in itself is beautiful with a décor to watch for. After that we headed to Malshej...

These are the names of the Chindiya Club members (you haven't heard about them?? :D) Now this is a learning. 2 gang members were supposed to give us a grand feast and these people simply packed their bags and left for camping....Smart move I say!!! Ok the the fab five pick up their kali ghoodis and of course the tent....its just not a tent its THE TENT (will upload the pic of the tent soon) and went camping....it was sans any excitement ;)...only excitement was the breakdown of one of the bikes, taking a detour, finally reaching the camping site, installing the tent and then on the return journey - the tyre sorry tube getting punctured, losing of the screw head of the tyre, and of course the search for the food...in their words for a journey of 4 hours we took just 9 hours :D But I wouldnt be surprised if they would have thoroughly enjoyed inspite of all this excitement ;-) Thats the spirit of Chindiya Gang. Even the gals were not left out...me and A chilled out, poor P had office ...

Yeah me have now reached old age...as per Georgie I am supposed to be politically correct and so lemme restate - I have turned Lethargic and NOT old. OK so whatever it is. But after a first few kilometers I was exhausted. Fatigue overcame me to the extent that my legs wobbled and refused to take my own weight. My hands also couldnt help me anymore. And mind it the trek was of a Beginner level only. Coz among the trekkers there were kids and older people also who walked by as if it was a piece of cake. I could hear my breath two feet away. I was so miserably tired and worn out. Oh my its time I retired. But the best part of the trek was I really felt that I have won a few friends for myself. "A true friend won't leave you hanging on to the edge, but catch you when you lose grip of the high mountain." So now that I have re-tired , I would definitely have a few friends who would be there for me. But I heard someone say we can only catch you if you do not put on more wei...

Yes, we are strong proponents of this philosophy and we abided by it. We left no trace of our stay there…packed all the garbage and carried them back with us in a polythene bag and then dumped them in the dustbin of the wayside inn. Though, it was sad to see the place enroute littered with empty bottles, candy wrappers and other garbage. A request to the fellow trekkers, please do not dump your garbage there. Enjoy the nature. Hope we can encourage and educate people to follow Leave no Trace .

Yeah me have to call it a saga...it cannot be contained in a few pages. For those wondering how come I am sharing the experiences of the trek when I had written earlier that I wont share the real stories. Well certainly not because I love to break promises / rules. But because now I have request to at least pen down a two pager describing in detail the adventure. Me thought about the entire thing...and decided instead of having a lengthy post describing the entire trip in details with pics, I would rather stick on snippets highlighting the key events. The reason I choose to narrate the events as episodes is coz , they would be shorter and would be easy to read and easier for me to write. One more advantage would be if I forgot to mention any event as soon as I am reminded of it, I will include them as an episode. So I start with the episodes from tomorrow. Watch out for them!!

My friends would be surprised that I am not writing anything about the trekking. (actually one of them would be thankful that I didn't, oh I think I heard more folks thanking me for not printing the experience ;-D …Imagine I was given strict instructions to expurgate sections :-P) Well all of them can heave a sign of relief for I am not going to share the real stories here. Now moving on with the incident that I want to talk about and this is the true story... That sweltering sunny day, we took refuge near a lake. While we were cooling ourselves after the arduous trek, we saw few womenfolk approaching the river with pots and pans of various sizes, some carrying tin containers. I enquired from them and found that they had come all the way to fill in drinking water. My next immediate query was answered even before I finished my question…no they didn ’t have any wells or any water supply in their village. It was surprising that we were just 55 KM from Pune city and hardly 4 hours dri...