Harishchandra Trek - A Final Destination !

Saturday 30th Jan 2009, I got opportunity with my ex-colleagues (ex- selecticans) to conquer harishchandra gad. We began our journey at 7.00 AM in morning from Pramod's house in pimpri though we planned it to start at 6.00 AM. (Never plan such things).We were total 8 people in 2 cars - Pramod's Indica and Sanju baba's Santro.
We reached at 11.30 AM near khireshwar. We parked our vehicles there. From this location we started our march upward.Barely 1 km we had walked pawan strated feeling fatigued and started cursing his choice to come for trek.Hold on this was just initial symptoms.Slowly we start crawling gad.'Tolar khind ' was our first target. 'Taramti' is highest point on gad (est. 4600 ft high).Taramati is second heighest point in maharashtra state.I who have acropohobia is wrong person to dare to conquer harishchandra. we started trek with enthuisiam. Once we started to crawl though rocky road to reach tolar khind our enthusiam turn in pessimistic view. I started blaming myself 'why I came here ? I was better at home'. I think this might going through other peoples mind as well.
After around half hour we have taken our first break (first among series of halts). We taken Nimbu sarbat and chaaj. No scope to get cold drinks at such places.After this break we started to take breaks at regular interval of 10-15 minutes. It took almost 2 hours for us to reach tolar khind. Half of the energy lost by this time. Enthusiam turn into gloom & doom. Reaching Tolar khind was first biggest milestones.
After tolar khind seond tough part was eagerly waiting for us. It was rock patch . Beacuse of this part I called this post as 'A Final Destination' . It recalls me movie Final Destination from James Wong in which young people cheat death by avoiding plane crash. Jaydip helped me to clear this tough part. He well directed me to go through this patch . Anna (Ashish Naidu) fumbled one odd palce. Rest of the folks were fine . This patch doesn't consumed much of our energy definatly makes me to put my fingers in my mouth.
Now we were ready for our final lap. This were final stage of trek to reach harishchandra temple. This stage demands lot of walking. But some good homework done by Jaydip & Pramod. They taken google earth help to find short-cut to reach temple.They are hardcore techie. During this stage we taken major halt of 1 hour . We had vada-pavs with us , we decided to consume those. I fatigued in such quantum that i prefered to have sleep of some time. After some sleep I taken some rice from sanju baba's tiffin and dilkush from Sanju baba. After this mini-lunch we started our march again after half hour walk we reached temple. It was 4.45 PM in evening. We got one cave there for rest. Finally we were able to do that. Yes we completed our upward journey .
After half hour rest , we all moved to Kokan kada. we reached near kokan kada and began some photo shootings. Kokan kada is very steep making recall of Cliffhanger & MI-2 to me.This is nice & funny place as well. Yes funny becuase if you throw any light thing like paper or wood , it goes upward some distance and defying the gravity.Some people trying with stones but had hard luck. Sunset from kokan kada was amazing thing. we enjoyed it a lot.It made us to forget pain that we got to reach this point.
After sunset we backed to our cave. We asked hotel person thereby to prepare maggi for us. We had maggi as our dinner. After dinner we went for bed.Next day we woke up around 7.00 started to preparing ourself for downward move. One funny thing that I observed is my bag had been cut by rats. We had breakfast of bread jam . we also had butter but couldn't found in anybody' bag . These sort of things always happen in trek.
We started to crawl upwards toward taramati. Four people including me prefer to stay at bottom of taramati . Abhijit kene, Anna, Varun and Pramod decided to go up . In midst varun and anna decided to stop. No need to tell the reason. Only Abhijit kene and Pramod reached the apex point. After hour those people returned to bottom of taramati. From here we started downward journey. We taken lot of halts in interim and finally reached at 3.00 PM at khireshwar hotel where we parked our cars.
That was end of trek. But some one worth said "Path to heaven is not easy you have to bear some pain". I experienced same in harishchandra trek.