Avinash, Uday, Sachin and Your's truly at Rajmachi

The last two weekends have been blissful. Last to last weekend went on a night trek to Rajmachi (Shivaji's Fort). It’s about 26 Kms from Lonavala station. We started at 1 in the night and reached just in time to catch the sunrise by 5:30. We had the customary photo session and explored the fort (there is hardly anything to explore as most of the fort has been destroyed, there is the last remaining canon on one of the bastions and some walls remaining that still remind us of the glory of the fort) but the best part was the beautiful morning itself with the kamshet lake in the backdrop and the twin fort of manoranjan visible in the highlight of sun. We had carried vessels and raw material, like tea, milk powder and bread and butter, to the top, so gathered some firewood and made our selves piping hot tea to go with bread butter. On the way up we had noticed a pack of trekkers sleeping at the foot of the fort next to a very old temple.

By the time we finished our session at the top the group had woken up and started walking up to the fort. We got demoralized by this a bit as we don’t like crowd and one of the primary reasons for us to go trekking is to get away from people. So we packed our bags and started our descent. The aim now was to explore the temple at the foot. The temple was very old and gave me a very serene feeling. Old wooden doors, and at a distance from the temple is what looks like the remains of the erstwhile courtyard of the temple.

Then we went down to the village of Rajmachi which must be having not more than 15 houses and of that only one is a concrete one. This concrete structure is a hotel (more like a dharamshala) the only place for trekkers to relax and fill their stomachs. The hotel actually can work out great especially for those who are scared to trek through the night. They can start in the evening reach the hotel, stay for the night, check out the fort in the morning along with the sunrise and then push off to their respective destinations or even for those who would like to spend some quality time away from the hustle of the city.

The village boasts of a lake which is ideal for a dip especially in the evening or early in the morning (don’t think about going there after the sun is up). Right next to the lake is another old Shiv temple with serene water tanks and old Shiv-ling. Hanging your legs into the tank with your face towards the temple brings back the connection which we all feel we had lost. A cosmic connection for people who would like to give it a name and understand it better! Me? I would rather just stay with the connection rather than define it.

The interesting thing about the village is that they don't have any electricity supply from the state govt. They have been adopted by the Tata Power Company, which in turn has installed huge solar panel in the village and the entire village is powered by that. You should see them using power as though it is the most precious thing in the world. They do not switch on the lights in the day time and use electricity only during the night for very minimum need. The streets of the village are lit in the night by the self sufficient solar powered street lights.

Anyways, moving on we were by now very tired and due to absence of sleep during the night were just hoping to crash somewhere. Luckily for us Atul's hotel has a huge veranda where we threw our bags and lay down forgetting our worries. He was also kind enough to serve us tea and Pohe. Thereafter we went away to dreamland for two hours deciding that trekking back at this hour would definitely lead to lot of burnt skin (as by now it had become extremely hot and the sun was throwing an open challenge to us, which we weren't willing to accept) so we decided to either trek back only in the evening or take a vehicle back to lonavala station.

All said and done the bad thing about trekking is once you stop to rest you can’t push your body any further. So as expected after two hours of sleep we chose the easy way out and took a sumo back to the station. The way back in the sumo we were accompanied by a British who came to the fort at 1:30 PM, sprinted to the top of the fort and back to the base in 35 minutes. Speaking to him we discovered that he had been doing this every year for the last 30 years. He comes to India for 6 weeks and goes around exploring the forts and caves for the stipulated period. He made us realise that we have a long way to go. We have many tracks to cover, innumerable places to visit and long time to go before we can boast of anything close to being a regular trekker.

But on the way back just like every time we were discussing where to go next weekend.. What to do nature beckons us every time we close our eyes.. It’s the need to test the human body and do something outrageous, to push our limitations and emerge a winner