Dhak-Bahiri, 11 Oct 2009

Bull shitting under the pretext of religious sentiments in India has reached alarming levels long ago and the amount of stink that has permeated the atmosphere is suffocatingly stinky!

Had a close encounter with the filthy stink yesterday on one of the very popular hiking trails in Sahyadri – The Dhak Bahiri. What was the stink about?

Have these -

Females, not allowed. If they try to pay their obeisance to the deity, it renders them impious, and may be, even amount to sacrilege!

However, chaknas and liquor seems to be the prasad offerings to the deity. A lot of the stink-causing villagers, who maintain their double standards, threatened us with dire consequences if the female accompanying us were to climb upto the ‘pious’ cave. However, they carried gallons of liqour atop and created nuisance in the cave.

Behead a live chicken in the cave, cut it, cook it and then savour it along with the liquor. Goes down well with the deity? eh? Utter bull shit. Nuisance values!

No issues with us, since the girl accompanying us had been there twice earlier and not being there for the third time did not bore holes into our souls and egos! But this nonsensical fuss did, maybe..

Other than that …

No offense to the day; it was a perfectly beautiful day with all the frills attached – less humid, not-a-scalding-heat, the freshness of green post monsoons and more importantly a good group to share all this with.

We started from Jambhivali village. Jambhivali can be reached from Kamshet (15 kms from Lonavala, on Pune-Lonavala route).

It takes around 30 minutes to reach Jambhivali from Kamshet. From Jambhivali a good trek of hour and a half brought us to the col between the Kalakrai pinnacle and the Dhak massif. Another 5 minutes to reach the famous rock patch of Bahiri.

The heat, even though not  scalding, was hot enough to try and seek some shade. The cave was left in pathetic condition by the rampaging villagers.. the hooters!

The final stretches of Bahiri patches, need to be negotiated with care. In summers, more so because chances of sun-stroke increases manifold owing to the extremely hot temperatures and completely exposed stretches.

We paid a quick visit to the cave and decided to descend towards the Karjat side. Descending to Sandshi village from Dhak is no-easy task. Why? No defined route as such.. Lot of thickets to negotiate and plenty of avenues to lose the way and get stranded in the jungle as the sun sets down on you and no other option than to spend a night out in the jungle.

We were about to end up doing the same (spend night in the jungle), but for some correct decisions and route finding. After a very long traverse, we reached Kalakrai wadi and then to Mangaon (near Sandshi). It was 7.15 PM by the time we reached Mangaon, the final 30 minutes being in darkness.

From Mangaon, we managed to hire a rickshaw ride till Karjat and the 8.41 PM fast train to CST. Good trek with the fellows, apart for the mind-numbing senseless display on the villagers part. Who were they..? Not worth discussing..!

Check out the photos here -

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/rohanrrao/DhakBahiri#

Cheers ~~~