Of Dhak and Tikona

Confounding my lethargy in writing a more real time update on my recent  treks! Yet, doing little about it other than finally sitting down to write in the face of pre New Year boredom…

Dhak Bahiri

It is an amusing name and this site has a formidable reputation for its difficulty level among the Western Ghats.  JPat  and Kansal seemingly had already been to this place before. So we had no qualms regarding the operational delay of finding trails

Anyway, this one too was in the Karjat area in the Raigad district. Enroute to reaching there, we sped on Landy‘s Micra (all treks these days of ours are preceded by a gloriously scenic  drive along the Mumbai Pune express way) Seemed like the guys in the car had a weird fetish for hats

Following the drive which was (as usual) laced with ‘Pitbull’ music and Landy’s dance-driving, we hit upon some rough roads along the Sahyadri. Owing to not knowing where exactly the Dhak hills were , we ended up going in circles around the Sandshi village area over ridiculously crooked roads (if at all we care to tag them as  ‘roads‘) . Took some roller coaster- like car riding and a verbal exodus of Landy’s road-cribs before we reached the hill’s foot

Surprisingly women are not allowed on this trail. Might sound sexist, but it is probably because of hygiene, safety and security issues

We found little refreshments at the village at the bottom   so we had nothing to stock our bag. As a result of which some of us gladly ate apple peels left behind by some previous trekkers 😐

There were moments where everyone except moi  were sitting on the edge of a steep fall.  I was quite scared (being a sucker for height phobia) that they might fall off and that I would be framed for culpable homicide *wondering*

Anyway we did find the good fortune to see the peak amidst mystique-building mist at the end of an ardous trek

x-x-x-x-x

Tikona fort

The more recent trek had been the one to Tikona fort. Not as long as Dhak Bahiri but a tad steeper and more rocky. Which presents a different kind of challenge to trekkers. Borders more on explosive energy than stamina

This time around, we had Dhaval, a colleague of Landy and Kansal …along with Rantu.The trek to tikona fort had to be preceded by a long drive and exploration routine along endless winds of kaccha i(bad quality)  roads. It took us  long to  find the hill. We actually stopped at tony dhaba  before we reached the trekking site. To stack up on the refreshments in order to avoid the man vs wild contingency we threw ourselves into the last time (ref: Dhak Bahiri and the apple peels)

But anyway the interregnum between the Tony dhaba landing  and the Tikona was filled with analysis and estimation of the  number of people required to finish ostrich meat in a single lunch session

The trek at Tikona was smooth till we reached the top to open our breezers and Parle-G biscuits. And then it happened. An army of monkeys decided to raid us in order to satisfy their carnal urge for Parle-Gs

We picked up our stuff and ran till we reached the Bajrang Bali point

All in all this trek was an all day event. Well interspersed was the drive back home with Landy’s speeding  and the wild wild west like scenery of the Tikona fort area

x-x-x-x-x