The bhataktiatma : Travelogue of a wandering soul

We have been visiting  Tamhini ghat more frequently this monsoon than other places , just 60kms from pune , tamhini offer some great monsoon trails , Andharban arguably most visited and know of them all ( thankfully on social media its the only know trail in tamhini).                   We decided to leave on staturday early morning , Sundays are usually taken by large trekking groups and we wanted to avoid crowd , saturday we expected would be little less crowded. We started at around 5:30AM from pune ,reached pimpri at about 7 , the village has just started to wake up while we got ready for the trek.                     It wasnt raining , hovering clouds had managed to create quite a mystique surroundings   GPS tracking was started, route wasn’t unknown, in fact with hundreds or people turning in every weekend ,route has more of became a highway, but we have mad...

Jungles are amazing places , they are like a live movie , a world within another. What makes jungle complete is presence of an top predator. Jungle with tiger is like cherry on top , you can always feel its presence but not always you are lucky to see him. I have been travelling in indian jungles since last 5-10 years , looking for the tiger , we even went to tadoba 2 years back but were then few of those unfortunate souls who dont get to see the tiger even in tadoba. This time its was different though , first sight of a tiger is like a dream come true , however having seen the animal i am now left wanting for more , so anxious to get back to tadoba and see the tiger again and again. Was bit disappointed as even with 300mm lens wasnt able to get good enough photo of the tiger , but something for the later visits.                               "You just dont see the tiger , you feel its aura!!" J...

"2000rs not a penny more not a penny less" Kachre mama was adamant , "The route doesn't exist now , we will have to create one , jungle will need to be cleared" he tried to convince us "this is the standard rate , few days back 3 people from mumbai came here for phadtad naal and paid me 2000rs" , now we were not sure if we are in remote place or a marketplace. We were in a small village near torna fort , Kusur Peth , Dattu ( jeetendra bankapure ) has found out a new naal (  Ravine ) Janani Naal ( Jajani means mother in marathi ) in the region , after doing some initial research on wikimaps GPS expert Ninand bartakke confirmed that route is humanly possible , it was again cross verified by Dhamdhere kaka and has given the green signal for the trek. Few of us started on friday night and after close to two hours drive reached kusur village for a sound sleep in the village school , few others arrived early morning , too early perhaps to disturb our sl...

Tamhini region near pune is full of unknown and unexplored routes , Ninad found out two such routes while playing with wikimapia and we decided to explore them. We left pune early morning , plan was to descend Naan dand ( dand : Marathi for ledge )  and ascend via Ghodnan Dand and visit kahdsamble buddhist caves in between , we reached ekalgaon which is about 80kms from pune , we barged into the village while it was still asleep , we had to wait for the village to wake up and ask if we can get a guide from the village. We did not have to search much and a young man ( lahu kadam ) agreed to show us the routes for a promised sum of 700rs. With ghangad at our back , tailbaila to our right we started our way towards Naandand opening , first half hour was a flat walk to reach kivne plateau. We reached kivne village and we saw our young guide asking for Naandand directions , he was trying to convince us that instead of choosing these difficult routes we should consider easier Na...

Since last year we sahyadri trek members have been planning to do a himalayan trek together, rather we all were waiting for opportunity to do a himalayan trek with Ajay kaka.                                     Ajay kaka has lead many expeditions in his 30-40 yrs trekking career  ( he has completed his basic and advance mountaineering course even before we were born ) , his stories always inspire us , its always a great privilege to trek with him and doing a himalayan trek with him is like attending the trekking institution , kaka came up with the idea of doing pin parvati pass trek which is not technical climb but difficult enough to challenge ourselves. Some of us were trekking outside sahyadri for the first time hence ajay kaka wisely selected this trek considering ease of access to manali in case of emergency situations. Within a week or so we received 11 confirmations ,1 cancellation...