Yesterday I went for a trek to Sinhgad – a fort that was a strategic possession because of its location between other important strongholds.  It was considered one of the hardest forts to capture and witnessed great wars (including people scaling the fort walls using monitor lizards).

Today though, it is the trek up to the fort that appears to pull crowds. Loads of people scaled up the fort and the trek takes 45mins to 60 mins up to about 4000 ft elevation. There were perhaps two highlights to the trek. The first was a gentleman named Ghokale who appeared pretty old and many people knew him. He was quite the character – not afraid of sharing his views with people who looked at him strangely. Once he got to the peak he then started singing loudly – very soothing when mixed with the strong winds at the height of the peak. The highlight though was a his wisdom to the tired trekkers perhaps quarter his age – “Don’t sit down, keep going”.

The other highlight happened on our return journey. We were scared to come down the slope, so we took the easy road that is used by vehicles. Unfortunately, as we discovered a few minutes (40-50 mins) later, this was a supremely long way down. So we asked a shop keeper for the shorter way down (We had just passed up the shortest – which was the same path we used to go up).  She told us to walk through the forest . Given there aren’t too many signboards in a forest – we asked how we would find our direction. She asked us to look up to the telephone tower and keep walking towards to it.

The combination of Ghokale & the shop keepers words  were pretty deep… or perhaps those are just my tired legs speaking!

View from the top – across the Western Ghats & Khadakwasala lake

The trekking paths – rocky, muddy & crowded

The way back down – look at the tower and keep walking.