Night Trek to Sudhagad

"Yes, I am ready" is my standard answer whenever someone asks me for a trek. Last Friday we made a night trek plan to Sudhagad. I joined a group of 11 trekkers, most of them from IIT, on Saturday (2nd Dec) afternoon and headed towards Khopoli.

Khopoli is at around 120km from Bombay, so naturally we had to leave at around 3:30 in the afternoon to reach base village, which was further 45-50km from Khopoli, on time. We just managed to catch the direct local train to khopoli, at 4PM at Thane station with a perfect movie like situation. Thankfully train was not very crowded because of Saturday and soon we get seats. Nature's beauty is very different in December as compared to monsoon when green and its shades are the colours spreading from nearby field to faraway mountain top. But in this season green is mixed with yellow, brown and golden colours. Kharif season was over by now and fields are ready to be plowed for Rabi season. Diverting from the main Mumbai-Pune line at Karjat we turned towards Khopoli and reached there by 5:45PM.

After a little pet-pooja in a restaurant we were searching for the bus to Pali. One particular thing I noticed that all small towns in this region look very similar, be it Karjat, Badlapur, Neral, Ambivili or now Khopoli. All of them have a typical feel of town, ease in the air unlike Mumbai, very limited market place near railway station or bus stand then a calm residential area and beyond that fields and mountains. It’s very easy to envy such a simple life after struggling in a metro and that may be the reason that trekking is quite popular in Sahyadri Mountains among city dwellers.

We were waiting at Khopoli bus-stand for bus to Pali and 2 trekkers from Pune, and hoped that bus will follow Bharat and his wife. But bus arrived first and we had to board on it because it was last bus for Pali, leaving behind two of us to catch punekars and bring them to Pali. But making a situation like a perfect hindi movie they arrived in the town at the last minute when we were about to leave, and get into the bus just before it left Khopoli. It was another close "could have missed" situation after Thane station.

By the time we reached Pali it was 8:30PM and we still had to travel 17km to reach base village of Sudhagad. Since no ST bus was available at that time we started to look for other alternatives. Finally after a lot of searching we could find a six seater and all twelve of us boarded. Now don't ask me how we managed because its one of the situations where no explanation is possible without actually going through it. I was lucky to get front seat along with the driver and avoided the crowded back seats.

Finally at 10PM we were standing in the base village, Thakurwadi, of Sudhagad. It was a moonlit night and visibility was quite good. Since the full moon was after two days, moon was right over our head at 10:30PM when we started trek. I was slightly disappointed when I looked for stars. Because of bright moonlight not many stars were visible. So no other option was there except to wait till moonset to enjoy starry night. Atmosphere was cool, not cold and breezing winds offered a great start to the trek. Passing through village is always a fun. Well built clusters of huts, narrow streets, bushes, barking dogs, sleeping villagers in their courtyard is a picture perfect situation, which matches very easily with the background of fields, ponds, jungle and the mountain. But alas, I did not have any camera to capture this trek. Well, since this was a night trek none other then a SLR would have helped and it was difficult to arrange one. At times it's a sadistic pleasure not to share pictures but sketch only through words and let others to use their imagination.

All of us were first timers at Sudhagad and as usual, which is not very uncommon for a night trek, headed towards wrong direction. But soon we corrected ourselves and asked a villager for the right direction. Then we kept moving ahead till we reached the top. Night was not at all dark and visibility was very good due to moonlight. This was a perfect plot for night trek. As we climbed higher and higher more and more landscape opened in front of us like a magic. Tall trees, small bushes and hard rocks were there to welcome us. Fog was being spread by nature with the unmatched perfection. Sometimes it was difficult to climb because of slippery mud but we managed to surpass those little hurdles. Finally at around 12:30 we reached to the top plateau of the mountain. Trek was not difficult at all and was short too. We had whole night to spend on the top. Soon bags were opened and food was unwrapped. Now there was no stopping and within minuted everyone finished the moon light dinner and proceeded to explore the plateau.

Some found a pond. Some visited a temple and some, like me, just roamed around to check the boundaries of the place and feel the height of the mountain. By the time I returned to our place half of them were sleeping on the hard rock bed. Rest of us started camp fire. Soon remaining of us were also in the grip of sleep and comfortably slept on hard black basalt bed which was laid for us millions of years ago by volcanic activity. Surprisingly there were no mosquitoes and I had a nice sleep for 2 hours. Then the magic appeared in the sky after moonset. At around 4:30AM I opened my eyes and could not close for next several minutes. Spectacular view of our galaxy was in front of me. If you have not seen clear night sky from a rural area, you can not imagine how beautiful it looks. It’s another such situation where no explanation is possible without feeling it. It reminded me about a new festival, about which I wrote last year here. Intermittent meteors were like icing on the cake. I also found some bright tiny star like dots moving at a very high speed. I was told that those are satellites and reflecting sunlight.

Moon played a perfect role in this night trek. It was there all the way to show us path and shared a memorable dinner with us, than set quietly when I was fast asleep. I gazed sky till sun light came to rule the sky.

We started moving downwards after the sunrise and landed on the base after 1:30 hours. We also had breakfast midway and reached Thakurwadi at around 9:00AM. Then again back journey to Mumbai. All in all it was a great trek and one of the near perfect treks in my trekking history. One final word of caution, if this post was inspiring enough to make you think about a trek, that please preserve 10% of your energy and enthusiasm for return journey. It’s always a big pain to pull yourself from a wonderful rural setup and push in a crowded bus or local train; especially if trek is as far as Sudhagad. It took 7 hours to reach there from IIT and again 7 hours to come back to Powai. If I could avoid that someday, it will be a perfect trek.