The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

 As a preparation for our himalayan trek in september Dhamdhere kaka wanted to plan treks which will prepare us for those long walks in the himalayan regions , this trek was the first of those many to come. Here is the photo blog of the same. Baleshwar temple resembling ramsey's movie setups at night , baeleshwar is a temple on hill top about 20 kms from sangamner towards nashik  We had motths and insects for the company in the temple Waghoba - a village god resembling tiger , on the way to pemgiri from baleshwar the cave  Huge yeloshi waterfall today is without a drop of water , monsoons here have not made even  a guest appearance in this part  on way to pemgiri from yeloshi Descending the payardara - Payar means step in marathi , payardara has manmade steps to facilitate the movement manmade payardara ladder on the pemgiri fort , while ascending we took the route from the front of the fort , this one at the back...

Finally summer heat has receded and the monsoons are here , the clouds have taken over the harsh sunny skies and now its all murky , raring to descend upon from the heavens. Chirag Muley , our trekking friend was coming out from his trek sabbatical after his long CFA exams , Nitin Tidke was to plan a 2 days trek which is long enough but enjoyable , and he came out with a perfect suggestion of doing Kamshet - Bhimashankar. Lonavla to Bhimashankar is an ancient tread route / pilgrimage route , we were just boarding from Jambhivali near kamshet. There are many starting points for this trek Lonavla , Siddhagad , Ahupe Ghat ,Khandas and many more known and unknown . We choose the one nearest to Pune i.e kamshet. 7 of us started for kamshet by 4:50 am train , even at the oddly hour the train was fairly crowded , after an hour of catching up with each other , we reached kamshet , after gorging on the staple food of Vada-pav we hopped  into the State Transport (ST) bus towards Jambh...

Injection Trek is a term my trek friends use to describe a trek which is physically and mentally demanding. These are one of those treks where you walk for 12 hours, ascend few thousand feet and descend equal height if not more. These treks when planned well and executed could be great fun. The problem with these treks is that they are constant race against time and sometimes you concentrate your attention so much on the destination that you tend to miss out on the smaller joys of trekking. I am not a big fan of such treks, for me trekking is not about the destination it’s the journey which makes it worthwhile. It’s an rare opportunity to venture into some of the most remote areas where there is no air pollution or the sound pollution, the only sound you will hear is of yourself and the birds chirping or the wild animals if you are lucky. These places demand a great respect and admiration something which you cannot give if you are on a tight time constraint. A trek needs to...

Tiger expert Atul Dhamankar has organsied his annual kaziranga camp and we signed up for it isntantly. It was only wise that we visit as many places as we could of this faroff land  6 years back had a chance to be Meghalaya governments guest and visit shillong , however that was an official visit so was short on time.Only after few years hence i came to know of the living root bridges and was disappointed not to have visited such a wonder . So when we finalised Kaziranga , Cherrapunjee was default addition in to do list. Cherrapunjee  Sohra , as it is locally know is the worlds rainiest place with average annual rainfall of 11692mm , in 2007 it was close to 16000mm. Beauty of shohra strucks you instantly and there is lot still unexplored in this place. Cherapunjee is 180kms from Guhwahati , the nearest airport and just 70kms from shillong. Situated at height of about 1000 meters this place receivies rain 9 months of the year caused by heavy evaporates from bay of bengal ...