rappelling on Raigad

It was a great experience for me to came in the Sahyadris' for the first time... my first trek; add to it the rappelling experience. I did it second time in all. About a week before we had a practice session in the National park at Borivli. It, too, was a quite good experience.

For Raigad we started at 28th night from Dadar. we were with an experienced team of Girivihang trekkers. We gathered next to Pritem hotel at Dadar east. Then left by the bus to Mahad. When we reached near the base of the Raigad a place called Pachaad, the bus took a stop for the tea.

As we get down from the bus suddenly we caught sight of the sky. It was beautiful completely filled with stars and dark like never seen in Mumbai before... The first thing I did was took the photograph of it. After some misses, I got a good snap of the starry sky. Soon it was dawn and we could see the outline of what lies ahead of us. After the tea we went little further.

This place is called Chitt dervaja. A place where the administration has built steps for people to climb up easily. But we resorted to the conventional and old root used at the time of Shivaji. It was a nice experience to follow the historic route to a historic place where once located Rajdhani of Maratha raajjya. Hop by hop we reached the Mukhya dervaja of the fort. It was well fortified. Built in the U-shaped so that it will be difficult to brake into it.

By this time, I started feeling tired. Here we took the normal route with steps.
Again after taking a break and lime water, we started walking. It was more difficult to walk on the steps, Add to it, I had a rucksack with me. Though everybody has it, I wasn’t used to it. We reached to the top at around 11 or so... drenched with sweat and hungry. we soon changed and got the breakfast which was warmly recieved.

After the breakfast we were splitted into two groups. One for rappelling and other for sightseeing. we went for sightseeing. My group was supposed to do the rappelling after the lunch. I was little nervous by then. We saw 3-4 places and Mrs. Shilpa Parab accompanied us and gave a true account of the what happened there and so. She was avid fan of Shivaji Maharaj and visited the fort first when she was some 7-8 year old.

After the lunch we took rest for a while and went for rappelling. we were little late to start. The point from where we were doing it is called Takmak. By the time Vardhan, the first young man, friend of my friend went down, I was ready with my waist band called (?) But somehow couldn’t manage to get into. soon the sun started to go down and it became kind of dark. When I was descending I could barely see the view below.

I was kind of horrified when after some time I wasn't able to see the men and the base where I was supposed to get down to. within a while, I heard the sound form the lady below which (my soul fell into the pot ;)) relived me. It was complete dark now and we were done with everybody and have to reach the top again via a different route. we were guarded with a rope for a certain patch which was a difficult walk as we were moving along the circumference at a fixed height. we descended nearly 350 feet. Ground was still nearly 1200 feet below our feet and it was a tightrope walk. after almost 15 minutes we reached the steps. Till that time we have exhausted one of our torch.

After joining others at the top I sat with my friends Sushant and Srirang in the open sky. we talked a lot. An hour later we had a dinner and slept to wakeup at 5 in the morning. For a day we had a break for a bath. The plan was to wander till noon have lunch and start the downward journey. we saw some more places like the Bajarpeth- the marchent's market, the Jagdishwar's temple etc.
the day before we saw the place where Shivaji and his family, his sardars had stayed, the mukhya durbar, to name a few.

After the lunch we were ready with the sacks on our back. Contrary to my belief getting down too was difficult. The steps could have been less steep... despite all this we were able to come down in less than hour. we rest there while the rest keep trickling down. As soon as all gathered we started back to Mumbai. It was now that we are able to see how serpentine the path was towards Raigad. After about 30 min. we reached main road. while I preferred sitting near the window of the seat, many enjoyed group singing. It was all inspiring again listening to those songs....

we reached Sion at around midnight. we were late because of the traffic jam near Pen.
I went to hostel and slept with fresh memories of the trek in my mind.

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