Matheran via Dodhani

After a long hiatus from trekking which seemed forever I finally got an opportunity to regain ground lost during non-trekking season and what could have been a better thing than trekking with baba!
Formerly I asked baba for permission to trek kalsubai on the coming Sunday and I was pleasantly surprised to know that baba himself was organizing a trek to Matheran! Half of my group was already ready to go so it was no big deal in assembling a team. Plans were relayed regular lieutenants like Prasad Dingankar, Tej Khadka were standing by my sides. Mayur Dorkar occasionally accompanied me was game on for this. Sanket Haldankar - Tej’s friend was also coming and so were his couple of friends. Surprise package for this trek was Ankush Pisal- Prachi Tai’s (my sisters) best friend and now my common friend -who is a fine and experienced trekker was also coming. So with this group joining into baba’s group was like a dream come true for me.
Trek began on Sunday morning. We left my place at 4:45am and went to Kalwa junction. From there we took a bus ride to Panvel. During the journey I was getting reports of various people coming by various means and their advancement towards Panvel ST Stand -our meeting spot. We reached Panvel at 6:15am. Over here still some people were still reporting. Over here we met a guy. He was going to Chanderi for a trek with a group called “Trek Mates”. He had traveled from Pune to Panvel for a one day trek. He was waiting for two hours for his group to arrive. That’s the commitment we trekkers show towards our treks. After chatting with him for sometime he met his group and we met ours so we bid him goodbye and wished him luck for his trek.
I met Tej and rest of the people soon. In next half an hour our group had assembled and now we were waiting for our bus to arrive. This bus was going to take us to Dodhani village from where we were going to begin our trek. It took almost another hour for the bus to arrive. Mean while we were chatting and introductions were being done. Match between Germany and Argentina last night was being discussed with fervor. Experiences of previous treks and plans for future treks were being shared. It was bonding time and was well spent. When the bus arrived we eagerly boarded the bus and were on our way. The bus was like a chartered bus as we were the only passengers in it. Soon we were amongst the nature. Mountains on all the sides and slight drizzle were everything we were asking for and we were having it. Ride of half an hour or so took us to our destination.
We didn’t waste any time in getting started. The beginning of the climb was easy. Once we were through with the first base we had our introduction sessions. After this we celebrated 43rd birthday of Mr. Eknath Janardhan Marathe. This was done in proper “marathmoli” style. We had replaced the cake with “sheera”-a Marathi delicacy. After finishing the celebrations we moved on with trek. It was still drizzling and we were wearing our windcheaters and all. Everyone was busy photographing. Most of us had some or the other camera with us. We had a 14MP camera as well as a 1.3 MP camera in our group. The terrain was through fields and flats. We moved through this for another half an hour and rains stopped. Rains were gone but still it was cloudy-perfect for trekking not for photography. Our windcheaters were soon packed in our sacks. By now the difficulty level had increased and the fungal growth on stones did not make our trek any easy. Fine climate was the only plus we had. By now the amateurs in our group were getting a “feel” of trek. Sweat was embedded on our brows. I had Tej, Mayur, Prasad and Ankush with me. We were at the tail to take care that no one was left behind. As the rains had stopped I was busy with my photography. We were posing for photographs and all. It was jolly time. An hour had passed and we had gained some height by now. Soon we encountered a rock patch. It was not very big but considerable enough. The only worrying factor was that it was all wet due to the recent rains and to add to our woes there was some prominent fungal growth in here. But the experienced senior lot took care of the amateurs and when we were here it was clear coast for us to fool around! So some damn fake posses and some real ones too we moved on. By now we could not see anything below us due to the fog. We could not calculate the amount of climb that was still remaining. Some of us were dead tired and were taking frequent halts. This slackened the pace but still it was all fine as we were almost done with the climbing part.
Very soon we reached sunset point of Matheran. It was covered all in fog and we could not see anything here so we moved on to other points worth seeing. We had lunch and a huge photography session on Louisa as well as Malang point. From Louisa point we could see some magnificent waterfall flowing from the rock face in front of us. It was an amazing view. After having a group photograph on lion’s head point we moved on towards other points. After roaming in Matheran for another half an hour we moved towards to sunset point and rested here for around 15 minutes and then started our descend. Descend was much more difficult as the stones were damn slippery and we were hot due to sun. After climbing down for an hour and half we reached the waterfall that we had encountered while climbing up. Soon we shunned our wet T-shirts and were ad mist the cool flowing water. The water was hitting us with a strong force. We were sitting bare back in it and getting massaged by rampaging water! We had another photo session of about 45 minutes in this water. It was a heavenly experience. After spending about an hour we were dressed up again in fresh clothes and were moving down towards village. We were near the fields when baba heard sound of an approaching ST and we were all running towards the village. Once there we had another chartered ST waiting for us! Soon we called it a trek.
As with all treks had some beautiful memories and made great friends. Missed some other friends like my brothers Ninad & Shivendu and friends from college. But all is well that ends well.