Kothligad Trek

Am back from Kothligad, another trekking spot struck off the list. The previous being
Harishchandragad
Mahuli (Not complete)
Rajmachi
Karnala

Too many still to go :P . We planned to meet at 6 at Ghatkopar railway station to catch the Karjat local scheduled at 06:15AM. We had two ticket counters brimmed to the full with people waiting for tickets. :( Needless to say by the time we got tickets (actually we finally got coupons and stamped them) the 615 local eluded us.

We were struck by the brilliant idea of having tea at the railway stall and then catch a local to Kalyan, hoping that we might get another train to Karjat. The Tea faced problems like over sweetening, lack of tea flavor, density issues and some other unexplainable phenomena, which made us literally throw it away. Disappointed by the start of the day we hoped for a better ending.

We caught a local to Kalyan and waited for the a local to Karjat scheduled at 07:51AM. Arriving at Karjat, we had a quick snack of the famous Karjat VadaPav and made our way out of the station. Nikhil especially had a penchant for those Vada Pavs and coudnt resist having one after the other.

The trek to Kothligad is from Ambivali Village which is around 25kms from Karjat. There are lots of options to get there.
ST Bus from Karjat to Ambivali
Tumtum (8 seater rickshaws) which might ply from the station to the village.
Tumtum from Karjat-Kadau,Kadau-Kashele, Kashele-Ambivali
or A rickshaw directly to Ambivali

Being already late by schedule we opted for a direct rickshaw and with my limited bargaining skills got the fare down from Rs.300 to Rs.225 (A good bargainer might be able to go sub Rs.200)

The ride to Ambivali takes around 45mins - 1 hr. After we reached the village we stopped for a quick refreshing tea. You can pick up things to eat and drink from this village. From there we headed for Peth (Base village for Kothligad).

The journey to Peth is more of a walk on an inclined path rather than a trek. And it takes a long time around an hour and a half. Its a kuchha road of mud but pretty wide such that bullock carts bikes etc ply on it. While climbing we noticed that they were laying stones on the road. Once it gets laid it will be even more strenuous to walk on it :( During this walk you can get a lot of pretty landscape shots. While walking we noticed a significant difference in temperature while walking in the sun compared to the parts where it was shaded. It was a phenomena to be experienced :)

Once in the village, we had some cool Nimbu Paani and then head for the Kothligad fort. The trek hence forth was a good one, though not that tough. The path is visible pretty well and theres wasnt much scope of getting lost. (Tip: If you are not confident of finding your way, kids from the village can be asked to accompany you)Even then we found an alternate path through which we climbed up. This was on one side of the fort away from the main entrance.

The trek to the top takes around an hour. At the top the weather was much more pleasant.Once at the top we scoured through the fort, had a look at one of the canons on the fort, and paid our respects to the deity in the temple. We had the whole fort to ourselves so we found a convenient shaded spot and had our lunch.
(Tip: The Cave temple has enough space if you want to stay for the night. The temperature though would be really cold.)

Soon after lunch we decided to climb down, as we were informed that the last bus leaving the village would be at 5:30PM after which the auto rickshaws would charge Rs: 400 - 500 to get back to Karjat. We started our downward trek through the main entrance path and steadily made our way.

The descent was much more quicker and on the way we saw a pack of Himalayan Langur, which were pretty different from the normal Monkeys that we see. White in color, Black tail and a yellow posterior end, all this made up for a very attractive appearance. Varun and I chased the pack for a while to get some good shots of them, finally managing to chase them away into the jungle. Varun, for his cameras 12X zoom had much more success as would be seen here (Varuns Picasa coming here soon).

Half an hour and we were back to Peth. We desperately needed to rehydrate ourselves as we had depleted our source of water. We again had the same Nimbu paani, waited for a while and started downhill again.

The descent was a bit boring without much to do, so it felt longer than the ascent. But actually we reached Ambivali within an hour.

From there we again headed back to Karjat to find lots of people waiting for the train to CST. We saw another group of trekkers who had been to Rajmachi, which is a much more eventful trekking spot - tougher and more to climb than Kothligad.

And it was back to Mumbai after we boarded the train.