August 2007: Trekking Peb – Vikatgad
I need a break !!
The time I wasnt in a situation to go ahead with any more work … I thought of joinin in mOrOnZ Group (Mumbai Trekkers) a.k.a. MoRonz AdvEntUrez
– who are all geared up for a nature getaway almost every weekend…
Trekking Peb – Authored by my friend: Anupama
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Getting away from the monotonous office life is what we MoRonz strive for. And the scaling of PEB / VIKATGAD was one more feather to our caps. Work / Office is part of the slavery to our “Paapi Pet”. Our Adventures together is what we term as “Life”. This time around our adventure started from CST station on 25-08-07. All the moroners were required to report to the station at 11pm and we were going to catch the 11:28 train to Karjat. I arrived at 10:30pm, as the first citizen of our group Mr. Kalpess Bhai had decided to grace us with his presence and give us his blessings. But then he dared to come in a tee which said “I am allergic to morons”. How dare u Mr. First Citizen??.. Iska badla hum zaroor lenge..heh he. And the first thing Mallikaji does on my arrival, is introduce me to Nitin. He he… the portable potty guy… Everyone was most eager to meet him actually…
At 11:30pm all of us got on to the train to Karjat and occupied almost 50% of the compartment. We sure can make our presence felt everywhere we go. The “WAZZUPS….” Never go unnoticed or unanswered. It was so nice and peaceful with the nice talks and the jokes, until Ghatkopar arrived and devil (RAHUL BARVE) got in. “Hey bhagvaan maine aapka kya bigada hai. Why have you send this guy to spoil my sleep…. Why why why ….. Miane aapko kitne baar samjhaya hai… I havta work on Saturdays whereas almost all the others have a holiday…so please next time tell Rahul to lemme sleep…Amen”
After Kalyan Stn.. the compartment had gotten almost empty except for a few commuters and was majorly occupied by us Moroners. Well so as I was already getting cranky due to lack to sleep and rest, I thought of standing at the door, or rather hang at the doorway. With Janaki giving me company we were trying to do the TITANIC pose with one hand to get the 50% feel of it.. hehe. And then the elite few… Rahul, Viju, Venkat Mallika came and sat at the door and started with their singing sessions. Half the songs I havnt heard in my life. How old are u, u guys??…. Pata nahin kaunse zamane ke gaane gaa rahe the.
We got down at Neral station at around 1:30am I guess and were again introduced to our 5 star accommodation. Well it was a better place than the Kamshet station as we were a little away from the actual platform and away from the ruckus the high speed trains create. As soon as everyone had deposited their bags, they scattered in every direction looking for toilets. Hmm…. Where was Mr. Nitin… I wonder…
After quick photo sessions, half of them went on to play a game of cards and a few of them went off to sleep including RAHUL BARVE. Wow!! God finally answered my prayers. Can u believe it, Rahul actually went of to sleep. Aahhhh…. Freedom at last. Freedom to sleep peacefully. Viju, Amol and I went to sleep on a broken down thing of a train… I dunno what it was. And I managed to get at least 1 ½ hrs of peaceful sleep I guess…interrupted a little by the barking of the maniac dogs. At around 3am we woke up and went to play Dumsharads with the others. Never have I played such a hilarious game of Dumsharaads in my life. U cannot believe the type actions people did and the type of associations people created. We had Mr. Santosh Kutty trying to explain to us in actions the movie “MOMENTO” Now we had guessed “mo” and “to” and the clue we had was it starts with “mo” ends with “to” and is the synonym for “GIFT”… and then our very talented Janaki even even went ahead to guess the whole story of the movie…she even announced that there is a tamil remake of the movie…she even narrated the story for us…but she couldn’t name the movie. Can u beat that? And Santosh was getting exasperated by the minute. ( I don’t blame him. Who wudnt J ).
Then came in Amit. We had given him the movie “The Bourne Supremacy” He misheard ‘Bourne’ as ‘Brown’… and the en-action and connection he treid to make was just out of the world. First he pointed to someone’s pants to depict brown…but no one got it…then he proceed to show us a brown dog.. still no one could guess….he went on further to make people to guess names of dogs to come to browny and then down to brown…still no one could get it… Only when Janaki enquired as to what he was actually trying to do, did we get the above explanation. My GOD!!!…. All of us were in splits of laughter. Whole 15mins Janaki and I were laughing like crazy. After Damsharaads we decided to rest for atleast ½ hr, and leave at around 7am afer breakfast.
As we got into the restaurant all the places were occupied except for the one next to Mr. Rahul Kumar. God alone knows what compelled me to go and sit down there. And to top it all even Viju came and sat down next to me. I don’t remember how it started but both these guys started making up grossy names of supposedly food items …ewwww… which included “potty kababs, tatti makhanwala, potty rolls, alu potty….. and so on… YUCK!!!…. im still disgusted… and they kept on continuing with this charade to my utter disgust… GROSS…. I then poured water over both their heads to shut them up… that sort of back fired… both of them started wiping their wet heads on my sleeve and Rahul went ahead to even blow his nose on my sleeve…… “Double ewwwwww….” I had lost my appetite completely and even the enthusiasm to speak. I went without breakfast even though my stomach was growling with hunger L. And Rahul giving me the so called “CHETAVANI” ‘The day has just begun..just wait n watch’
We walked for about 30-40mins to reach the base village. Well actually we skipped the base village and went trespassing through private property, crossing barbwire fences, walking through cow shit strewn paths. Hence it is rightly said for us, we choose the road less traveled. Well it was now a favorite pastime for Rahul to disgust me. He had found this BIG disgusting beetle from God knows where, which he kept dangling under my nose whenever he got the chance. “ Tripple ewwww..” And I could hear people warning him, “Jyada gussa mat dila, bhadak gayi toh teri khair nahi”. Well I am guessing that was Mallikaji.
As we kept treading along after like an hour we reached a plateau where there was a big electricity tower. All of us were sweating profusely by now due to the lousy weather. Here we saw some stunts by our official group monkeys who climbed up the tower. Rahul K., Viju, Venkat and Mallikaji doin the honours. A 10min break at this place and we were ready to move ahead. Amey showed us from here a ‘V’ formation in the mountains that we were supposed to be climbing. It looked far. We started our march ahead. Somehow every one was very quiet and kept walking in a single file, which is strange considering we are “THE MoRonz”, but I guess this was due to the tiredness. As we walked ahead the steepness of the path kept steadily increasing. And as we were on the wrong side of the mountain, there was no breeze around. We kept climbing to the tunes of Rahul’s singing. U can call it singing as he was singing his own modified versions of some popular songs. Disgusting yet hilarious lyrics though… heehe… After some time we reached a small stream and everyone freshened up here and we filled our water bottles” As we finally reached the ‘V’ we realized we still had a long way to go. After walking further for some time we reached a rock patch which looked really difficult to climb due to its steepness. We completed the rock patch successfully with some help from our strong men.
From here it took us about 30mins to reach the caves. All of us were so relieved on finally reaching the caves. There was a small namesake waterfall here and Viju, Janaki and I went and stood under it to beat the heat. Aahhhh!!…. the cold water felt soo good. Then Rahul B. announced that we still had to go a further ahread to reach the top, and we would be eating our lunch after we get back. After a 5min walk from the caves we reached a metal ladder which was leaning straight against the fort wall. It was quite a tall ladder and look scary to climb, for me atleast and even before climbing I was wondering how the hell am I gonna climb down from it. But all of us climbed up without any mishaps. From here a little walk away there was a steep slippery climb up for which we had to make use of ropes for support. I was very eager to reach the top just to see wat was up there and catch the much needed breeze. But the top got us just disappointment. There was just a small monument up there of some saint’s feet. And nothing else. The breeze was still non-existent and the weather was getting hotter as it was already noon. We rested here for about 30mins and decided to move down. 6 of us decided to get down through the same path by which we had come, the rest decided to take the easier but longer route which turned out to be a mistake (or not). The route they chose took them halfway upto Matheran. On the way they encounterd 2 bulls that chased them…hehe. I wish I was there to experience this. The 6 of us reached back to the caves in less than 30mins. We were at the caves by 1pm. By this time Mallikaji had already reached and cooked maggi for us. After a nice cool washup under the small waterfall we sat down to eat maggi.
As were started eating our lunch (all of us had forgotten to get plates or spoons, except for the kid of our group – UMA) All through the trek she had behaved like a introvert and quiet kid. But now as she opened her mouth we realized that she was far from being a quiet kid. She had full on started accusing the leadership abilities of Mallikaji.
Uma: You are the leader of the group. You are supposed to inform the people to get the plates.
Mallika: I had informed everybody on the message boards. It is not my mistake if they didn’t get their own plates and spoons.
Uma: But u had not informed me. Mallika: U are not a group member, hence u do not have access to our message boards and u didn’t get informed.
Pam: Yeah he had informed all of us. We forgot to get it. Uma: Then as a leader it is ur responsibility to inform me personally.
Mallika: No it is not. I had informed all the members and since u r Nachiket’s guest, he is supposed to inform u.
Uma: But Nachiket didn’t inform me.
Mallika: Well then that is not my mistake.
Uma: Ok chalo thik hai that u didn’t inform me about the plates and spoons, but then why don’t u have the ladel to mix the magi? Why are u using a stick to mix it?
Mallika: I did not have the pertromax stove and the vessel with me. Rahul had it and he gave it to me at the stn. So I didn’t know that there was no ladel.
Uma: Then u shud have told him nah to get ladel also, that is ur responsibility as a leader.
Viju: Mallika, yeh ladki toh teri acchi tarah le rahi hai.
Mallika: Arre how was I supposed to know that he will not get a ladel?
Uma: But I am saying generally also, that it is the leader’s responsibility to take care of everything
Rahul B.: Aga tujhi unchi kiti ani tu boltes kiti (the length of ur tongue is more than ur height)
Viju: I have just one line for u. As a guest u should not expect too much.
It was then that this NICE and ENTERTAINING conversation ended.(It had many more line to it, but this is all dat I could remember. After a long and leisurely lunch we had all lied down to rest and yet the other group hadn’t arrived. It was already past 2pm. Then at a distance we saw the group slowly making their way towards the cave. All of them exhausted and looking food deprived. All of them pounced on the maggi as soon as they came. By the time all of them ate, I decided to take a much needed nap. By now it had become nice and sunny and all of us were getting worried about getting down in the hot sun. We had decided to start moving down by 3:30pm so by that time everybody had lied down to take a nap.
When I woke up at 3:15pm, I was happy to see that it was nice n foggy n cloudy n breezy n a little cool too. I was shivering a little as I had slept off in wet clothes. Viju and Janaki wanted a nice pic of just the two of them but nobody would allow them to do this. All the others would come and crowd around the two of them each time they tried to take a snap…heheh… well after mayb a half dozen such snaps we let them have a moment of their own.
At 3:30pm we started our descend. It was nice and cool and relaxing due to the breeze. It was nice till the “V” but from here we would be again going down the wrong side of the mountain, hence no breeze again. The climb down was nice and slippery with each of us having had at least one nice fall and nice spoilt bums. But then the falls became the fun of the journey down.
As we came down to the plateau and reached the 1st electric tower, Venkat asked “ Kitna bada tower hai nah! Soch kitna purana hoga” , to which Viju replied “Abe who koi ped (tree) hai kya jo, jitna bada, utna purana??” and Rahul K. who as usual never leaves a chance to reply or crack jokes, stated “ Haan bahut chotasa tower boya (planted) tha kiisi ne, dekho kitna bada hogaya hai. Arre 2500watts ka power chahiye, aur paani daalo.. arre 3000watts the power chahiye, aur paani daalo” All of us were in splits and Venkat looked highly embarrassed.
The others were waiting for us at the 2nd tower. Rahul K. and Janaki arrived last, and as they proceeded towards us, Janaki slipped and had a nice fall with both her legs in the air. Ahahahahh….. all of us were in splits at the sight even Janaki herself. Then she came and announced “That was a really nice fall, I could see the entire group between my legs (NO PUN INTENDED). Ahahahah we were laughing even more at this statement.We halted here for a small break and took our Butt Snap. What is a Butt Snap you would ask? Well it is the snap of all those spoilt Butts who had fallen on the way down. A Kodak Moment!!
From this tower we had about 1 ½ hrs worth of walk left. Slowly yet steadily we kept walking on our route taking pictures wherever we could. Finally we reached the base village and I changed into fresh clothes at a Tai’s house. We reached Neral stn at 7:20pm and our train back to Mumbai was at 7:56pm. After saying nice Goodbyes to everyone we gurls went to the ladies compartment which was nice and empty. At thane 4 of us got down and Janaki proceeded towards Dadar. All in all it was an Amazing trip with the Moronz. I enjoyed a lot. Thanx to Mallikaji and Amey for a nice and enjoyable trip.
To see the pictures click this link here:
mORON kReAcIONz – Trekking Peb Vikatgad – Photos/Pictures