strongbone Offline

White Cloud Hills: A Adventurous Tour

I would like to share this experience with the people who love to do traveling. It was memorable day for me and my first lively adventure which I did with my two friends.

We had a exciting and amazing trip to Junnar Situated at the base of the Sahyadri mountains, it is around 100 km east of Mumbai and 94 km north of Pune. Also located near this city are Shivneri Fort, birthplace of Chhatrapati Shivaji Raje, the famous Maratha king, Lenyadri (girijatmak) and Ozar (vighnaher) both are from Ashtavinayakas.

Junnar has attained prominence as early as 90 B.C when king Vedishri son of the Satavahana king Satakarni, the "Lord of Dakshinapatha, wielder of the unchecked wheel of Sovereignty" made Junnar the capital of his kingdom.

We had a thought to explore all the above these exciting places in one go and had a plan to cover most of these places through walking to discover the annals of hilly places.

Unfortunately and fortunately none among of us had visited these places earlier.Cutting short the travel of bus part and coming directly to Junnar from Pune, we did a walk from Junnar upto Shivneri hills.We had a light breakfast of upma cost of Rs 8 and a tea before tracking where we had 6 Paav Bhaji.I was accompanying with my college senior who was working in Tata Motors that time.

The fascinating part of the hill is that ,the hill part of Shivneri had a shape of Shiv Ling that gave the name "Shivneri" of that part of the hill.On the way we were singing , and not a single person was appearing on the road to the great extent of our eyes limit.That gave us the feeling that we are the kings of those roads and deep inside at the back of our head, fear of leopards in all of our minds, which was dribling and started dancing for a while when we saw the sign boards of warning in Marathi on the way as we were advancing towards the hill. We couldn't able to see the top peak of mountain from the foot hill as it was surrounded by fog which was crushing inside the clouds.

While returning we took the path of (Chor-Vath) , a shortcut which is at the back part of the hill.An emergency pathway to escape in the olden days when there use to be a attack on the fort.Of course not a easy route to follow that path.But the madness inside us made all of us to choose and force us to take that route. After all we was in search of adventure and that was the need and demand of that hour.This is a dangerous and adventurous thrill, I had first time experience in my life.The path was narrow and it was steep downhill , slippery , every possibility to find snakes or reptile.
I can feel the cold breeze which was giving blows and hitting on our faces from all over top while coming down , it took us 20 min to come down from the hill on the contrary 45 minutes to climb the same hill.

Then we started our journey to Lenyadri,represents a series of about 30 rock-cut Buddhist caves,twenty-six of the caves are individually numbered. The caves face to the south and are numbered serially from east to west.The caves date from between the 1st and 3rd century AD; the Ganesha shrine situated in Cave 7 is dated to the 1st century AD, though the date of conversion to a Hindu shrine is unknown. All of the caves arise from Hinayana Buddhism Caves 6 and 14 are chaitya-grihas (chapels), while the rest are viharas (dwellings for monks). The latter are in the form of dwellings and cells. There are also several rock-cut water cisterns; two of them have inscriptions. The layout of the caves, in general, are similar in pattern and shape where it is temple of Lord Ganpatti,one of the Ashtvinayak, which was too old. According to one Pandit there , it was built by Pandavas (Mahabharat).

After that we started for Ozar without stopping any further.We are near about Kalyan which is around 60 km away and 20 km away from Malshet. Malshet is famous for rain at all season.Ozar have the temple of Vighneshwar.

After covering all those places we left for shivajinagar (Pune).Beleive me or not when I was counting and analysing the distance we cover , we realise that we cover approximately 15 Km through walking , excluding the climb part & coming down from the hill.

That make that journey fun, exciting and memorable...