Thipthipya ghat - kurdugad - lingya ghat

Monsoon is half finished , after some small treks we were eager for a big one . Jeetu ( jeetendra bankapure aka Dattu Tupe) started the mail trail two weeks back for thipthpya ghat ...from the name itself trek looked very offbeat ..havent heard this before from anyone I was in instantly so as Ninad Bartakke (12%) , Nitin Tidke ( tirke or tiduk ) .... pravin shelar(shelar mama) didn't bother responding. Jeetu has added few new faces to mail trail this time and those new faces added few more unknown faces which started asking questions like "what brand of biscuits we should carry for treks?? , are we going to have lunch at a restaurant on the way ??" super excited i say ..anyways we ignored. Jeetu finally ended the mail trail by issuing stern warning ..."if you dont reach by 4:30 , you will be left out!!".

                   Getting up at 3 am in the morning on friday night can be really annoying especially if you have biochemical weapons like bedbugs in your room , but i did manage to wake up ang get ready , and then wait for tidke's call to pick me up ...it was 4:15 no sign of tidke yet ...called him twice "12% will pick you up" ... bartakke coming for pick up means i could affort 15 minutes of power nap ...finally we reached dattu's house at 4:45 ..."dare dattu i was having a bath " bartakke ...."&*#%#$#$#$#$$#$# fc%%##u##K" dattu and we started for  Dapsare village which is about 30 kms from panshet and 70kms from pune but bad roads extended the travelling time and we managed to reach the village by 7.

                         After some inquiry in the village , More uncle from village agreed to accompany us till the end and back to village and we started for the trek after a hot cup of tea and shirkhurma left from other days Eid celebrations.

                          After one hour cross country we reached the opening for thithipya ghat , it was more uncle who knew the opening else we would have never found it out ...for us it was just an end of the plateau and deep valley ahead .After a quick snacks of eggs and bananas we moved on for a steep descend of thithipya .Jeetu had to rearrange the group so that experienced ones are scattered good enough to support the others ..me with my great qunchua forclanz 500 was feeling more like wearing skate shoes on this wet and hard sahyadri rocks , these shoes are great no doubt but are just not made for such heavy rains and slippery hard rocks, alas!! . First patch was a 90 degrees descend and was slippery , we had to almost crawl through , then it was relatively easy my shoes did manage to land me on my bum few times but nothing serious ...everything is intact ;) , after one hour and half hours descend we reached the end of the steep descend and the traverse which took us to other mountain , at this point there is a cave like structure formed by waterfall and a small constructed pond "this is why this ghat is called thipthipya ..water always falls in this pond from above , 24X7 throughout the year" more uncle provided the info .

slippery start

The traverse 

Small pond which gives name to the ghat

and we move on ...

 This route was once used as a trade route between upper pune and konkan end of thipthipya took us to the end of tamhini ghat , "with tar roads coming upto the village its not used much now" more uncle.

 We had thought end of ghat will lead us to plateau but what followed is another hours cross country to reach the base and one hour more to reach the sakhlechi wadi village. Another cup of tea offered by the villagers few biscuits and we moved on , here i realised kurdugad is actually vishramgad which i have done last year from a different route.
We inquired about the route ahead and moved on one more hour cross country and one hour steep ascend to reach the plateau adjoining kurdgad , we were hungry now ..quick snacks break ..eggs ...bananas ..dry fruits ..no calorie counting here ..we were on trek and we were burning them at much faster rate than consumption.
                        One hour more before we reached base , kurdupeth village , a small climb took us to top or kurdugad we did the exploration and descended back to a ancient water tank. Few others will still exploring the fort so we decided to have few paranthas ...by the time we realised that we need to save few for others we had consumed 15 between 4 "dont worry i do have few more in my bag" ..and we finished 15 more.
After a small break we started moving , more uncle was bit worried by now ... few guys at back were moving really slow and having cramps .."this way we will not make it to the village before night ..we have to hurry else we will have an impromptu meeting with the leopard" more uncle, it is true this area is notoriously famous for leopard and trekking through the dense jungle at night was not a good idea anyways.
after more than one hour we reached the face of lingya ghat ... as per jeetu this one is as small as his apartment stairs ..but his apartment stairs doesnt have 100 0 feet dead fall and are not slippery either , the route was so slippery i was just not ready to trust on my expensive shoes and had to climb last patch using my knees ...reached the top of tamhini ghat , end of lingya and we thought its just a matter of hour here after so enjoyed few more eggs ..because of holy shravan month half of the group had turned vegetarian so it was on me , tidke and jeetu to finish 36 eggs ...we happily obliged ..after all bananas are for monkeys :)

What we thought would be matter of hour turned out to be a huge cross country ...tooks us little than 2 hours to reach dhamanpada village ..dapsare is 4km trek distance from here ... and then a long walk followed and tar road appeared from nowhere ,"we will take the short cut, just a small ascend to reach the hill and then its just half an hour from there" more uncle , his small hike turned out to be 80 mins ascend ...people at back were already in pain ...jeetu had to do the circus of keeping there moral high and group shifting to keep the pace going ..it was getting darker ..reached the top and other one was visible , crossed that and the next one was at our face finally after 3 small hills plateau arrived ...group started to move at better pace now but back benchers  were really struggling ..chances of dinner with leopard were getting thicker . After three hours of longest cross country done so far we reached the place from which dapsare village was visible at distance. after few minutes more and just before it darkened out completely we reached the tar road ..dapsare was a km away ...back benchers gave up and jeetu,12%.tidke,sumit and me along with more uncle started walking towards the village ...we had to finish the trek properly ..reached the village ,,,added the marker on my tracks and trek was officially completed.
                    Hot tea at more uncles house and we helped each other to remove leeches , while we enjoyed tea leeches had our hot blood. Paid more uncle what he truly deserved and finished another offbeat trek successfully.