New Year's First Winter Trek to Kalavantin Durg

Greetings Wanderers..!!!

Wish you all a very Happy Healthy and prosperous New year.

Last year (2017) was full of ups and downs, well.. that’s life and we have to move on.

Winter was high marking the beginning of 2018 as one of the chilliest winters and so on.

That was a good news for us and we planned a simple Trek to Kalavantin Durg.

Kalavantin Durg

We had already been to these spots and never ever did we find anything Dangerous… unless you have plans to “INTENTIONALLY” do it.
We planned to celebrate the new year with a trek to Kalavantin Durg on 7^th Jan 2018, the 1^st Sunday of the year.

Mouth to mouth publicity led the group to reach a figure of 20. Wow.. that’s amazing.

Since most of them were old timers, we indeed got Freshers as well.

We met at Panvel station and had a tummy filling breakfast at Hotel Sarovar, just opposite bus depot. By the time our wanderers were charging themselves with good breakfast, we quickly managed to bargain with the tumtum guy who charged a nominal fees. Will provide you the name and number in the end for further reference.

It’s a 20 minutes journey towards Thakurwadi, however small cars and bikes go upto a kilometer ahead till the starting point.

Well it was cool in the morning and we decided to walk towards the starting point. We needed to warmup 

The Warmup road

Group pic

The wanderers then “stood in a Straight Circle” for a small round of introduction. 
Most members had already done trekking with us. We had Naresh Chaudhari sir, his family and Varsha, hiren, Tejas, Deepali and 2 more from Idea Group and Hemali, Manil, Swati, Devang, Sukesh, who had earlier done rappelling and Ulhas valley trek last year.

With Kalavantin peak in view we started our trek at 9.15am with much ease. With small breaks at intervals of 15-20 minutes, exploring new routes, we reached Prabal Machi by 11.30am.
Oh my… it was crowded with campers, tents were setup, people taking selfies like crazy near tents… but we all were just enjoying the view and our motive was just 1 thing… trekking.

Helping and caring

The shorter route

Kalavantin Durg from Prabalmachi

Camping at Prabalmachi

I informed Balu dada (Prabalgad Hotel) that we are 20 people and will have lunch once we return. 
And continued further.

To our horror.. there were hell lot of small groups who had already went ahead and were piled up at the peak. 

So we decided to move at our own sweet pace and enjoy the view, 

WE met “Nisargmitra” on our way who had come with areound 50+ kids for higher secondary for trek. They let most people go ahead and started their final climb when most were returning (Pretty nice move).

The Steps

Climbing up was nothing, the challenging part was to decend. Once on top, we checked out the Crowd desperate to climb the pinnacle (Last rock patch) .we kept our distance and only 5 of us led by nilesh went ahead.

The earlier groups were behaving so unprofessionally… wondered how can people take risk of bringing them without any safety gears? Alteast rope is a must for such treks. 
Now since we had to wait for nilesh and others to return, we decided to move down and have our lunch…
The decend begins slowly with each step monitored and with assistance, holding hands and providing support whererver required.

Deepali had some vertigo problem, but we were destined to help her get out of it. Tejas taking the major responsibility to bring her down, I looked after other wanderers.

We reached prabalmachi and had our lunch… veg and nonveg both were super, yummy and Mouthwatering.

Till we finished…. Nilesh and others arrived…

Just had a look at the time and whoa.!!!! We had already finished 80% of the trek by 3pm… what next.?????

After such a tummy filling lunch.. slowly and steadily , one by one started their transition from Vertical posture to Horizontal.

Just imagine… “Jaadakhaali thandgaar saavli, Shen-ane saravlela aangan, gaar vaaryachi angavar haluvar thaap” (Sound like poem). Hahahaah.
End result: all were fast asleep within minutes.

By 3.30pm.. gave a wakeup call and all were standing Fresh and ready to move on.
While decending we made a call to our tumtum guy and he was already there.

Reached Panvel station by 6pm and the trek finished with great memories and promises for new treks.
We would like to thank all the participants to make this trip a success and would love to have your company for upcoming treks.

Till then…
Jai Hind.. Jai Maharashtra.. Jai Shivraay.

Sumya – the Wildwanderer.