“BLOG ABOUT MY TREKKING EXPEDITION TO VISAPUR FORT”

I was wondering every time, that I visited Lohgad but never visited Visapur fort which is exactly opposite to the Lohgad fort. Not sure why I never thought about it until I planned to visit this place in Monson 2011. Before visiting this place I heard as well as read of many cases and stories of this fort that, lot of groups who visited this before lost their ways on return and then other experts called for the rescue. This may be because of dense forest, waterfalls during monsoon and trekkers mistakes.

Here is one of the links of news –

http://www.sakaaltimes.com/TagSearch.aspx?TagName=+Visapur+fort

I just put across my idea to visit this fort during Monsson weekend and asked my colleagues who would like to join. This would be one day trip, I said. Immediately one of my friends interested always for trekking (Avinash Patil) agreed on the plan. Day decided and 10 of us planned to start the journey by train early in the morning.

The day has come and all gathered at Pune Railway station except two, Bhaskar and Amol Patil. Amol Patil indolent fellow was expected to be late as always so we were bothered much. Myself was waiting for train at Akurdi station on the way to or destination Malvali station. Rain has arrived at Akurdi station and I enquired about Amol Patil. Then I learned that, Amol failed to wake up  on time so he dropped the plan. Since we already discussed about the plan night before regarding who will carry what, who will carry breakfast and who will carry utensils to cook the food on the fort and so on, I asked Bhaskar where are the fruits? All laughed. I said what happened? Then I learnt that, Bhaskar came to station Just In Time when train was about to leave the station, and he forgot the fruit carry bag on the bike handle in hurry of catching the train. I said then what to do, we took some Wadapav for our breakfast on next station and reached to Malavali station at around 9.00 am.

If you plan to take your own vehicle, here is the driving direction....

If you would like to see the details on Visapur fort and forest road, You may zoom this map and some ruins of fort, water reservoir, etc can be seen. 

Every one was ready with their trekking gears to start the mysterious journey towards top of the fort. We started out walk and stopped at flyover constructed on Mumbai Pune express way. To our surprise, we saw lot of small waterfalls flowing down the hill. We were of no clue of the road for expedition to the fort. Since Avinash had visited this fort before during summer, he was of great help to us.  We took some snaps of that great magical view and Avinash told us that we have to take that route only. We crossed the road and reached at the base of the fort. As soon as we started out hiking, it started raining. And all screamed with joy… yeee…..

Flyover on Express Way

Mumbai Pune Express Way

Visapur Fort

Walking and Walking...

Forest Road Started

Yee... We have to go there....

Making Our Way from Dense Forest

Escaped from Forest Route

We continued our journey though flowing water touching our knee height, mud of half feet, showering of water from the sky and sack on the back, full of cooking material and drinking water. Within 20 minutes we took first break when no one was sure whether we are travelling on right path, because we came across dense Jungal in front if us and fort was not visible from any angle. So we were not able to judge if we are on the right path. Avinash was confident that he took the same road and this should be the right one. After spending 10 minutes there, with all courage we started walk once again though the dense forest without any clue where we are heading. While walking we had to bend in back to avoid touching out bags to tress and getting trapped. The route was such that only one person can walk and no one can join him from side.

Rest

GOD Hanuman

Finally we crossed the dense forest road and reached at one of the waterfall. We had almost covered 50 % of out hike and 50 % were remaining. Some sort of relief. We thanked Avinash for guiding us to the right path. One advantage of passing from the forest was it was proving sort of shelter in rain. Rain had stopped by the time we reached out of the forest.

While travelling again we came across flat but covered with different kind of flowers. Flora. Looking like its natural shawl of flowers covering entire flat land of the fort Visapur.

And finally we reached at the place where we could see some steps. It was started raining again. This is typical Puneri Rain, (Kind of Pune rain), speciality of this rain is, it starts and stop and never showers continuously for long time. Hanumanji’s temple was out temporary shelter where everybody took their mobiles out of their bags and checked for any urgent miscalls. By this time everybody was completely wet, hungry and tired too. When we reached at the top all were screamed again like we have completed Everest expedition. Haha. Wooo….

Shiva Temple on Visapur Fort

Preparations

There are some ruins of temples, darukothar easily visible where trekker usually prefer to stay. We were in search of place where we could cook the food. Finally we fixed a place where we can cook the food. Rahul the man who was carrying the ready to cook Paneer tikka, took the material out from the bag and started basic preparations. Some were looking for the dry wood for making bone fire to cook the food. This was the toughest task since it was rainy day and hard to find such wood. Some guys were arranging stones to put the utensils for cooking food. All were looking at Rahul, because he was applying mud to the bottom of the container which he was about of put on the fire for cooking. One of our group member laughed and cracked joke saying Rahul we are yet to cook the food, don’t clean it now, to that he replied, Beta this is to avoid blackodising of the container due to fire. Smart…. Hmm….

One group came with some dry wood and finally all arrangements were done. Rahul pulled out ready to cook Paneer Tikka and started cooking. All were sitting around the bone fore on which the container was kept to get some heat and dry their cloths as well. Finally food was ready and all enjoyed having delicious paneer tikka with bread. To our good luck rain did not appear during that time and we finished lunch.

Packed our bags again and we all were now ready to explore the flat Visapur fort with full energy. On this fort various small water reservoirs can be seen. Also strong fortification from all sides of this fort is still intact. We moved from all sides and reached at the opposite side where 40-50 cows and buffalo’s were having their lunch on the fort.  One of our group member disturbed poor buffalo and she started following that guy. All were laughing so hard that it was unstoppable… writing this, I can not stop laughing..

We took some rest there and rain again started. We took the temporary shelter of fort ruins and decided to start the return journey to make sure we catch the train from Malvali station on time.

We started our return journey in rain and as I mentioned above we lost our way. Till the time we realize that we are not on the right path it was too late because we were separated in two groups. Fortunately we connected each other over phone and confirmed that all are there. Then my group decided to take route of waterfall. We started climbing down from side of waterfall and fortunately we managed to make our way down the fort. Other group was waiting for us at the base. We all were happy to complete this expedition safely.

Strong Fortification

At around 5.00 pm we come to Malvali station and decided to take Local train to Pune which was about to come in next 15 min.

All were tired, happy and full of lifelong memories with this tour. No one was in mood of taking to each other and everybody put their head down to mobile screens. Train arrived on time and we left the station……..

Difficulty level is low to medium for Visapur fort. No rock patch…

Hoping to visit this fort once again from Lohgad side and not from the base of this fort directly….. Will try to get the road from Lohgad to Visapur fort next time…

Stay tuned….

- महेश  आवटे