Experiencing wildlife, and gettin chased by bees!!

Here’s another of those amazing experiences that I am sure I’ll never forget, and I am so sure are my pals, who joined me on this trek to Manikgad, on Sunday, July 3, 2005.

Manik-gad is an old fort, approachable from Vaishavli, a small village that comes after Patalganga. Patalganga itself is a village, named after the river Patalganga. The Reliance Petrochemicals industry is located here. The factory is worth watching, simply massive, and covers a wide area of Patalganga.

After getting down at Vaishavli village, we immediately started on our way towards Manikgad. One can see the fort in the distant, and it really is very far away from the base village. But the way towards the base hill is littered with waterfalls and the site is irresistible to one’s eyes. Fields of rice and paddy, with overflowed water spilling down the fields and tickling your feet, is quite a feeling. On the way, Vaishakhi tried to talk with some local women in Marathi, but she eventually scared the hell out of them…. they started running away from us…. While we were passing the village, the villagers, who observe you as some unidentified extra-terrestrial species, continuously examined us. Children and small playmates, laughing and smiling, wished at us innocently as we made our way towards the base hill. After a while, we started climbing the base hill. Since it had rained a few hours back, the path was slippery, but not dangerous. Slowly and steadily, we made it to the top of the hill. The top of this hill was a flat plateau, from where there were a series of such flat plateaus to cross to reach the base of the fort. The Karnala Fort, where I had been just four days back with my college pals, was visible in the background. Dirty thoughts crept into my mind at the site of the huge pinnacle of Karnala (there’s no way I am adding those explosive thoughts here, hehehe!!!) We took a small break here, and checked our water. It was running out very fast, because we had anticipated rains and bought very less water, and it hadn’t rained since the start of the trek. Also, mosquitoes had driven us crazy. They were in plenty, biting you all over. In fact, till this day, I still feel itchy on my feet. We almost thought of applying cow-shit on our body to repel the crazy bugs, but then on the other hand, no one had the guts to pick up “bull shit” in their hands, and apply it all over their body. We certainly had no plans of becoming aliens.

So we had to continue, eating Glucon-D all the way. Luckily, we found a cool mountain spring just a little way ahead, and we almost had a bath here. Tuhin and Ambarish were having fun in the spring water, and I was just about to urinate in the spring, above them, when they saw me. I fear to think of the consequences I would have to face, if I had done this…

The plains in this region are simply marvelous. Very few people know about this fort, and as a result, the ambience is natural. Absolutely. No pan-masala packets, no plastic wrappers, no Bisleri bottles, nothing at all. Just green grass rolling down the hills, clean air and a variety of limestone crystals studded in the hillside, gleaming in the morning sun. And the best part is that, the faithful white arrows are missing on this trek. As a result, you have to “make your own road”. Obviously a hell of an experience this was, as we got lost almost seven times in the entire trek.

A little way ahead, we entered a thick vegetation patch. The trees here were so dense, it was a tropical forest type scenario…. absolutely amazing! Waterfalls flowing through the trees, wild birds chattering high above us. It really felt like the “living waterfalls screensaver ”, moreover; this was for real. The fabulous sights nature was offering, dazed me. With no words to speak, we simply continued towards the base. After a few minutes walk, we reached the base. There was a small temple here, where we offered our worships, and then continued up the fort. The real part had now begun.

A little way up, things started getting sour. Prathamesh, Advait and Tuhin started following what they felt as an alternate, simpler route. The rest of us stuck to the more visible path and before we knew it, we had separated! Yet again! However, we had no thoughts of going back and calling them, so we decided to continue, and let them continue as well. It was now going to be a competition between the two of us, as to who would reach the summit first. Hey guys, I feel sorry to break it out, but it’s the truth, and you know it very well…. Advait and gang never made it to the summit…the path they selected was not a path, but a LANDSLIDE. For obvious reasons, they had to turn back. However, I really appreciate the guts shown by these guys, in doing more than half the landslide, in a group of three. They must have surely had their own share of adventures, which I would really like one of them to write down for us.

Half way through the trek uphill, we took a break. We were now exactly opposite from Vaishavli, the base village. The view from here was breath taking!! Cool breeze was blowing on our face, and the slope was rolling down with green grass swinging wildly. Cattle were feeding themselves lazily, way down below us. Feasting on a light snack, we continued our way up. After some moments, we reached a place, from where we saw a steep climb leading straight to the fort. Without addling our brains further, we started the climb. Ambarish was at the lead, and he was going up quite fast. The rest were making their way, but something was disturbing us…something was just not feeling right, and you could sense it, after years of trekking, the instinct comes naturally to you.

Our instinct was right…half way up, we looked back down to see another group of trekkers making their way back…these people had already done it! And now, they were looking at us in bewilderment, wondering what in the god’s name were we doing on that slope?

One of the guys in their group was kind enough, he came to us and told us that we had taken the wrong way, and showed us the right one. We were lost yet once again, and had it not been for this group, god knows what would have happened!!!

Once we returned back to the right path, (much against an irritated Ambarish’s will, who had almost reached the top of the slope), things got simple. In another half an hour, we made it to the top of the mountain. Just near the summit, we passed a small tree. I have to describe the existence of this tree now, because it plays a big role in our adventure downhill. Actually, I hadn’t even noticed this tree while coming uphill; it was really an ordinary tree…or was it?

We finally reached the top of the mountain. I have no words to describe the force with which the wind was blowing at us. Kunal (Vorya) was never leaving my hand, afraid of being blown off. The fort was right in front of us, welcoming us, but wait a sec…. what was that buzzing noise???

Then we saw it…

Bees…thousands of them…they were humming loudly, as if protesting at our arrival. There was an entire beehive right on the entrance of the fort, with thousands of bees wildly buzzing in the vicinity. And the wind was so powerful, that the bees were actually being hurled towards us. It was really scary, with bees slapping you on the face. While Shatesh and me were wondering of an alternate path to the fort, Ambarish and Dyanesh incredibly (till day I wonder how!!) managed to pass the beehive, and entered the fort. After recovering from the surprise, I tried to make my way, but the bees were no polite creatures…and I had no guts to make my way through them like some macho-man. I tried to climb the wall of the fort some way ahead, but while doing so, I slipped and badly injured my kneecap. Well, so much for those efforts, we now knew that this was it…this was the best we were to get out of Manikgad. There was no way to enter it. With this final depressing thought, the rains came down upon us.

And the trouble time started…these bees, which were quite agitated already with our arrival, were now more irritated with the rainfall. The entire swarm started coming downhill, some of them straight towards us!! And we could not leave the place, since Ambarish and Dyanesh were still in the fort. All this time, we heard nothing of Prathamesh and group, and I really started getting worried. Where had they gone? Were they stranded in some place, and in need of assistance? The thoughts were not helping improve the situation, so I stopped thinking on these lines. I trusted Prathamesh enough to get them out of any situation, no matter how bad it would be.

We stood motionless in the downpour, with our faces covered, jackets pulled. Luckily the rains didn’t last for long. After ten minutes, we were back to life again, shouting at the very top of our voices, trying to call back our two heroes, who were still exploring the fort. A little while later, they emerged from the top, with excited expressions on their faces. The usual routine started, “ Oh my god, you people missed it!!!! It was amazing!!! “ I recalled a very similar situation that had occurred just four days back. In this incident, my friend (nishant) and myself were the ones to go to the top of the fort (karnala), while the rest of the team were requested (by us!!!!!) to wait down. And we had done the very same thing when we came back down. “Oh my god!! It was simply magnificent!!!” I know realized how it feels to be down, waiting…

Finally we all met, and the best thing to do now was to turn back home, as it was already 4.30pm, and we were still on top of the fort.

Starting our way back, we had not even covered a few minutes, when we came across the tree I had explained earlier…the only difference was that the tree was looking like anything but inviting…why?

There they were, on the same tree, waiting for us, humming impatiently.

Bees.

The same agitated thousands of them, which we had encountered a little while ago, had decided to give us a farewell. And it was going to be a memorable one for us.

Absolutely disturbed by this new situation, I looked around for an alternate path. There were none, just the valley sloping down. We were now trapped, with a Shivaji’s ancient fort on one side, and another aggressive fortress of bees on the other. We realized that, waiting for them to subside would be nothing short of stupidity. So we decided to go ahead. That’s when Dyanesh got stung by one of the bees on the nose. Man, he was screwed badly, as he didn’t have a jacket, and bees were just clinging to his body. Another one stung him on his cheek, and this guy lost his patience. He ran, and he ran like he’d never run afterwards in his life. He dashed straight through the tree, with the bees angrily buzzing by him. But he made it. That was the only way to do it. One by one, all the rest of us started to follow the same procedure. I was the last one to cross, to wish them farewell lo!

It was bad, as there were bees even on my jacket, but luckily I swatted them off with my hand (I dunno how I got the courage to do something like that) and went ahead.

After this scary adventure, things went smoothly. We finally received a call from Prathamesh, and things were bad on their side. He wanted to join us and again go to the summit, but he only received a long sequence of abuse and dirty words for suggesting such an action, from all of us. So he dropped the idea, and suddenly the call itself got disconnected. However, we met them after fifteen minutes, and continued way down.

At the springs, we had a small but filling lunch, in which we consumed some of the weirdest combinations ever tried by man. As an illustration, let me explain the layers of my sandwich-bread, butter, chutney, banana wafers, mixed fruit jam, fried chilies, boiled potatoes and boiled eggs. But it was filing, and who cared? We were getting food in this isolated place, that itself was enough. Then a kind Sanket (SP) distributed dairy milk chocolates for all of us. That was really very nice of you, Sanket. Having our tummies filled, we slowly turned towards Vaishavli—a long way to go, but we had bagged the satisfaction of conquering yet another fort…or had we? Well, almost, you could say that!!!