Mission Harishchandragad Accomplished!!!

It was a mid off August. My group had been preparing for this trekk for a long time. With every passing day the energy levels of my mates was constantly on rise...All were for eager for the trek!!
The trip was finalized for 15th and 16th August. Our spirits were very high as we would be there on the top of the world on Independence Day! But unfortunately because of several of my members falling ill and some having personal commitments our final list reduced to as small as four. But still we were ready for it!! So the final list of trekkers were Avi, Kunal, Prasad and myself(Justin).
On the D-Day we started our journey at around 7 in the morning. Our places of interest included Tolar kind, Harishchandreshwar temple, Kedareshwar temple, Ganesh guha, Konkan kada among many other.Took our breakfast containing the delicious hot kanda pohe in Junnar!!. We made our pass along the lines of Shivneri fort. We reached Kireshwar around 11am, kept our bike with a caretaker and started with the important mission. The journey went through rock patches, jungles, plateaus, mist and heavy rains in between too!!

Finally we reached Harishchandreshwar temple around 4:30pm. We were very very tired by now. But we were very much enthusiastic and progressing ahead motivating each other. Avi had some cramp but he was quick to recover his mental strength. Yes, we were on the top.A guide guided us to the Ganesh Guha. Luckily we got a cute cave within the main cave which was unoccupied till now. We were very very hungry by this time, as we had our kingsized lunch in the form of bread loaves. Thanks Kunal for that!! We were very lucky to find this young chap who prepared food and tea for the visitors of the cave. This guy prepared hot tea for us. We also ordered him dinner which contained Chapattis, Pitalla, Rice and Dal. It was absolutely yummy. We quickly cleaned our area of the cave more thoroughly mainly to dry the floor. Laid our trekking mats plus the big plastic mat which Prasad had bought!! We were well prepared for sleep. The time was just around 7:45pm :). Four of us cracked lots of jokes, played lots of pranks amongst ourselves. Things got more hilarious after we put off that guha in our guha!!! Can't be explained by mere words. Lots of theories evolved during that discussion :) :)
Finally sleep overpowered us but at then came this unexpected guest. It was a mice in our guha!!! It gave us a run for our money. Especially the guest troubled Prasad who was sleeping at the entrance to the gate. I still remembering him pleading to the three of us for help. Sorry yaar! we were not asleep. We were trying to act as if we were asleep!!! :) :). The rest of the night was a sort of counter strike game, where we were protecting our eatables from the mice.

Early the next morning we got up around 6am, except Avi. I had to kick his *** to get him started! :). Anyways soon we got ourselves fresh and we were ready to continue with the assignment. We left the cave and resumed our journey to "Konkan Kada". Unfortunately the atmosphere was too foggy and we could hard see anything down the cliff :(. This still is a motivation to get back to this place again :) Came back to Kedareshwar temple where the diety is placed in a freezing cold water enclosure. We got to know that the water as part of the enclosure is always freezing cold at any point of the time in the year.
From there on we resumed our journey downhill. We were accompanied by a dog which came along with us the whole way from Ganesh guha to the base of the hill ie near Kireshwar. How could we forget the hot Bhajji. Yes we had our bite of plates of Bhajji on our return journey.
I really enjoyed the trek a lot!! I am sure we have burnt a hell lot of calories :). I really thank all friends who helped making this trek a memorable part of life, not to forget other members from other trekking groups especially from Dombivili and Thane!!! Cheers to my mates.
This one is indeed a true test of a trekker!! Lets continue this PASSION!!!

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