Garbett Plateau

I’ve been to Matheran several times when I was younger, and let me tell you, there were a few spots that really caught my attention. Louisa Point, Panorama Point, and Garbett Point were my favorites. Usually, I would visit during the winter because, you know, the fog and all that. But recently, my colleague Videsh asked for some easy treks near Mumbai, and that’s when Garbett Point came up.

It had been ages since my last hike in the Sahyadris, so I thought, why not give it a shot during the monsoon season? I wanted to rekindle my love for trekking, and what better time than when it’s raining cats and dogs, right? This monsoon, my goal was to go on at least three treks. I mean, with all those mountains, non-stop rain, and gushing streams, there had to be some awesome waterfalls waiting to be discovered. So, we rounded up a small crew from the office for a rainy Saturday adventure to the Garbett Plateau. Let me tell you, it was totally worth it!

About Garbett Plateau trek
Garbett Plateau, at an elevation of around 2600 feet, is a well-known plateau in the Matheran region of Maharashtra and is a popular hike for novices. The greatest time to do this walk is from July to September, when the entire area is lush green and the weather is comfortable.

Garbett Plateau can be reached in three ways. The first option is to enter Matheran hill station (through Dasturi Naka, which may be reached by pre-paid taxis or by self-drive vehicle) and walk the internal path to Garbett Point. This shows the Garbett Plateau from the top. The Garbett Plateau is reached after a relatively perilous descent down a cliff. The second option is to hike up from Bhivpuri to Garbett Plateau through Diksal village. The third option is to use the Garbett Plateau bypass jungle trail and hike to the Garbett Plateau. We chose the third option because we had first-timers with us.

The experience

So, here’s the deal. It all started when Videsh and his gang were planning another trek. They casually asked if I wanted to join, and without hesitation, I was like, “Hell yeah!” Originally, we had a chill monsoon picnic in mind at Asangaon, with just a little hike thrown in. But when everyone else from that plan opted out, we decided to level up and find a real trek.
We scouted around for something in the easy-medium range, considering places like Songiri and Irshalgad. After much debate, we settled on Garbett Plateau. The only snag was that it had poured cats and dogs the whole week, and worse, on the eve of the trek. As I headed home from work, I even bought new trekking shoes, not knowing if they would ever touch the trail. Luckily, the rain eased up a bit at night, and then Videsh messaged: “Plan is on!” 😄

So, Videsh told me that two total newbies, Vanita and Nikita, were going to join us on the trek alongside Aishwarya, Madan and Sonali who had been-there-done-that. Our original plan was to hike the 20 km route starting from Bhivpuri station road, going up to the plateau, and then coming back down the same way. But I thought that would be way too tough for first timers, so I managed to persuade Videsh to split the trek in half.
My buddy Saurabh, who’s also into trekking, suggested an easier route, so we decided to go with that. We set our alarm clocks to catch the 5:59 am Karjat Fast local train from Dadar the next morning. After saying goodnight to each other, we went to bed and prayed that the rain wouldn’t mess up the train schedule. Fingers crossed!

I got up super early, like 4:30 a.m., and man, that alarm was annoying! But I didn’t waste any time. I quickly changed, took a quick shower, gulped down some jam-bread (yum!), and grabbed my trusty rucksack. By 5:30, I was out the door, ready to conquer the day!

But guess what? No rickshaws in sight. Panic mode activated! But I sweet-talked one driver and managed to catch a ride to the station. Phew! Luckily for me, the Karjat fast train was running a little late. It had to wait for the Mumbai-Pune Indrayani express to pass through. Talk about good timing! So, I hopped on that scheduled train just in time. Talk about a stroke of luck!

When I reached Dadar and Ghatkopar, I saw that my group had already gotten onboard. I entered a different compartment and settled in, taking a breather as the crowd thinned out. At Ambernath, I dashed out scouting compartments to find my gang, and finally got to them. As I entered, I couldn’t spot Shubham. Turns out, he had hopped off at an earlier station for a nature’s call emergency and missed the train. Poor guy! Thankfully, we knew that another Karjat train was about to arrive in just 30 minutes. So, we asked Shubham to meet us directly at the Neral station. Crisis averted!

We made it to Neral at around 7:30 a.m. and boy, were we starving! There was this awesome vada pav stall right outside the station exit, so we pounced on some tasty vada pavs and idli wada while we waited for Shubham. Finally, he showed up at 8:10 a.m. by which time it had started raining lightly. We quickly put on our rain gear and hopped into two taxis heading towards Matheran. It cost us Rs 100 per seat for a pre-paid taxi ride (as of July 2023). These Suzuki Eco vehicles can fit six people (not so) comfortably.
The taxis maneuvered through those crazy winding roads for about half an hour until we reached Matheran, intersecting the toy train tracks along the way. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can drive yourself to Dasturi Naka, but trust me, during the rainy season, it’s best to leave it to the pros. We got off at the Garbett Plateau shortcut at around 09:00 am, ready to start our epic hike to the Garbett Plateau. Let the adventure begin!

The hike from Garbett Plateau shortcut is a dense jungle trail that takes one alongside the slopes of Matheran and leads directly to the Garbett plateau. And let me tell you, we were lucky to have some drizzle going on during our walk. It was like a rainforest adventure! We couldn’t resist pulling out our phones every now and then to snap some pics of the jungle and ourselves, of course.

After around 40 minutes or so of trekking, we reached this clearing where we could catch a glimpse of the Pali Bhutivali dam (also marked on Google as Dhom) and the majestic Garbett plateau peeking through the mesmerizing clouds. It was like something out of a dream, I swear! Videsh entertained the girls with the trademark SRK pose, and trust me, in those surroundings, he beat SRK hands down 🙂

Sadly, the pictures we clicked don’t even come close to capturing the true beauty of that sight. On the right side, we could see the long Garbett Plateau, which was where we were headed. And just above that, there was this spot called Garbett Point in Matheran. Our trail led us to the intersection of these two spots.

Originally, we planned to climb up this small mountain to get an epic top view of the Garbett Plateau. But, some of the newbies in our group weren’t too keen on taking the risk of climbing back down. So, we decided to skip that and head straight to the plateau. And let me tell you, it was totally worth it!

We spent the next couple of hours just exploring the plateau from every angle. The rain kept pouring, and yeah, we were totally soaked. My backpack cover didn’t do much good, but luckily, I had packed everything inside in plastic bags. Gotta be prepared, right? Anyway, the plateau was absolutely breathtaking. It’s massive, and get this, we had it all to ourselves, that too on a Saturday! At the end of the plateau, there were some makeshift food stalls, and lucky us, one was actually open. We treated ourselves to some hot Maggi noodles and a nice cup of steaming chai. The weather started to clear up a bit, and we could see the route we were supposed to take to descend. It looked pretty daunting, especially for the newbies, but they mustered up the courage to give it a go.

Hunger pangs satiated, around noon, we started going down towards Sagachiwadi, our first pitstop. Man, that slope was way steeper and slipperier than we thought! Vanita and Nikita were struggling, but thankfully Shubham and Madan had their backs. We ended up taking more breaks than planned, but, it was necessary. On the way down, we ran into this group of newbie hikers from a fancy Mumbai neighborhood ;). They were so exhausted, urging us to turn around and hail a cab from Dasturi Naka instead. But no way, we were determined to keep going down the slope. We stopped halfway at this stall run by local kids and treated ourselves to some spicy guava and cucumber. It took us a whole hour to reach Sagachiwadi, and from there, we knew the slope wasn’t too bad until Bhivpuri Road station. Along the way, we got to see the beautiful Pali-Bhutivali dam reservoir and the trail curving around it.

We took a break under a mango tree and out came the snacks again. We stuffed ourselves with tasty bhel and biscuits before continuing our quest for another waterfall. We were on our way when we spotted some huge waterfalls and a stream crossing that had us a bit unsure. Luckily, a local showed us the way, so we could cross it with a human chain. Further we saw the famous Diksal waterfall up ahead, where a group of men were rappelling down. It was on our must-visit list, but alas, it looked like a long trek to get to the base. We all wanted to cool off under a waterfall, but we opted for a smaller one instead of tackling that monster.
Not too long after we reached the edge of Pali-Bhutivali Lake, we spotted one in the distance. And it was a gem! We had our own private waterfall with a jacuzzi-like vibe, and we spent a glorious hour just chilling under the rushing water. Now, I may be the odd one out in terms of age but seeing those youngsters having a blast brought back a flood of memories of all the crazy stuff I used to get up to back in those days. They even shot some cool trending instagrammable reels and had an absolute blast under the waterfall.

We were strolling down to Bhivpuri feeling invigorated. The lake walk was epic, with the mountains in the background and the lake by the side, giving off serious chill vibes. We spotted these three bulls grazing by the lake. They looked like they owned the place and weren’t too thrilled about us invading their turf. Yeah, you guessed it right, one of those big guys got all worked up and came charging at me and Videsh. Him, being the smarter one, took off running like his life depended on it.
But me? Oh no, I thought I was some kind of bull fighter and actually tried to face the beast, ready to grab its horns. Luckily, at the last second, the bull seemed to have a change of heart and swerved away, sparing me an embarrassing flight through the air. We all had a good laugh afterwards, especially at Videsh for abandoning me in my moment of “bravery”. Sonali, who was walking ahead and missed the whole circus, was like, “Bulls don’t scare me!”

After that, we took a quick 20-minute walk to Diksal, trying our best to stay away from those scary creatures ahead. We grabbed some more yummy vada pav and onion bhaji there. Then, we kept on walking to Bhivpuri Road station and hopped on the 05:42 pm train to CSTM, just in the nick of time, running up and down the railway bridge like crazy. We chatted non-stop, trying to figure out our next big adventure. Before I knew it, I had to get off at Thane station. I said my goodbyes to everyone and hopped off the train. It took me about another half an hour to get back home. Once I was there, I jumped into a nice hot shower, changed into dry clothes, and spent the rest of the evening chilling out, in memories of the epic day we had in the great outdoors.