Harishchandragad

 

Idea of harishchandragad: 

                 After the end of sem-5 exam, as always I was looking forward to   any trekking spots. I was very eager to go to rajgad-torna trek. So me with my school-friends were discussing about trekking destinations at our regular spot subhash maidan. Me and vinay was ready to rajgad-torna, but after discussion wit aniket who failed to do that trek from torna,we dropped our idea Due to shortage of time as rajgad-torna trek would have taken 3days(and also we heard rumors about torna from aniket), we decided to go to harishchandragad. All of us were going to harishchandragad for the first time, so we discussed with our friends who visited before and decided finally.

 

7 jan 2010:

           Early in the morning we met at kalyan bus stand at 5:00 am. we were 7 in all. Me, vinay, sanket, prathamesh, abhijit, rahul & devendra. We took bus for ahmednagar at around 6:00 am. Actually we were not knowing exactly where to leave the bus, bus me told to conductor that we want to go to harishchandragad, he said ok, I know it, and fortunately we met a person in bus who told us where to leave the bus. After 2 to 2-1/2 hrs we landed at river side and the man told us to from the BANDH of this river there is the village khireshwar, from where u can start your journey. The photograph below is the start of the river bandh

  start of journey

It is around 4-5 km walk, took us around 1-1/2 hr to reach khireshwar the base village. It’s a very long walk, we saw some jeeps in d way but we decide to walk. With taking snaps of river and chatting we reached to khireshwar. By the time were so hungry and searching for food arrangement. After enquiring with the people in village, they told that the way goes to top and there is a last home in the way where u can get some breakfast

 

So after eating garamagarm “pohe” & tea, we asked for any arrangement of guide to take us to top, as we heard that the route is very long and tricky. They said guide we will be available no problem, But the cost for it will be 200. finally I managed them to 150. and we started our trek to harishchandragad.

                          

actually the trek to top can be divided in three parts

1.     way from khireshwar to start of vaghdari.( i.e. tolar khind)

2.     vaghdari (the difficult part)

3.     walk to the temple.

1.    way from khireshwar to start of vaghdari.( i.e. tolar khind):

           the way quite exhaustive and tricky at some parts ,but not difficult

or risky at all. Its required for first time visitors to take guide along with them. By normal speed it will take 2-2 ½ hrs to reach the start of vaghdari. The way is covered with trees all the way.

at the end of tolar khind, there is a figure of tiger curved in a stone and another way also meets at that pt. this is the start of vaghdari. The way for up is directed by an arrow as shown 

           

vaghdari  :

          It is the difficult and risky rock patch. With a little extra care one can cover easily. There are iron bars there at regular intervals for support. The patch normally takes 1 hr weather for climbing up or down. For climbing down one has to be very very careful. Here are some pics of it.

way at top:

           After the valley road, again it is a comfortable way to temple of harishchandragad. It a series of up and downs, will take time of 1 ½

Hrs . there are some water ponds in the way.

The way ends at temple. 

We reached the top at around 2-45pm we immediately look forward for place for lunch and night out. There are caves into which stay can be made.

When we reached there was a group of 10 people already there. we took the next cave to them, that was having a ganpati curved in stone. Its name was “GANESH GUNFA”

After relaxing a bit we started our lunch  that we brought from home. Our guide who was very shy we shared our lunch with him. As we were taking lunch the group beside asked us that do you have an AXE??

We were so shocked that why they are asking for axe… but soon after they said that they want axe to cut some trees to have a night fire. As were there for first time we were having nothing.

After lunch we asked our guide about way to kokan kada. Kokan kada is 20 min walk from caves.

Then we also started looking for some arrangement for nigh fire. Our guide by the time said us that he want to leave as he should reach down before sunset. But he got us some dry tree branches for fire. And we let him go by the time was 4-30 .

After lunch we visited the temple. The temple is very beautiful .

There is a big shivling surrounded by water having 1 piller is the best fascinating spot.

this shivling is a little step downwards from temple.

After visiting this we proceeded further to kokan kada as directed by our guide. After 25 mins of walk way ends at a deep deep velly.its the kokan kada. The view from kokankada is just awesome. A deep straight wall, and ranges of mountain aside.

            We were there to see the beautiful sceneries at sunset. Sunset at kokan kada is really special.but we left kokan kada a bit early from sunset as later it would have been difficult for us to reach the caves.

 

After watching wonderful views of sunset we returned back to our cave. It was our first night out in a cave. As it went dark we lighted the fire with the help of ghaslet as given by our neighboring group. They helped us a lot. They said u can come along with us in our cave, but we maid our stay in our cave only.

                    After some chit chat and jokes and also ramrakha stotra and maruti stotra around 9pm we took our dinner which was also brought from our home. We were having so many parathas in all of our tiffins. It was decided that nobody will sleep throughout the night, but it didn’t happen. I was very tired because of having lohgad-visapur trek last day, I went to sleep early.

 

8 jan :

       We wake up early in the morning, some of us didn’t slept for whole night. After regular work, we packed our bags and went to kokankada once again, to feel the great atmosphere.

After some nice clicks at kokan kada we returned to temple visited the temple again. We had a program of bhel, as we carried that things from home uptill now.

        After eating that delicious bhel, we packed all the things and took a tea at a persons home. He lives at top. Tea was not that good, but ok. We proceeded towards the way we came.

        Actually the fear was about how to cover that risky patch, but we moved slowly & steadily it didn’t feel that difficult. And we done that safely.

After getting that patch covered, we came to the khireshwar village in no time, took some breakfast at the same home and retuned back with a great trekking experience.