Night Trek @ Korigarh Fort

Boys again proved that they dont need directions, let the new destination be decided at 10.30 pm on Old Mumbai Pune Highway NH - 4.

After all hullabaloo till 8.30 pm, ten of us left Pune for a decided location Tung fort. We had an advantage of having Kalidas, who is quite an experienced trekker in places around.

It started raining and thankfully someone pointed out before dinner that there is no place of shed in Tung. People like me were still optimistic as I was carrying an umbrella :P, but I happened to be only one who was carrying it. So a new place was decided Korigarh.

None of us had gone to Korigarh before so it could amount to be a quite risky business as a night trek but we were all gamblers by choice. Energy levels were high, so it was decided almost unanimously without any concerns.

After dinner we left for Korigarh wishing ourselves very best for the decision we had taken.

We knew its near Amby Valley Lonavala, so it didnt take much time to figure out the route. 12 am and we were there bang on the spot.

Real guts testing started from there as we started trying to make our way up to the mountain.

Its hardest in the night to find your way up in a green terrain coz small trails which are obvious in the day time tends to become obsolete in the night. Every thin space which goes through two trees becomes a trail adding to the puzzle.

In our first trial, we reached almost 30 ft to the top only to be stopped by a upright slope. Getting up from there was only something Tom Cruise can think of. Hit n tries went on with heavy backpacks for trying a short cut but all in vain.

Then we came back to the base camp, to look for an alternative route. We found it and went but pretty like our previous try it was unsuccessful. Worse was that it took 3 times more effort and time than the last one. We heard that night treks are generally not successful and stories of displacing a snake to make some room to sleep. Time was 3 am.

We had almost decided to wait till the morning and then find the way but still 4 of us had some energy left to go and look for an alternative.

Luckily we found another trail about 30 ft below to our base camp but we could not call everyone as we were not sure this is the right one. We went ahead for sometime and special thanks to Gutka lovers we found more of their empty pouches along the way.

This was a clear signal that the trail is atleast going someplace more frequently visited. We sent a final call to the boyz. And soon everyone was there. We started following it apprehensively, the trail got thinner with trees in between and only thing we were sure of was it is going somewhere.

Then came the moment when we heard cheers from the first two. We had found the stairs!!!!

Going up from there was much more tiring, but the discovery had added to the spirits.

We reached up at 4:30 am with all zeal and hip hip hurrays. It is so pleasant from the top.

But our worries had no end, it started raining.

It started raining heavier, and we took shelter in an old and small Shivji temple. It took almost half an hour for all of us to fit in what we had. For the first time in my life I slept inside a temple, thanks to Shivji probably he wanted it this way.

7 o clock we were all awake by cold and different sounds coming from different birds. Thanks to the light, another grand discovery was made. We had a large pond besides the temple. Something that I tried to throw my torch's light before getting in the temple on but could not see anything except clouds.

Morning was beautiful and equally echoed the success of the trip!!!

Link: http://picasaweb.google.com/gaurav.teagi/Nature?authkey=Gv1sRgCI_Uua6qzZfZgwE#