Thirst

Long drought of absence of treks, made me feel like boiling water. And the whole beautiful monsoon season reached on the edge of winter. The thought of not going on a single trek in whole monsoon season was making me sick..moreover driving me crazy. I knew it’s only after a year I will have my next chance. And then it went till yesterday and I decided to take it on my chest.  My old school friend showed me the interest of going with me wherever I plan. I started planning. My search halted on Garbett!... Garbett! A golden plateau that me and few of my office colleagues had visited almost two years ago. This rang the bell and I started imagining how the plateau would look in the midst of monsoon. I expected whole green cover in place of golden-brown grass which I had seen in the month of November.

Here we reached Kanjur station two of us on bike, missed the planned local of 5:29 by 2 minutes. And then taking whatever train we got we reached Bhivpuri-road station. It was complete different plot there, the sun was already arose somewhere behind the clouds. From a base village Diksal I only knew I had to head for a lake nearby. Making our way through ‘fresh’ cattle dung, we reached the lake. Water levels were up, surrounded with a complete green carpet, the lake and the beauty were at its peak because of the season. Paying all the respects to the cattle on the path (because of their gigantic horns!), we started traversing the lake by its left edge. The place is surrounded by big and small hills, mountains and through them cascading water streams. Small and big cascades everywhere, the closer we moved towards them the farter they shifted. We heard a little chirping from behind, I had not expected any crowd on this particular trek and was the reason I had picked this place. It was a pair of a boy and a girl armed with all branded equipments starting from their shoes to their backpacks. The couple was also heading to Garbett plateau. After exchanging few words with them and analyzing their trekking skills I realized they will not make it to the Garbett and soon will be hopping into their return train. As I told this to Bhushan, he advised me to not to underestimate them! Praying for their good I crossed a little water stream leaving the lake behind.

From that onwards the trail turned upwards and we started ascending slowly, with each growing height the lake grew in its beauty.  The mesmerizing view of the lake surrounded by clouds and fog and green was encouraging us to go higher. Our next destination place was Sagachiwadi, a small village, stepping carefully on a slant watery trail of the hill we ascended further, crossing hill by hill. After every hill we crossed Bhushan asked me “how far ahead?” and I kept telling him “You will see!”.  After a while we were greeted by darker green farms, each of which laid on different height than another. Here Bhushan got little relief as he realized we are on right path and not lost.

Sagachiwadi is the place from where the hike to the plateau starts. We crossed the village through it, unlike last time, we had to make our new route through a water stream.  At the end of the village there is a big well, a good landmark place, from here the hike started. The trail became stiffer as we went on, a dog accompanied us to the top, while we made it to the top it had done it at least thrice, but never left us and came back time to time to see that we were alive and healthy. After one and half hour of climbing we reached on flat grounds of the plateau. A complete light green color was rendered all over the surface and the valleys to the left and right could only be felt as clouds were all around. We were in the heaven at last, nothing else but just evenly spread grass could be seen. As it was not raining at the moment we did few monkey jumps and took photographs. After our trust of sightseeing was fulfilled completely we sat feed our tummies. The only butter-jam bread felt even tastier in the presence of warmth of diffused sunshine, the sunshine was cuddling us while the pleasant cool breeze was tingling us.  With our stomachs and minds filled with pleasantness we took a nap and decided to move on.

As we neared the Matheran mountain to climb, the climate suddenly changed its mood, it covered us in clouds ceasing all the visibility than few feet, it started showering upon us. Absence of sight baffled Bhushan for a while, but as I knew the route and could feel the direction I insisted on keep moving. At the base of the cliff we took a trail going left (As I was suggested and hadn’t followed last time) which led us into the dense forests of Matheran. The route with red sand was pretty wide which led us to a bunch of houses, just before there we took a sharp right passing by a small school. Here the trail ascends little stiff and nearly within one hour we reached the top again. We heard the hooting of the train, I wondered the toy-train worked in the monsoon season. Within no time we were in the middle of people again, tourists, mostly couples, ‘one umbrella and two birds’ type of people, unlike us! As the sight of Dasturi naka came in to the picture I knew that the trek was over and I had rituals to follow, paying hiked amounts to a cab trip to Neral Station, catching up the CST train, redeem my bike and returning to my forest!

Lake near Diksal Village

Lake view from the plateau

The Garbett plateau