Sandhan Valley Trek

I had heard about the Sandhan Valley trek about 3 years back and was very keen to do it. I had been after my go-to man for the Sahyadri treks — Utkarsh Arora for quite some time, and he did organise that trek for a few times, but then the dates never worked out for me somehow.

A month back, some of us trekkers suddenly had the itch to do this trek, and we were able to convince Utkarsh to organise that for us. It was going to be a reunion of some of us as we had last met about a year back for the Aland Madan Kulang (AMK) trek. Finally, there were a bunch of 14 of us who signed up for this trek, including Utkarsh. (me, Utkarsh Arora, Nurjaha Arora, Prasenjeet Biswas, Vinod Jain, Vinod Singh, Priya Pathak, Rahul Chavhan RC, Aiman, Ruchita, Khyati, Sreema and Prasanna) Once again, the group profile was very diverse — an equal gender representation, the age group from 11 years to 50+ years, professions ranging from a student, a budding lawyer (with an interesting take on petty vs. heinous crimes!), a very famous actor and model, Thakur Village ki world best Bollywood dance teacher (who is a health and safety office during the day), a vlogger, a banker, and a few corporate types + one guy doing nothing :)

We started from Thakur Village at 11 pm on Friday night, picked up a few members on the way, and were off to the base village for the trek. There was a technical problem in the bus and we were delayed by about 2 hours en route and reached our destination by 7.30 am on Saturday. When we parked our bus, Utkarsh said that on a busy day, there are more than 20–30 buses parked there — which means more than 500 trekkers at a point of time. In our case, we were the ONLY group, and we met 2 small 5 member kind of groups on the way. I don’t know what the scene would be like in peak season with hundreds of trekkers on the route, as the terrain was very tricky — which we would realise when we would enter the valley.

We had a breakfast of tea and delicious poha at the village and started for the trek at about 9 am. I, as a principle, try not to research about the treks I am going for so that I don’t know what to expect while trekking, thus bringing in an element of freshness in the trek. I knew that we are to walk in a narrow valley and there would be a few water crossings, wherein we would need to wet our feet. The whole trek was walking on boulders — I had experienced the same in the Kashmir Great Lakes trek, but this was on a completely different scale — both in terms of the distance and the difficulty involved in navigating over them.

We were in the valley within 10 minutes of starting the trek, and it was an amazing scene — two walls of rocks on the sides, with thousands of boulders waiting for us to walk on them! Within some time, we came across a small pool of water, and we had to remove our shoes to cross it. We were told that there is another water body nearby, so most of us decided to walk further in our sandals. The second water body was an interesting situation. The water ran waist-deep in a few patches, and there was an option of taking a “boat” to cross this patch — it would not be more than 30–40m in length. The boat was a jugaad — a plastic drum split in two, and the 2 C sections would float on the water — pulled by a rope on the other side! And this would cost a grand Rs 20 for a person, and Rs 10 for luggage!! Some of us wanted to play safe, and some of us adrenaline junkies decided to cross the water by wading through it!

About 4 hours after we started, we reached a point where we had to rappel down about 70 feet. Rappelling is always fun — looks scary but is very enjoyable once you get the hang of it. Each person would take about 1 to 2 minutes to get down and the cycle time per person was 7 to 10 minutes. I can’t imagine what kind of a bottleneck this would be if there are 100s of trekkers — there is a provision to have 4 simultaneous rappelling lines, but still, it would be utter chaos. We had packed lunch of a chapatti, a dry subzi of aloo and matki, and thetcha (a Maharashtrian chutney) (which was sold to Aiman, the 11-year-old, as oregano equivalent ) waiting for us when we got down. Our guides asked 4 of us (Vinod, Rahul, Sampanna, and me) to go ahead and wait at the second rappelling point — about 5 minutes away. We started to move ahead, thinking that we would reach there soon — and yes, we reached there — after more than an hour!! Sreema caught up with us along the way.

This part was a challenging one, as there was no one to guide us, and there were at least 4 points where we had to get down about 10 feet (again rocks everywhere), but could not find any obvious hand or footholds to get down. And we had backpacks with us, which made traversing through rocks that much more interesting! Rahul and Vinod took the lead in experimenting with how we could get down, without breaking any body parts, and somehow all 5 of us managed to survive this adventure! The last point was a sheer rock face, and there was a small group ahead of us — the guide told us that we had to go through the hollows in the middle of the rocks (almost a dark cave-like structure) to pass through! Adventure overloaded :)

The second rappelling point was not much in height — maybe 20 ft. But the challenge was that there was no rock after the first 2 feet to push the feet against. I was told not to hold the rope while getting down (and the guide meant only for the first 2 feet, which I somehow missed). I was tied to the rope with the harness at the waist and as soon as I started to get down, I tilted head down (as I was not holding on to the rope) and it was a Mission Impossible moment without the finesse! Had the guide not held me well, I would have hit my head on the floor — but fortunately, nothing like that happened and I finally landed safe and sound.

The two other groups that we had met on the way were getting out of the valley the same day — it was about 3 hours of trek from the second rappelling point and they would have reached the village when it would have got dark — must have been a very exhausting trek. We were to camp in the valley and the campsite was about 10 minutes from the rappelling point. We reached the campsite at about 5 pm — so about 8 hours since we started the trek.

There was a small pool of water near the campsite with small fish in it. Some of us dipped our feet in the water and the fish decided to reward a few of us with fish spa! The tents were pitched by our support team, and most of us lazed about, some of us changing into a fresh set of clothes.

It soon became dark and we had roti, sev ki sabzi, dal, rice and papad for dinner. The sky was very clear with millions of stars shining over us. It was a very enticing sight and some of us decided to sleep on our mats in the open, under the sky — something which many of us would have done as children on our terraces at hometowns. There were a few mosquitos but not so many to stop us from sleeping outside. The night grew a bit cold but we were able to manage the same with a blanket. We played a couple of games led by Rahul (the vlogger) and Krishna (the dance teacher) — which was fun.

We got up at about 5.30 am on Sunday morning, and had maggi as breakfast. We then dismantled the tents, and started the trek back to the village. Saturday was all descent, and all that we had descended, we had to ascend! This time, the group was divided into 3 parts within 30 minutes of the trek starting. There were a few patches on the ascent that were challenging — but nothing that this group can’t handle! There was a lady in the support team from the village who had a big sack she was carrying on her head (the kitchen stuff) and effortlessly climbing — and one of our group members, who was struggling herself, was kind enough to ask her if she needed any help :)

The first group reached the village at 10 am, had a change of clothes — I took a bucket of water and had a crude bath — and then waited for the others to come. All of us were back to the village by 11.30 and we started back for home. Rahul suggested that we have a late lunch at Sidhu da Dhaba near Kalyan, and the lunch was really good there! In the meantime, Krishna made us dance to make some reels, and we had general fun in the bus. We were finally back in Thakur Village at 6pm.

Quite a few of us from this group had done the AMK trek, which is supposed to be one of the toughest treks in Maharashtra. However, if you keep the endurance part out, and some of the patches on AMK which look scary (but are manageable with adequate safety gear), we found the Sandhan Valley trek to be more challenging. And kudos to Aiman, Khyati and rest of us to complete this successfully!

Some interesting learnings from the trek (which only our group would understand/appreciate)

1. In Hindi, you say F for Fatthar (as in stone)

2. Travelling ticketless on public transport occasionally is not a crime, okay, not a serious or heinous crime

3. You do not need to be on LinkedIn to be popular

4. You should block your immediate relatives on social media if they come in way of your posts

5. 1.6 is just a number, does not mean anything

Overall, a great experience, as always, with one more Sahyadri trek off the checklist.