Mindchow from Vaidy: Visapur

Visapur Fort – One Day Monsoon Trek promised the following !!!!
| 50 Shades of Monsoon | Twin Fort of Lohagad | Secret Escape Passage | A Walk Through Waterfall |
With a 6 am planned start , I typically looked forward to a couple of hours of snoozing in the bus (high hopes given the enthusiastic wannabe singers :P ). Another motivation for this trek other than the salient features as mentioned above was ... traveling to and fro by bus. You have to do a local train travel to Kasara and back for a trek to know what I mean 😀

One of the highlights of the bus trip was the totally creative and hilarious dumb charades game with our juniormost trekker Bhaval (all of 11 years young) keeping us wondering as also in splits with his version of all movies.

Reached base village as planned and after a typically Maharashtrian village breakfast of Poha and chaha the trek started. We were promised a rainy trek and we got one. Start to finish, except for the few who preferred to get wet (without rain gear), every one was in their respective rain jackets, caps and what not. Not that it made any difference. By the end of the trek everyone was soaking wet. Either nature had its way or we chose to get drenched under the myriad falls along the way.

Walk through waterfall is something which has to be experienced by all trekkers. For a easy grade trek the thrill quotient was more than made up by trekking uphill in the gushing waterfalls.

The occasional plains gave us the much needed rest as well as the opportunity to admire the beauty of nature. On a conservative estimate we had about a million hues of green !!!

I do recollect seeing few caves with nice camping space, Assume that must have contained the “secret passage”, if any. Or maybe we missed seeing it because of the continuous downpour.

There were a few big rocks laid in formation and this was all the sign of any fort ever having been there. I have written elsewhere and repeat again, there has to be a certain regular maintenance done of all the historical places in the Sahyadris. There seems to be a lot of lip service happening about the rich culture and history of the Marathas , but precious little done to preserve the same.

Descent from the top happened soon enough and after change over to dry clothes and a delicious lunch at the extremely hospitable village household , we started our return journey in good time with pleasant memories.