One of those trips which did not go as planned and boy, am I glad? The trip was to actually meet a friend of us, a prospective producer of a short film that one of us had in mind. That short film which is yet to be captured from our imaginations. Since our friend was kind- hearted to meet us at midnight, we set out from Mumbai to Pune at dusk in an overcrowded Mahalaxmi Express.
Pudheel Station Shivajinagar
I have always enjoyed travelling and imagine if combined with many ‘waiting to be a movie’ stories and meaningless situational jokes, it’s a double delight. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world slept, we alighted at Shivajinagar. Reached, had wonderful dinner and started the discussion which though constructively, deviated and went on till early morning. A few hours of sleep later we decided to head back home.The weather was pleasant and we boarded the train from Pune.
En route this journey was the twist that atleast I never expected. We crossed Lonavala and our nature exploration mode got activated. Partially foggy and waiting to burst out clouds to be blamed. We started asking each other, “should we get down or not?” From the three of us, I was the one who was sceptical of this plan. We reached Khandala, and the only thing we thought about was to get down or not?
“Oh oh!” that was the sound of the train leaving the platform. A motivational speaker got into my friend and he started saying things like, “Gaadi slow jaa rahi hai, ab bhi time hai, chal kood jaate hai (The train is going slow, we still have time, let’s jump).”
I was like, “kaha jayenge hum (where will we go)?”
“Arre kaha nai toh, track se chalte hue jayenge (If not anywhere, we will walk by the railway tracks).”
Next thing we realize, we are on the tracks and the train has gained pace. There is no looking back now.
Adventure starts now!
“Monkey Hill”, read the other friend and soon we knew the reason for the name. There were monkeys on both sides of the track. We kept a stick with us, just to be sure that the monkeys don’t trouble us.
We walked towards the signal cabin, as we reached it, the cloud burst and it started pouring. Standing under a shade we started readying ourselves to take on the rains. We cooked up an interesting story about why we were on the tracks so that the signal attendant would help us with the way out. After taking a nice peaceful leak in the open air, we started our trek. Slowly admiring the beautiful monkey hill, we went where the lane took us. For a moment I thought, we would be lost but there came a ray of hope. Two bikes coming our way from the jungle, we asked them where the highway was and they obliged. The walk took us to the other part of the railway line and we spotted some technicians at work. We asked them for the route and found that khopoli highway was the closest. So we started walking and came across what seemed to be a big pump house. Fun fact: Whenever we spotted a local, we would tell the Maharashtrian in our group to take lead and talk, but every time the restless guy in our Bhaiyya came out and would jump start a conversation with the local showing off his Marathi prowess (some of which only he understood).
Finally out from the calm peaceful inroads to the busy concrete road, Khopoli highway. A small tea break later we started walking towards Khopoli station. Walking on the highway is way too dangerous than it seems and hence we started signalling for a lift, and a truck stopp
ed. Perfect! As I had imagined. He dropped us at the Khopoli exit and we got another lift from there. This time it was tempo, much better. We got down at Khopoli ‘phata’. The place seemed familiar to me as I had been there once couple of months before all the way from Mumbai to surprise my best friend for his birthday. Some nostalgic moments later, we got into a rickshaw to get to the railway station. While in the rickshaw, we thought the adventure wasn't enough, we need more. So we decided our next stop would be, Zenith waterfalls.
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| Zenith Waterfall, Khopoli, Maharashtra |
Zenith waterfall is one of the most famous waterfalls in the area around that place and attracts a lot of tourists in monsoon. While asking for directions we learned that Zenith was closed down as few people had lost their lives while enjoying the falls. We started walking, and kept walking and walking and walking for a while until we could see our target and then walked a little more. The more we walked it looked farther away from us. We climbed the small hills to reach to it.
The waterfall was indeed amazing; worth all the walks and hurdles we had to go through. There were 4-5 points of waterfall, we chose one. As my friends pulled off the Salman Khan look, I decided to go fully clothed (I don’t like to give people complex by showing off my amazing physic). Some people were “rappelling” in the unusual way. They would hang on to the rope and the person standing down would push the strings up until they came down. Many small kids running around freely on the slippery rocks got our spirits high. They were ‘FEARLESS’ while we were extra cautious while jumping from rock to rock. The water flow kept oscillating because of the wind. Every time the water fell on us, it was refreshing. It actually felt like someone was pressing the F5 button on the PC (quite nerdy, I know).
Half-heartedly we started climbing back down. We slipped a lot both while climbing up and coming down (mostly me) our footwear proved useless. While trying to lie down and enjoy the flowing water my friend slipped and had a fall. Friends being friends, the first reflex emotion that came to us was laughter. As we reached the tip, it was my turn and I slipped and fell bottoms down on a rock. I was just planning to thank my luck but I did not have to.
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| That's me while going back :( |
Bidding adieu to Zenith, we took a rickshaw back to Khopoli and boarded the crowded local back home, thus putting an end to an awesomely adventurous trip.
