A memorable trek to Ratangad

We went to Ratangad, near Bhandardara on 17-18th June 2023. We had taken Shravya, our 4.5 year old daughter for the trek. We have been following 'say and do' with her since we learnt about it. We love trekking and have introduced it to her since she was 11 months. We took her to Lohagad then and fortunately there was very less crowd and she could crawl on the steps of the fort. We have been blessed with a child who is eager to climb wherever possible and she enjoyed it. 

We have been taking her to different forts since then and she has climbed very well considering her age. We have seen how powerful 'Say and Do' is every time in this case. 

A trek that tested our strength

Koldher

In past couple of years, since all of us got a bike / car and have started working somewhere, we have started enjoying luxurious treks with respect to food variety, taking vehicle till the very end of the road before we can start climbing up some fort. It has become very easy and time saving with a vehicle at our disposal and we can cover any forts at far distances, but every time, at some point we feel that we should now go to a real trek.

Ganesh Chaturdashi special trek to Ankai - Tankai

The Ganesh festival is one of the biggest festivals celebrated in India. There are crowds all over a city during the 10 days of the festival, which peaks in the last 2-3 days and all main roads in the city get closed for vehicles, to make some room for the crowd walking from one place to another to see the decorations made by various groups (Mandal). The highlight of the festival is the Ganpati Procession (Miravnuk) that takes place on the final day - Anant Chataurdashi.  So unless you want to see those decorations or want to see anything from traditional Dhol - Tasha Pathak in the procession to people dancing on the beats of rowdy hindi film songs, it is not the place for you.

Me and my friends have been going to see this procession since we were in school. We used to go on Laxmi Road at night around 8 - 9 pm, the main road from where all the groups take their Ganapati for immersion and witness the huge crowd gathered there just to be part of the whole festive atmosphere. Wherever you look around, be it the road, railings, footpath, balconies and any open space in the buildings on the road, there is crowd. We used to wait for the very well known and well respected Ganesh Mandal, Dagdusheth Halwai to arrive at the Laxmi road, which never missed its 6 am timing, and then only go back home.

Durg - Dhakoba

When we started planning for it, few of us had only one and a half day in hand where others had 2 full days, so we had to plan where we could visit one fort on first day and start back to Pune on the next morning, while others could continue to the second fort. That's why we decided to go to these forts since Durg is very small, actually a huge pile of big rocks rather than a fort. Dhakoba has quite a climb, as per few books and blogs it takes 2.5 hours to reach its top if climbed from the base village Amboli.

Trek to Aad, Patta, Aundh

We had not been to any 2 day trek in few months, so 6 of us, Harshad, Rasika, Parth, myself, Ashwin & Manali had decided to go for a trek on 10thJune 2011night and be back on 12th. The dates were locked but the place was not, so Manali searched a little and decided that we should visit Aad, Aundh, Patta and Bitanga (Bitangad). We did not know how many of these forts we could visit in 2 days but we decided to visit as many as possible.