Rasaalgad
9th july to 11th july 2010.
Right from June 1st week or so, when monsoon hadn’t even hit the city, we, the enthu Deccan Hikers started planning for the monsoon trek!! So impatient we got, n so desparate, that we already did a small 1-day trek in june (Dukes Nose), to get a feel of the pre-monsoon trek, and keep the enthu alive!!!
And as soon as Dukes Nose trek was over, no body was even bothered of our regular Trek photography competition and all, everybody just set up in preparations for the next, long time back planned July 2nd Week Trek… J)
The chain mails reached a century count.. yesss.. we actually had a 100 emails in the chain with subject “what about July 2nd week trek” !!!! This is not an exaggeration.. but a FACT… how enthu, and despo everyone of the deccan hikers were, for this July 2nd week trek!!!
After lot of discussions on lot of places, our Leader .. Amol Chaudhary.. settled down with “Rasaalgad”, a fort in Konkan region.
Some info about Rasaalgad:
It is a Fort in Ratnagiri, Konkan region. The nearest village is Khed, which is reachable by bus or train from Mumbai (We chose ST while going). Khed is around 200 kms from Mumbai, takes around 5 hours to reach by ST (we started from Mumbai central at 11.45 pm ST, and reached Khed at around 5.15 am). Further from Khed, need to reach a small village called “Nimni”. But buses are not very frequent there, so we rather chose to reach an intermediate spot called “niwachi wadi” by ST, and the 4 kms to “Nimni” we chose to walk!
From Nimni, again, a small walk on a properly constructed tar road, and then a walk on the “kachhi paayvaat” leads to another small village “Rasaalwadi”, which seems to be the actual Base village for Rasaalgad. This entire walk, from Niwachi wadi till Rasaalwadi, took us around 3 hours (though its not that long and hectic, but we had great photographers in our group with all sorts of cameras, from simple point and shoot, to basic SLRs to Medium level SLRs… and everybody doing their best with their cam’s all the way!!)
From here, Rasaalgad top is just another half an hour climb. (again, we took more than 1 and half hours or so, to cover this distance, for the same reason as above. So the entire ascend we took around 4 and half hours.)
Its around 1770 feet above the sea level. It’s a very simple trek, even for first timers, very easy, and no chance of missing the route or anything like that, since the route is very obvious, and roads very nicely constructed.
And the best season to visit, according to me, is obviously the Monsoon!!! It was raining sooo heavily there on the hill top!! And all over there was foggy, lovely atmosphere, with greenery all around! Not only the hill top, but also the entire route from Khed to Niwachi wadi in bus, and from Niwachi wadi to Nimni and futher to the Rasaalgad top, entire route was soo amazing, such a greenery filled, lively environment!! Konkan is in its best in the monsoons!!!!
As obvious from above, Rasaalgad is a very beautiful place to visit, very calm and quiet, into the nature’s lap. Very few people know about this place I guess, hence there are hardly any trekking groups visiting here. Probably that’s the reason, is so clean, calm and close to the nature, without any mess!
Though not very popular, but it has a great historical background. Its more than 2000 years old fort, under the rule of More of Javli, and then conquered by Shivaji Maharaj, later on by Peshwas, and finally lost to the British. (I read all this on the internet ;-))
On Rasaalgad, there are lots of site seeings and old remnants to see..like there are 2 main darwaaza, huge entrances to the fort. Very beautiful, and still intact! A small Hanuman temple just before the 2nd darwaza. Then, Zolai Devi temple on the top, and a deep maal in front of it. The temple is very big, beautiful, and very nicely maintained. With proper puja and prayers offered daily, as there was a diya lighted up when we reached there. And its so big that around 20-25 people can manage to stay in it very comfortably. Again, another small Ganpati mandir beside this temple. Also, lot of canons (tof), around 16 as I heard, nice fortification which is still intact, Bale killa’s (citadel) left over walls, lot of potable water ponds, few waterfalls (thou very small ones).. and very lovely atmosphere!Also, from Rasaalgad, we can see Sumargad and Mahipatgad forts.
Oohhh… lot of gyan about the place!!
Now, lets get back to how we did the trek!!
The entire description of how, what and when we did… is already very nicely and in detail explained by our newly appointed co-leader of the Deccan Hikers!!! Check out the link if you haven’t yet visited!!!
Besides this, I cant think of anything else that we did on the trek..
And yess the highlights of the trek were…
Amol loosing his first and verrry old mobile phone in kurla, just in front of his home ;-)
The bus accident, which was very skillfully controlled by the ST driver, and BIG THANK YOU to GOD, for not making it anything severe (thou truly said by Alpana, we all were really scared of!! )
Pics of each and every “themb” (drop) that we clicked on the way.. and then, the non-photographers getting soooo bored of our photography that they started thinking of tricks to stop our photography… like dropping all the water droplets from the leafs on the way.. (hehehe.. just an exaggeration, but the boys actually said this to us.. hehehhehe ), and praying tht our batteries exhaust hehehe.. lot many things.. ;-)
Loooot of humor on the way.. in the bus, and also on the Rasaalgad top.. which made the entire Trek sooo fun filled, enjoyable and memorable to all of us.. THANKS to EVERYONE for this.
The games, the songs, the photography with the Umbrella, with the stone dropping in the lake and clicking pics of the splash…oo.. that was really funny!!!
The verrrrrry tasty Rice mix prepared by Amol’s mom, the maggi and tea (tea was really tasty.. ;-), appreciating my own efforts.. hhehehe)…
While descending, Chasing each other, finding shortcuts, and chota shortcuts, (which were really amazing routes and we enjoyed these routes the most!!), running and reaching the niwachi wadi bus stop just in time, and asking the driver to hold the bus till others in the grp reach!!
Girpade family’s members - starting twice with Alpana slipping down, and once Sonal, the first time trekker, and a big fall she made on the tar road, hurt herself a lot, and even her pant tore off.. but still didn’t stop, and reached running to niwachi wadi quite on time to catch the bus!!.. Hatts off! Wht at spirit!! She’s a real trekker!! Also THANKS to kedar, tushar, etc etc, who really helped her and managed to reach on time. Everyone’s efforts from the beginning made us do the near to impossible task, and bcoz of this, we reached back home by afternoon only, instead of by train we wud have reached by 10 in the night!
I can keep on writing.. so many things.. so many memories.. so much of fun!!!
THANKS A TON to our Group Leader AMOL for arranging yet another awesome trek for us!!
THANKS a LOT DECCAN HIKERS for making it possible to have such memorable treks!!!

When is the next trek????????? ;-)