Less travelling, nice scenic locations, pleasant atmosphere, fort with long history and forts with structures intact, and all this with a great observer,analyst. What makes a trek more special?? Chawand trek was one such trek offering all these flavours. We departed at Saturday night as usual with known / soon to be known people. Reached base village early in the morning and had enough rest for the trek. Fort was looking great from base village Chawand, which is exactly below fort wall. With fort on east side, one can not see sunrise in that village, in fact one can not even see the sun till noon.
Fort built on a rock and no ridge from where it can be easily accessible. Natural protection to the mountain and looks unbeatable from base. Shridatta motivated from the begining of the trek by explaining very minute details about village houses,village history,temples around etc .
New steps have been built on the fort to the initial part of climbing. But still one can notice its stipness. After these new steps ,old route begins. Shridatta was giving information throughout ascend and one specific I remember is he showd us the structure on the rocks, its a gap of a climbing rope size. These structures are very common on the rocks on fort routes,these are formed by mines plotted by british in 1818 wars to destroy the routes ascending on fort.
After we reached atop, on the entrance we continued our talk session with Shridatta and he elaborated the door structure, fort structure, administration of fort,war strategies, shivaji maharaj strategies and peshwa war strategies, british war etc. It was a superb experience. After that we started exploring fort. At every point Shridatta was giving detailed information. Best part of fort in my view is the caves, from where we get a superb view. Here Rahul me adi and amol were trying to spot forts around. Could spot hadsar,nimgiri,harishchandragad.
After exploration Shridatta eplained us the sadar structure on the fort. And we went to the route of collapsed bastion from where view of steps and fort entrance is breathtaking. One more intresting thing is from below one cant make out route from door to this bastion and enemy can be bombarded on the route ,without his chance of guessing where the attack comes from.
We descended the fort on time,had lunch and went for kukadeshwar temple. Its an ancient temple,with lot more carvings on it. Here also Shridatta gave detailed information. It is a nice place , near fort nimgiri, and also offers nice view of chawand.
While a journey from chawand to kukadeshwar, i came to know about a prank of tambade baba created by new joinees. Our all return journey we were enjoying it and had a great time. In all another superb trek with Kshitiz.
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