MY TREK TO LOHAGAD

The bus left Mumbai leaving my friend who managed to get me a pass behind.
He who had received passes for some of his friends, to his dismay realized minutes before the buses left that his own pass was missing…
I felt bad…but then the buses made a move…After some unsuccessful rounds of Anthakshari, and some two hours of traveling, we reached Lohagad.
My friends, Miss R, Mr. R, Miss. J and Miss M and Mr & Mrs. G were there along with two hundred and odd associates…and so the trek began..

As soon as I got off the bus, there was a tree with a bunch of blue flowers welcoming us….There were a couple of waterfalls …we started our ascent, saving the waterfalls for our trip down… The weather was absolutely fantastic, with the sun nowhere to be seen and breeze dancing on my hairs…The hills all around were majestic…I felt so puny in their presence…the hike at first seemed like a cake walk as the slope wasn’t very steep…
After half hour of trekking, we started encountering small brooks.

I sat down on one of the rocks in the middle of a brook…The gurgling of the water running through the brook reminded me of incessant chatter of a little girl …it wasn’t making any sense to me…the sound of the running brook…but I enjoyed listening to it…There was water flowing to the right of me, to the left of me …and at some distance from me…how they all had different sounds, just like ppl…the water at my side was light and gay and the water falling at a distance, sounded somber and grim…I could hear the distant sparrow adding in to the symphony that the nature was playing…even the winds weren’t quiet…they were blowing intooo my ears…trying to reach to me through all my open senses…I put my fingers into the water…and lo, a chill passed through my spine…I felt as if it was a brief moment of rebirth…I washed my face in the running waters and felt alive…

The winds started blowing stronger…I wished then…that for a brief moment that I were a bird…or at least a butterfly or a bumble bee…so that I could fly…All around me, I could see one hundred(or more?) shades of green…there were ferns, cacti, huge trees, bare trunks, trees with thorns, three laden with green berries, violet colored berries, beautiful blades of grass…shivering as the breeze played on them…
There was particular plant that had heart shaped leaves and had hairs too minute to see, but you cannot, NOT feel it , when you touch it…that should help prevent excess loss of moisture…

There they were, fresh and shiny, washed by the mountain rains. To my eager eyes, they seemed like a maiden who just stepped out of the shower…but to my overwhelm, there was not just one maiden, but beauty every where my eyes could turn…
So much that I didn’t want to talk to my friends, I didn’t want to do anything at all…but sit there and spend the rest of my life trying to register the beauty of the moment…

Half way through the journey, I had fresh mountain lemonade…after a sip I felt like drinking a barrel of it, but had to be content with a glass of lemonade as I had to take care that I couldn’t attend to nature’s call in the wild…

The slow moving clouds that veiled the brides, the mountain tops, who peeped out of the veils, once every now, for a brief moment and then hid behind the soft moving white mass of mist made my heart flutter.

Hhhhmm, then they came, first there was one…and lo there was a second one, and then two more…with pinkish ears and a mischievous look in their eyes, came the ruffians, in groups. We were informed in advance of these particular inhabitants, who snatch bags and caps and food from visitors…one of them had the imperiousness to open a fellow trekkers bag and rummage through it for food… They looked cute, but from a distance. Yes, the monkeys were a source of fear and constant vigil, for no one wanted to be scratched or bitten by one.

Once atop, just before the main entrance to the fort, there is a place from where one can get a spectacular view of the ground beneath our feet…of the buffalos the size of a pebble, of pastures and neatly sectored agricultural lands, of a lonely farmer working in the field, standing out from the rest of the landscape by the bright orange rain cover he was wearing, the black swallows that flew by us (they seem to be capable of living at such heights), a huge silver water body that must be some lake…

The fort is made of rocks, huge black boulders covered with moss and grass, that had grown because of the water trickling down them since the monsoon began.
As I entered the fort, I felt haunted by the many soldiers’ souls that might have spent their entire lifetime guarding the fort…keeping a constant vigil, spending days and nights in that fort atop the hill…

There was temple of Shivling with a statue of Nandhi, strangely, there was a real life Nandhi(bull) standing right next to the Statue of God Nandhi.

I sat on a huge rock on the top and for a moment tried to realize what it would have felt like, to be Chatrapathi Shivaji, the emperor who built that fort…

I felt so powerful, sitting on that rock and looking at the world below…the fantasy was great…I was filled with this temptation to jump off the cliff…I imagined what would happen if I did, how long would I feel the pain of broken bones and crushed ribs?
And then what??? Will I get lost into Nothingness?

Boy, at that moment, I felt glad I was alive…that I could see, sense, feel, hear…that I was alive in the liveliest sense of the word…

Within moments of strong breeze, I was surrounded by fog. For a moment, I thought this is what Heaven must look like…Then it started to rain and the rains cleared the fog…
It was a brief drama that Nature had staged…I was standing by a water collecting pit, when it rained…the rain drops created a myriad patterns in the pit as they reached their destination from the sky.

I met an interesting crab, a shiny snail and hold it…..
On my way back, I witnessed a slithering sinewy snake, about a meter long, an inch thick, black and white striped passing right before my legs, in a jiffy, in a flash…it got me too excited. I was jumping up and down shouting “ I saw a snake! I saw a snake”

Mr. R and Miss R were coming behind me…
Mr. R caught a glimpse of the snake…Miss R just missed it…

On my trek down, I saw a local mom with her two daughters followed by their dog. One of them was carrying something on her head. The other was too small and had a dirty but beautiful face. The mom caught my attention and so did I. She smiled and so did I. I felt I knew her since a long time…It was a brief moment…

On our way down, we wet our feet in one of the waterfalls, had corn cobs and dozed off in the bus.

So it was….my trip to Lohagad!