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Published: July 28th 2009
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The Group
The Group For a change, this time, we were running ahead with our planning. We had 11 confirmations for Sunday (19th July) outing and the place chosen was Raigadh and this all was confirmed on Friday itself. On Friday, Vidya had dropped a mail to the team saying that we will go by ST, which was later changed on Saturday and we decided to hire a private bus because we got three more additional confirmations.
Our past experience was when we said 7.00 am, all of us never gathered before 8 am. But this time, it looked like everybody was determined to come on time and they surprisingly came before 8 am . Our bus started from Pune at 8.00 am. The team comprised of 3 couples, a one and half year baby boy and rest singles, some new faces, some known but the everybody mixed up with each other in no time.
The journey started with a popular game “Mafia”, intended to see how much of lie people can speak, how much of convincing skills they have and how can they succeed or fail to prove that they are innocent. Although many people were playing the game for the first time, slowly,
Maharaj
Shivaji Maharaj they started catching the momentum, getting more interested and skilled.
Now we were in the ghats of Tamhini and Tamhini was not letting people go without admiring and complementing its heavenly rainy beauty. The road was full of zig zag curves, but on one side beautiful waterfalls and on the other… the “hariyali” and the overflowing river. The road was also covered with a lot of fog which made every one of us say “WOW”. As we continued it started becoming little hot and humid which none of us had expected in this month of July. I guess it was because we were approaching Konkan and this continued till we reached a place on Mumbai-Goa highway for our morning breakfast. It was 11 am. Being hungry since morning, everybody was like “Toot pado” on the breakfast. They only guy, who was enjoying everything else but eating food, was our center of attraction, he was “Manu”, the one and half year old baby boy. He was liking it, walking with his little legs, little imbalanced steps.
It must be 1.00 pm, when we reached the Raigadh base. We could see the waterfalls and a lot of fog surrounding the fort, but
Takmak Tok
Takmak Tok at the base it was all hot and humid. We went straight to the rope way ticket counter and were shocked to know that we will have to wait for another 90 minutes to get our ticket and turn to reach the top with rope way. Little disappointed, we decided to explore the surrounding beauty for some time, capture the waterfall snaps and take our lunch so that we get ample time when we reach the top and all our energy goes in exploring the once capital fort of Maratha regime.
Finally our turn came to get into the rope way ride. For most of us, it being the first time experience, the excitement and eagerness to feel the experience was at its highest level. They allowed only 4 people in a cable car, our journey started, two cars side by side and 8 of our team members in the those two cars. We sat down inside the car, and before we could think anything, it started. It started taking us to the height, leaving others to watch and video shoot us going to the top. The view from the car was breath taking, we could now clearly see where did the waterfall start from and where is it ending with a bang. We could also see that we were entering into the clouds as the car was progressing and taking us to the top. Some were watching the view, some were recording it all and some were just telling others to sit down and scared of getting the car imbalanced.
The car must have taken just 5 minutes to take us to the top and to a different world? Perhaps, something like heaven if not heaven. Now we were completely inside the clouds and surrounded by fog, waiting for rest of the team to reach and they reached in few minutes too. Everybody, was now busy talking about the experience they had with the rope way and everybody was happy to have experienced it. We were now seeing the great, big and wet walls of Raigadh, the steps to enter inside were wet too and were looking clean because of rains, and all of this with a few feet visibility only. We kept climbing from those wet stairs to see the hidden inside beauty of Raigadh. There are a plenty of things that you can see inside, to our surprise, most of them were now the ruins, they include, Queens’ palace, a market place, Rajwada, Samadhi, Ganga sagar lake and the watch towers. The Nagarkhana and Jagdishwar temple are the places which are still standing tall with their complete framework still in place. After finishing all these places, while experiencing some wind, some rain and a cup of garam garam chai, we turned our morcha towards the most talked about “Tak Mak Tok”. As many people who already know what does this tak mak tok is meant for, we could now see why it should have been chosen to be the one. When we reached this place, the wind was flowing in full swing and we spent some time here talking, taking snaps and experiencing the wind. This was our last spot.
Now, it was time for us to return to the rope way to get down. Again when we reached at the gate, we found that we are in a half hour waiting list and we utilized the time playing Mafia. When our turn came to get into rope car, we were little relaxed this time, we found our car making the way through that dense fog, and literally in 3 minutes, we were at the base. We had a small break when we had a cup of tea again while the rain was pouring heavily and then we headed for Pune through Bhor ghat, all of us singing some melodious music.
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