Trek To Kalavantin

Went to Kalvavantindurg last Sunday actually, but it has been a long long week, so found time to blog about it only today. Anyways, took an early morning train from Thane to Kurla, then backwards to Panvel. The Thane/Vashi route starts up at six thirty, which made it too late for our purposes. Landed up at Panvel station, then walked it upto the bus stop, and caught the six fifty bus to Thakurwadi, which is the closest bus stop to the trek. Now Kalavantil is a pretty prominent pinnacle right next to Prabalgad fort, and the view from Prabalgad is amazing... might go there sometime soon just to get the godawesome pics of Kalavantin like the ones here.
The route is pretty short, not at all tiring, and actually a good "tough" trek for beginners. Early in the trek, while everyone was taking a break, I was looking through the bushes for some good critters to snap. Found this crab hiding from me. The funny thing about a crab is that because of the way it moves, its bound to cross directly in your path while running away from you - many times over! That's the curse of running sideways. A sight to watch would be a snake chasing a crab. Anyway, so I got this:



Anda villiager I came across at that point of time asked if I got it. I said I did and showed the picture to him, and he was so happy that a crab from his mountain was snapped by an alien photographer. On the trek was another fellow with an EOS 400D, the same cam that I use, but with a much better lense. The route to the top took around an hour and a half. That's to the base villiage before the pinnacle. Now Kalavantin has a sort of pinnacle on top of a pinnacle. Both of them rest on the base villiage. There is a pasture about half way to the base village, which is a plateau. We rested here, and it was a great place for a photoshoot. This is a group photo, but one guy called Crimemaster Gogo was totally over the top at this point of time. He was totally over the top most of the way. The evidence is in the title link, but here is a group photograph of all of us except me. This one is captioned "सब लवडे खड़े हैं"



At this point I split ways with the party to follow a path of my own, while they came up an alternative route. I came up a little quicker than them, because I stuck to the path, and these guys went over a rock patch and caught a totally different path. This is a pic I took of them from the a higher level.



Seen in the background is Chanderi. The villiage on the top is great, and a lot of friendly people here. If you ever come across such a place, please do not spoil them by giving them an excess of money. Rajmachi and Harishchandragad are ruined because of this. This one is untouched. We even got a large cucumber free, with the chatni. These folk are terribly hospitable, and simple, happy people. There is another real world here, a much wholesome place, untouched by evil, so if you are taking any bullshit with you, leave it before you reach here. We rested a while, replenished ourselves with water, filled up our water bottles, talked to the kids and went on.



There was a winding staircase here, the upper staircase of Cirith Ungol minus Shelob for me. (To narrate a half-weird side story, was reading LOTR on top of Lohgad, while the others were sleeping when a group of three trekkers asked me what I was reading, when I told them it was LOTR - and they 1) acknowledged the fact that it had a lot of "enviornment" in it, and 2) were glad it was not Harry Potter) anyway, we climbed to the top, fooled around a bit there, and came back home.





We could see a Chanderi and Karnala from the top. This is us waiting for the four o clock bus, tired out, and at an office of some "enterprises"