Lakh Lakh Chanderi...

            "लख लख चंदेरी तेजाची न्यारी दुनिया...." the old tune and the only first line of the song, my mind started singing since it heard that my next trek is to Chanderi fort. For us Chanderi was like that hard chapter that we see everyday in a textbook, but we keep it behind to study later. But our captain - Mehul had finally decided to hunt it down, he was ready with a voyage plan, we only had to follow his orders. My busy office schedule didn't allow me to do any preliminary research of the trek route. I was warned this time to get up early, pick Rajesh - my office colleague at Powai at 4:30 and get into a train to Panvel by 4:55 in the morning. I said OK! As planned I and Rajesh united with the captain Mehul and two new faces he had brought with him - Sharad and Shrikant. So, the captain and the crew was ready, ship was loaded and here we started our voyage with a rickshaw leading to the base village of Chanderi fort which is Tamsai.

          The rickshaw run on a narrow and rocky road giving us a nice massage with a rattling noise, the road was surrounded by green fields and it showed us some beautiful water streams and mountain silhouettes. We started locating and naming few mountains as Irshal, Chanderi, Malang and Sondai fort, some of our guesses were correct though. About half an hour later we reached to Tamsai, the ratting of rickshaw stopped but it started beating same sound in our hearts as our gazes got fixed on two magnificent mountains Mhasmal and Chanderi. At the moment we were unable to distinguish between them, the mountains and we were strangers to each other. From a distance it seemed like two giants shaking hands before a fight. Their ridges meet at a place forming a very big 'v' shape in the middle. Our trail started through the village, left it behind and our ship sailed towards one of the mountains we were not sure at the moment upon which we were going to be landed. We were filled with so much enthusiasm that first one and half hour we went on chirping and chattering. With each step we forwarded we were pushed into more dense forest. We had already started ascending, we could not see our destination but the dense flora and various kinds of insects living in it. The insects had got merged into their habitat so amazingly that we needed put pressure to figure them out. We found there a lot of banana trees that you would have called it a banana forest as the jungle and the mountains were full with them. 

           After about one and half hour of blind hiking when we only tried to remain stuck to the route, we found ourselves at an elevated place, near a beautiful cascading water stream and down below as far as our eyes can reach laid a dense jungle with the artery flowing through it. From there we could see the mountain tops, huge and high, one would never believe that he would make it to the top. I inhaled a deep breath and started ascending again, this time we were hiking alongside the water stream and heading towards the col where Mhasmal and Chanderi meet each other. We were greeted by many white crabs on the path, I called them white-walkers. The weather turned little muggy and damp we finally reached the col. The same trail on which we had climbed up descends down on the opposite side directing to Chinchawali village, which was going to be our returning route, but we still had a mountain to climb which was on third route which climbs up on the ridge. We could see the huge pinnacle of the Chanderi now, so we knew a direction to follow.

          The damp air and the hot sun didn't allow us to settle there for long, well we might have but we saw few wasps or honeybees hovering around us, Mehul said one bit him and in the panic moment we pushed ourselves to go on. The trail brought us in a heavy thicket again, I was ahead of the troop by then and when few fine spider webs broke upon my face, I put a sword in my hand, Mehul was not worried about the spiders as he had already eaten a few! I was only afraid of wasps but when I realized that the flying monster is some strange insect with orange colored wings and a deadly long needle, I got terrified because I didn't have any clue what it's bite would cause. It never deserted us and kept biting until we reached the top. It seemed to me similar to a girl we love the most, no doubt beautiful but brutal!

          About half an hour later we halted at a plain big rock where cool pleasant breeze gave us some relief from those irritating flies. Enormous depths of the valley and magnificence of the mountains made us forget the mundane world and it felt like being in another world. Although we wanted to stay there for more time we had to moved on. The places of green patches had then been replaced by yellow and pink flowers spread all over. The ascend became steep but it didn't trouble us as the weather became less humid and more pleasing. There we reached on another col where on one side there is a small temple and on another side is a cistern and a cave at the base of huge pinnacle. I got to know that once the pinnacle had stairs to reach the top but eventually got collapsed so now one could not climb it without ropes and on the top there is a statue of Shivaji Maharaj. Keeping the pinnacle on our left and walking along it's right edge we reached our destination point - the cave. To our surprise the cave had tiled floor and idols of lord Ganesha and a goddess and a Shivaling. We had our lunch there, took a nap on the cool floor, collected our stuff and the wonderful memories into our bags and started our return travel.

        We descended down with decent pace up to the col where we took the trail which headed towards Chinchawali village. The descend afterward was little steep and the trail coincided with a water stream many times. Most of the people do a mistake and follow a water stream and end up lost, we're not going to do that, we insisted upon the route. With taking very few halts we descended down from there onward it was a long walk to Chinchawali. The two mountains looked the exactly same with the 'v' shape, the only difference was, we were on opposite side than the morning. Just when we neared the village we heard a loud thud in the distance, there was a mountain being slaughtered by our kinds for the construction purpose. Then only I realized why Chanderi and Mhasmal were holding each others hands so tightly, I glanced at them for the last time and continued forward. Our destination stop was Badalapur railway station, we were hoping to get a vehicle in Chinchawali but we couldn't, so we took another so called 20 mins of walk which turned into another 45 mins to a small village called Bhendshil, there we got a rickshaw which dropped us at Badalapur station. We hopped into CST train with sore legs but we had filled our bags entirely with sparkling 'Chanderi' memories.

Photo: Mehul Vast

The dense forest

Mhasmal Gad

The pinnacle of Chanderi

Attempted water painting one of the scene