God’s Valley Trek — Sep 2022
People of my vintage would remember the era of VHS (or video cassettes). There used to be a time in the 80s and 90s when people would rent VHS tapes on which movies would be recorded. And there used to be something called a ‘bonus’ — at least we used that term. The VHS libraries would use re-recordable media and would use the same media to overwrite the older movie with the newer one. In many cases, the newer movie would be of a shorter length than the older movie, and so when the movie ends, you would have the recording of the last bits of the earlier movie — some song, fight scenes, climax, etc, and we would feel that we go more bang for the buck. You must be wondering what I am talking about — well, the trek we went on last Sunday reminded me of this. Please bear with me to know how and whyJ.
I thought that Rajmachi trek was the last monsoon trek, but Utkarsh was feeling bad as he had promised us a waterfall and we could not go there (as the water flow was supposed to be less). He came across this trek called God’s Valley trek — it takes you to the base of the 1200 ft Kalu Waterfall which is near Malshej Ghat in Maharashtra. I was tempted by the photos and videos he had posted and so decided to join the gang. As usual, we started from Thakur Village at 0130 hours — there were 22 of us, of which 5 were coming in their car and the rest of us were in a Tempo Traveller. Again, we had a varied demographic profile in the group — age group from 8 years to 50 years, home-schooling student, college-going students, bankers, a model, a pilot, teachers, etc. We reached the base village at about 0700 hours as the part of the journey was more on bad roads. After having breakfast at the village, we started our trek.
Utkarsh has earlier taken a group to Adrai Trek which also started for the same village, and one could see Kalu Waterfall from the hill at a distance (I have not done that trek). About one hour in the trek, Utkarsh had some doubts as we were on the same trek which went to Adrai. On checking with our guide, he told us that he thought we wanted to go to Adrai to see the Kalu waterfall! Utkarsh had a hard time explaining to him that we wanted to go to the BASE where the fall lands, and our guide said that trek started from a village which was about20 km away! So we trekked back to the village, got on our bus, and went to the other village where the trek starts from. Here comes the reference to my beginning comments — in the VHS days, we used to see a movie, and then the end of another movie. This time, we say the first 30% of a trek, and then went on a new trek (thoda reverse cycle ho gaya J). So we got 1.3 to 1.4 treks for the price of one!
When we reached the other village (Thitabi, via Savarne), it was almost 1030 hours and all the guides had gone with other groups — so we were on our own. The route was simple so there was no chance of getting lost, but we had no idea as to how long as well as how difficult/easy the trek would be. The forest is supposed to be inhabited by hyenas, and one of us saw the footprints of hyenas on the trail. We were expecting that the trek would be about 1.5 hours and then we would reach the base of the falls. However, after 1.5 hours of walking on an easy path, we reached a river/stream which we had to cross, and we were told that the base of the falls was about 45 minutes away. The water seemed to be waist deep, but the flow was strong and there was no way we could cross the stream on our own. Some of the groups had carried ropes with them (must be the guides from the village) which they used to cross the stream. Interestingly, the villagers have set up a manual zip line to cross the stream! They charge Rs 100 per person (to and fro crossing) and ensure a safe crossing J Our timetable started turning topsy turvy from this point onwards. Our bonus trek had cost us about 3.5 hours, and now we spent almost 45 minutes for the group to cross using the manual zip-line. And we had an hour more of trek one way to reach the falls.
The trail to the falls was tricky, to say the least. There was a continuous drizzle and the trail was quite muddy. Also, there were some sections that were quite difficult to navigate — in one place, we had to heave ourselves up by about 8 feet, using only hanging tree branches as support. There was one section where we could not find a way ahead and there were no people who were coming back to tell us which was the way forward! We then decided to walk in the stream (waist deep, strong flow) by holding on to the surface of the rocks on the bank. We finally reached the falls after about an hour (only 7 of us had ventured to reach this point) and the waterfall was there in front of us! BUT — the side we were on would not get good photographs — so we HAD to cross to the other side. And the flow was very strong. After some pointless discussions, with the final answer being obvious, we decided to go to the other side by forming a human chain — there were 3 other young men from some other group who also helped us. And it was sheer bliss when we crossed. We spent about 20–30 minutes here, took photographs (with the phone in a plastic cover!), and then ventured back to the first stream crossing. Utkarsh had rushed ahead so that he could take the people, who did not come till the last point, back to the bus to save whatever time we could save. We had taken about 2.5 hours to and fro on the second leg of the trek. We zip-lined again to cross the stream and the last members reached the bus by about 1730 hours. We met a person who lost his mobile while crossing the stream — it must have slipped out of his pocket. We met another group which has lost their car keys somewhere in the trek — and the key maker was supposed to come from someplace which was 1 to 2 hours away!
We started our journey back, had some dinner on the wa,y and played — no prizes for guessing — antakshari to pass time on the journey, and reached home by 2300 hours.
This trek was super fun — great location, great views, challenging trails and best of all, the element of surprise for all of us!
Let us see when the next trek beckons!
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