Khodala

Date : 10-Jul-2011

The last monsoon I had been to Vihigaon and had always wondered what lay beyond. Though I had heard a lot of stories about how beautiful the region used to be before the work on the new dam over Vaitarna had begun, I still had a temptation to be to this zone. It did not materialize last time around on 2 occasions, since the first time we were on a tight schedule to reach Bhandardara by lunch and on the other me and my wife had to get back home by evening as we had left our year-old daughter with her grandparents.

This time though, it was very unplanned. Jacob and Joseph with whom I had been to Tikona would always be the ever ready candidates for such a trip, but Jacob had moved to U.S and I wondered if Joseph would still be interested.  As luck would have it, he was – and he called me on the same day I thought of contacting him. Call it coincidence 🙂

We left on Saturday morning with Joseph picking me from Mulund @ 06:00 – sharp on time. The city was still waking up when we passed most of the crowded zones of LBS, Teen Hath Naka and the NH3 till Bhiwandi. Once we had crossed these major hurdles we were confident of a butter-smooth Mumbai-Nasik highway since the work had recently been completed (with the exception of a couple of patches that are non-troublesome at this hour).

The solitary halt @ 07:00 was at a small cluster of shops before Kasara ghat section began, where we stocked up on water and some dry snacks like Lays, nuts etc … all being sold at exhorbitant rates for God-knows-what reasons. The bhajias and batata wadas looked very tempting, but seeing the swarm of flies feasting on them, we lost our appetite. Eating mud would have been equally safe. Yuck .. how cud I write that 😛

I was sure of the light vehicle diversion a couple of kms from here, however, I still asked Joseph to slow down just in case we missed it, cos if we did, we would have to go all the way to Igatpuri by the normal ghat and I didnt know the way to get to Vihigaon after that. It was easy finding the fork in the road and a couple of kms later we were at the Vihigaon falls.

There were 2 adivasi kids here waiting for tourists and some possible income. I however told them I already knew the route to the falls and they could easily wait for other probable customers. They were very persistent though and accompanied us for the entire stay at the falls. Luckily or unluckily for them, there were no other visitors to the falls.

The water was very muddy this time compared to the last visit and we were not very keen to get into the water, since the depth could not be determined. Considering it unsafe to mess with water, we let it be and took our time taking pics of the falls and the two other falls above it including the small  dam.

We didn’t waste much time here and left by 08:00 to move towards Khodala. As we reached the parked car a huge bunch of kids arrived. It looked very intimidating, but they were harmless. We parted by giving some money to the 2 who were there with us and it was good to see a smile on their face.

They have probably never seen a city in their life so far and have never known how crowded Mumbai is. We left with a thought of how uncomplicated their lives are. Sunday / Monday does not make a difference. They grow their own food and possibly their income also comes out of the same. We in the cities keep cribbing about low salaries and other problems, whereas there are so many people who are below the proverbial poverty line and are yet content with their lives. Definitely a lot to learn from them.

The road beyond Vihigaon curves alongside the Vaitarna river, where there is a beautiful gorge and further up also an old British bridge. Sad this area will soon be under water once the dam work is over and water starts filling up in the catchment in the coming years. Next 2-3 years may be the last of this beautiful region. We could also see the new taller bridge being built for the same purpose.

The drive onto Khodala is a very beautiful one along curving roads, through vast green fields on both sides and without any traffic. We just spotted a vehicle every 10 mins or so. The contrast of varying shades of green with the wet tarmac was very appealing to the eyes.

In an hour or so we reached Khodala. The left turn here leads to Wada – another scenic route, straight on goes to Jawahar via Deobandh and the right to Ghoti via Upper Vaitarna. We took the latter. This was unknown territory for me as well but I was assured of not many forks having researched this path on Google Maps. In any case, this road is also well signposted and we had no qualms reaching there.

Soon the dam on the Upper Vaitarna was in sight. We took a short halt for some pics and moved further for a view of the reservoir. As reported in the papers, this had almost reduced to half its capacity. The region is in desperate need of good rains, and although the rain gods had started favouring just last week, an overflow was a long way to go.

There is a huge gate here that leads to the Dam, but it looked like private area and we were hesitant in venturing out there. It was just 10:30 now and we had a lot of time to our disposal. Ghoti was another 30 odd kms from here and if we had continued on the NH3 back home, we would have been home by lunchtime 😛

But how could we have missed Bhandardara after coming so close. Joseph had never been there so he was keen to go. I am ever ready for a Bhandardara trip so it was kind of a quick mutual agreement to carry on to this place. The drive to Ghoti is a bit of a bad patch compared to the lovely roads to Khodala, yet tolerable.

We took the left turn at Ghoti on the Sinnar/Shirdi/Nagar highway. This one has been freshly laid till the Warangushi phata and is a real smooth ride as compared to the horrible pot-holed roads on earlier trips. really shortens the time taken from Ghoti to Shendi (Bhandardara)

We passed by Bari village, from where we had a good view of Kalsubai peak and the lovely waterfalls pouring all over. A lot of groups had come there for a trip – some for the waterfalls, others for the trek. It takes around 3 hrs (in localite time) and 5 hrs (in Mumbaiite time) 😛 to reach the peak. Hope to complete this trek some day.

Roads beyond Waranghushi phata are at their ridiculous best and as Joseph exclaimed “Why did they lay this in the first place, when the upper layer has washed off and the lowermost layer is still intact”. Seriously, the lowermost layer was most intact. The potholes were being formed by the subsequent upper layers getting washed off in some specific design fashion.

We didn’t want to waste much time in Bhandardara … so we first head to the MTDC resort for a quick thali lunch and then headed straight to the spillway. It started to rain heavily once we were here and it seemed impossible to get out of the car. However, miraculously, the sky cleared and it was all very bright within minutes. We could see the dry bed of the spillway, which, when overflows in September causes all the water to gush down here (below the road ofcourse) and fall into the gorge beyond forming a mini Niagara falls.

Randha Falls had to be skipped since it’s a 20 km ride back and forth and the man-made dam on the Pravara has taken away the attraction of the waterfall. It is merely a trickle compared to what it used to be in monsoons.

We wound up by 15:00 and headed back for a non-stop ride back to Mumbai. A solitary halt we took was at Ghoti to buy the famous rice they produce. But the shop owner said he could only sell in wholesale for a sack of 30kg. Not willing to take the risk we let it go and carried on to Mumbai. I was back home by 18:00 … hopefully in time to take my daughter our to her favourite mall – just as I had been promising her all week 🙂 …

A trip that was planned only for the wonderful ride and that’s what it was … amazing greens all over .. so soothing to the eyes 🙂 !