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K2S.... The range trek

Informative | Experiential | Trekking | Katraj to Sinhgad Trek

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K2S.... The range trek

Written by

Pratik Shaha

19 Apr 2017

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When cool breeze runs over your sweat, sweat evaporates absorbing latent heat from your body surface thus producing cooling effect. That's what I have been taught while pursuing my engineering course,all bullshit! Why didn't they keep it simple that it's the nature's miracle, that it's the way the nature loves us. Why do we want answers to all the questions, and why don't we admit that some things are better left unknown. Well, this is all I was thinking when we ascended the first hill of the K2S range and one of those breezes ran over my body.

Sudden plans are awesome as one of my friends just mentioned while I was writing down. So the plan for the K2S ( Katraj to Sinhgad ) was made all of sudden amongst us and the group of 6 people gathered on the Saturday night at Swargate bus stand. Omkar, Rahul, Rohini, Kavita Uday dada & I. I was meeting Uday dada for the first time, so was earning one new friend. K2S is really not an easy task speaking in terms of endurance.

We boarded Khed Shivapur bus around 9 pm. Both Khed Shivapur and Kondhanpur buses will take you to the trek's starting point. And they are available at good frequency from swargate bus stand. We reached our trek's starting point, a power house nearby is the landmark for beginning the trek. We reached there around 9:30 PM and began tracing the trail immediately. To our surprise, other trekking groups accounting nearby 100+ people were accompanying us on the same night. It was a kind of jam on the trail for a while. We tried to maintain our gap from other groups so that we could enjoy the peace and the company of ourselves. Soon after beginning, the temple of "goddess waghjai" offered us it's darshan. Temples in the woods and mountains have always been special to me as they offer real peace of mind.

We continued our walk after our prayers and soon we were at the top of the first hill of the 16 hills on the trail. Well, some say it's 16, some say 17 while others say something else. I tried to count them myself but trust me, as soon as you leave 9-10 hills behind, you won't be left with any courage to continue your count further. As I already told that K2S is not an easy task in terms of endurance. So sitting at the top of the first hill, I was immersed in my thought that I shared earlier. We refreshed ourselves with fresh air and continued walking ahead.

The path from beginning to the end is very easy to trace as there is no chance of getting lost as all you have to do is to follow the small red light glowing at the top of one of the two towers on the sinhgad fort.

I remember when we were on the 3rd hill, one of the tallest among all other hills, the view was dazzling. We stopped for a halt and took out the watermelon that we had brought all the way from Swargate. The view was something like this, city flooded with enormous lighting, stars scattered all over the sky, the half moon shining even brighter and the watermelon slices in our hands. It was almost 12:30 AM and we were damn happy for not sleeping like the entire city but having a chance to look at them and wondering how beautiful feeling it is to stay out of the comfort zone. Rahul clicked some beautiful pictures of the scenario while we kept gazing at the view in wonder.

Meanwhile, we were encountering other groups also and there was no age group that wasn't present to witness the beauty of the trail. We could see people as young as nearly 15 years of age and as old as almost 60 years of age. And of course, that makes sense, no one can stop oneself from loving the mountains and admiring the view they offer. After crossing another 4 hills, we stopped to have our dinner, or what should I name it, dinner at around 2:30 AM. We sat there for quite a long, enjoying the cold breeze and gossiping in between.

We started hunting our path again and I was really wondered at the way Kavita and Rohini were picking up the speed and descending those steep descents, while the girls from other groups were left with choosing the only option of sliding down those descents leaving scars on their trousers and even men were not saved from doing this. I, myself pointed at one guy having good biceps struggling with sliding down the steep descents. It's the matter of courage and dare, I thought to myself. Uday dada was doing good and he wasn't troubled at all, Rahul didn't miss to capture anything that caught his eyes on the trail and Omkar maintained the courage in us and guided us very well.

As soon as it was dawn, the mountains were doing their best to left us amazed with the scenario. Many small villages could be seen from the above and also the huge nearby projects like, Nanded city, DSK and so on. At a distance khadakwasla dam was adding beauty to the view by shining in the sun rays.

The trail was also shining like a gold in the midst of sun rays.

As soon as we approached towards end, we got the glimpse of sinhgad fort.

We descended last hill around 6:45 AM and reached the proper asphalt road connecting sinhgad fort and fort base. One can walk down the road or hire taxi to reach the fort , one can directly head to the base by taxi which costs ₹50 per head or can descend in kondhanpur village directly instead of coming to asphalt road which may save you the money wasted on taxi as frequent buses are available from kondhanpur which heads to swargate. We ended our trek at the fort base, had some break fast and boarded our bus back to swargate.
Yes, everyone was tired, but smile on our faces for doing something extra ordinary suppressed our fatigue.