They had organized a trek to ‘Dhak Bahiri’ caves which I was precisely looking for. I had heard from a few friends and the colleagues at my company that the trek to dhak bahiri was one of the toughest treks in the sahyadris. I got in touch with Ananda (the leader and the organizer of the treks for VRangers). I was a bit worried as I didn’t have any experience of ‘Technical’ treks (with ropes and other equipments). Ananda gave me the confidence and hence I decided to go ahead with the trek. I had trekked about 5-6 forts but this one was one of the best treks I had been to.
Dhak Bahiri caves are situated at about 50 kms from Pune. One needs to get down at the Kamshet railway station and proceed to a Jambahvli village by bus.
I got down at the Kamshet station at about 7.30 in the morning and there was still about an hour or so before the VRangers group to arrive. I had a small introduction with Ananda at the railway station when they arrived and after that he just ran to the bus station to book a bus for us. I proceeded with the group towards the bus stop. Looking at the group my first reaction was “Man! Look at them. They are totally professional trekkers. How am I gonna do this trek?”
Ananda hired a bus and we started our journey towards the Jambhavli village. The mood in the camp was upbeat. They all started singing and cracking jokes in the bus and I realized that it was going to be fun with these guys. We got down at jambhavli after about half an hour of a journey. The first step was the introduction and instruction round.
During the introduction round I got to know that there were some real ‘adventurous’ trekkers there. Ananda along with Sangeeta and Macchindra were associated with VRangers from 3 years. They didn’t even remember the no. of the treks they had been to. Man! That was impressive. There was this guy ‘Rajas Deshpande’ who had gone to about 200 treks. I was left agape. Ananda gave us the instructions about how to go for the trek and the safety precautions needed. We started our trek with Dinesh cracking jokes. He has got some real sense of humour I must say!
We trekked for about one and a half hour until we reached a small ridge. We decided to take a short ‘rest halt’ at this point. The mood was real upbeat. By this time I had really gelled in to the lot. I, Macchindra, Bhagya and Rajas were the first to reach the ridge. The view from up there was amazing!
The real fun started from here. We carefully started to descend the ridge. Ananda and Sudhir guided us through the patch. When we reached the base of the ridge, we all were mesmerized by the beauty of nature!
We decided to rest a bit as another group was trekking up the bahiri caves. We clicked some real good photos there. Ananda told us that each one of us would require at least about 20 mins to climb the 25 feet wall to reach the caves. We started to move from there carefully towards the base of the wall. The ropes put up in the wall helped us to see through the horizontal patch with no real difficulty.
Then came the real test. When we saw the wall we realized that it had about 70 degree gradient with no real patches where we could land our feet while climbing. Again Ananda and Sudhir came to the rescue! They guided us to the caves. The sun was belting down and the rock was getting hotter, still they continued to stand in that heat in the middle of the rock patch just to help others. It was tough for the guys to go up not to mention how tough it would have been for girls! Sangeeta, Bhagya and Archana did a remarkable job to reach the top.
There were three ropes tied to the top to one of the rocks and a wooden log with the help of which we had to climb. The log swayed precociously. We all reached the bahiri caves and started clicking some photographs. As again the view was astonishing!
All kinds of stuff were happening in the caves. The humorous conversations between Pradeep and Dinesh were the best of all. A group of the local villagers brought a chicken to ‘serve’ it to God. That suddenly became the talking point of one and all.
The group that trekked before was taking ages to descend (No wonder! They didn’t have the likes of Ananda, Sudhir, and Paresh with them!). Descending was tougher than we thought! One wrong step and you’re gone! Fortunately we had the trio of Ananda, Sudhir and Paresh who guided us. We were scared a bit specially for the girls but they did a fantastic job.
After everyone had climbed down the rock patch, we started trekking down at about four in the evening. We walked for about an hour and reached the base village Dhak. We took a halt there and had Gulab Jamuns which Ananda and Sangeeta had brought.
It was about 6.15 and the sun was setting down. So we quickly started walking again towards Karjat. The experience after that was one of the best that I have ever had. Walking through the dense jungle with no torch was amazing! I, Macchindra and Rajas tried to scare Bhagya by speaking about ghosts and that kept us upbeat. Wherever we would stop for the rangers that followed us, Bhagya would start showing the constellations and the stars and macchindra would somehow find a way to crack a joke upon that. We had some real fun! Macchindra kept on saying that the base is just 10 mins ahead every time we asked and in its anticipation we would continue our walk. Finally at about 9 we reached the Karjat railway station.
This was one of the best treks that I had been to and got the opportunity to interact as well as make some real good friends!
VRangers Adventure rock!!!!
Original Link:-
http://deveshbpande.blogspot.com/
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