The Bhatkanti season reloads from this Raigad trek. After sending a mail to all of my collegues only response I recieved was of Abhijit Sir, which I thought that time, was a Good Morning Joke on Monday morning. But later on I came to know that he was really interested. The tension has already started to build up (yaarr Boss k Boss ko trek pe lekar jana kya majaak hai?). But I was sure that if he joins in this trek is going to be memorable for us. Afterall quality of people matters not the quantity. :-)

When it was decided to travel by "Laal Dabba" he confirmed his availability on Thursday/Friday. I thought of having all things a pre-booked from Pune itself being a director with us. But when I phoned ropeway offices came to know that no bookings are required for the ropeway and meal. Only stay can be booked from Pune. Some more tension...

Even on D-day I wasn't sure until Abhijit Sir joined us on Swargate ST stand and re-introduced himself to me with the words "Hi, I'm Abhijit". Finally we boarded the 10:15am Pune-Mahad bus. With the formal introduction to each others our lips were sealed in front of each other. I tried to break the silence with the comment on Santosh's military style cap and also showed my new cap. To our surprise suddenly AL (here and henceforth consider 'Abhijit' and implicit 'Sir') dragged off his sailing cap and flashed a special string-clip which holds a collar of his T-shirt even after flying off the head in the winds. And then the same ease continued throughout the trek.
As the bus was passing by the Satara Road, just after City Pride Cinema the driver had shown us his extra ordinary skills of almost pushing street bike sideways off the road and then later-on some heated words with the bike riders. This was just a trailer of the whole movie from Pune to Mahad via Bhoar and Varandha. Even after having a back facing Shrikant was always trying look from the driver's windshield. Probably he wasn't ready to trust his driving abilities. The driver too had made his mind to keep us stunned with his amazing driving skills. His skills was all inclusive package with the overtake to GM-Tavera on ghat roads and hairpin turns like he had super-power-steering in his hands with the full throttle.
Reaching Mahad was a sigh of relief for us, and especially for me being feeling uneasy because of the driver's superb driving skills in the Varandha Ghat roads. After cooling ourselves down with the cold drinks we quickly caught a jeep to reach Raigad. 40 mins of bumpy jeep drive and we reached near the ropeway station and from there to the Raigad top after a lunch. The ropeway cable car ride was an experience within. The bird's eye view of the Sahyadri Ranges was the simply superb. The guide we hired was 10th standard boy who had good knowledge as well as a distinctive voice. The structure built that time took 14 years to complete and the great brain behind was of Heeroji Indulkar who had paid enough attention to each and every aspect of the Royal Palace of Chhatrapati Shivaji and his kingdom's day to day work including the food grain storage, acoustics of the 40,000 sq ft Darbar, and Marketplace where one can actually do a window shopping without getting down from the horses. Every Marathi person heart will get flooded with the pride when he'll see the actual place where the Great King was actually coronated, though the original golden thorne worth 1.5 tonne was looted by East India Company.
The King's statue there was a piece of masterpiece of the sculpture in the Panchdhaatu (mixture of five metals). But the base of that statue was equally disappointing to us as being painted in the worst color scheme. Even if this useless man, who made the color choice for this color had a 0.000001 % vision of Heeroji he wouldn't have choosed this color scheme at all. The most suitable comment was from Santosh that "I am sure that this painter was ex-employee of Sasoon Hospital".

The evening there was a complete nastalgic experience with the windy atmosphere and we were resting ourselves under the roof of the sky and counting the stars for an hour. This evening was really special that even AL thought of calling his 'family' to share an experience. Our guide himself turned out to be our food provider, as we told him to prepare a night meal for us at a good price deal. All of us were left finger licking with the typical village food with Bhaji-Bhakari and mangoes to throw ourselves to our bed after a tiresome day in the Nagarkhana. The night stay should be marked with the snoring of Shrikant and AL with Santosh Santosh sandwitched and sleeping (rather trying to sleep) between them, Pankaj's night talks in the sleep (all others eye-witnessed rather ear-witnessed that and a guest visitor to AL's bed (probably a Mongoose).
The night there was everlasting. Every other hour Santosh waked up and asked "What's a time?" and dissapointed to hear that its not morning still. Though my mom actually has to kick me to get me out of the bed, when I am at my house, the morning at Raigad was totally different and all of us as we wake up in the dawn at 4:30am (Mummy, you also have 'good boy' son!!!). The only passion behind was to capture special snaps of statue of Maharaj. But the direction from where sun spread his rays was the right way we wanted. still we managed to have some good clicks of the statue and the Jagadeeshwar temple. The "Takmak Tok" the point from where the one can have a look towards Rajgad, Torana and Lingana (the jail that time was on Lingana peak). Shrikant's all inclusive bag for every type of trek was one of the favorite topics to discuss. It was full proof solution for each and every trek with head torch, maps, rope, plastic bags, information pages and any trekking gear that you can think of. The most loved thing of it was seedless dates ("boneless khajoor" in Santosh's words) and Awala candy from AL's pocket.

The morning beauties include the Sun rise from the back of Jagadeeshwar Temple, Scenic misty vally, Sun rays filtered from the cloudy skies and the Mahadwar of Raigad. The Mahadwar is actually located at the height much lower than the actual fort, so we had to walk to that place halfway down the height. After being there me and AL thought instead of climbing the hill to catch cable down why don't we walk down to the base. Santosh and Shrikant wanted to enjoy the ropeway ride downwards so they went back to top and we started to descend down from there. Within 40mins we reached at the base and to our surprise we saw at the bushes beside the road the "Kali Maina" (sorry no English substitution for this). The unlimited Kali Maina was a treat for us before travel back to Mahad in a 13 (sorry..sorry... 6) seater.
The way back to Pune from Mahad was another driver's skill display journey. The most of the times he managed to bump us from our seats at least a foot in the air, and that too just after we start closing our eyes because of the tired trek. At around 5:00pm we reached Pune and Good Bye'ed each other with a plans and suggestions for the next Bhatkanti to return to the world of AC and PC with the new energy and Raanwaara filled in our lungs.

The visual Raigad tour is available at:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/Bhataki.Toli/Raigad_May08