“TRIP TO KORIGAD NEAR LONAWALA”

Trip to Korigad Near Lonawala…..

This is one of the forts located in Western Ghat near Lonawala. Short one day trip to Korigad from Pune or Mumbai is always possible. Provided you start early in the Morning. This is basically to avoid the Lonawala city traffic. Once you come to Bhushi dam then the same road from there takes you towards Korigad. The base village of the fort is Peth Shahapur. It’s on the way to Ambey Valley. The clear sign boards of Ambey Valley make sure you are on the right path of Korigad. Fort will not be visible easily from the road so you have to stop at the Peth Shahapur village.

Road to Korigad

Top of Korigad

Brief History –

Not much of the detailed history known about this fort. But this fort was part of Shivaji Maharajas Empire. He took custody of this fort along with Tikona, Lohgad, Visapur forts. This was further taken over by British during 18^th Century. It was not easy for them to capture this fort due to its location and fortification. Finally by damaging major part of fort by Cannon they have captured this fort and were under British East India Company.

Journey to this place –

This is situated very close to Ambey Valley city. Due to this development, road to koraigad is in very good condition. So reaching at this place with your own vehicle is very easy. Journey from Lonawala to this place is (Approx 20 km stretch) is also memorable one. Since you are riding up on the hill and other side of the road is deep valley. You may stop at various places on the way to capture great views in your cameras.

Driving Direction From Lonavala -

How is this place –

Forest Trail to Korigad

Steps to Reach on Fort

Waterfall On the Way

Main Gate of the Fort Korigad Still Intact

Despite of such attacks, the fortification of this fort is still intact. It is said that climate here does not damage the fort structure. It’s not very harsh climate there. It takes roughly 1 hour to reach at the top. Having said that, this does not mean you have to climb straight for an hour. Road passes from the forest. You have to walk straight from forest and little climbing on hill and then nice steps of the fort takes you to the top of the hill. If you are visiting this place during mid of Monsoon season, it will be the treat for your eyes. Because clouds arrives here during Monsoon to meet Western Ghat. I am putting here few snaps of my visit to this fort during monsoon and then you will wonder its actually heaven on the earth.

Laxmi Canon

On the fort you can see temple of Goddess Korai, ruins of some fort, huge cannon name Laxmi, water reservoirs, fortification, huge main door. These all can be seen once you reach at the top of the fort. Reaching to this fort is as exciting as visiting this fort. If you are in the mid of rainy days, water continuously flows over the fort steps and you have to find your way from that flowing water.

At the other side of this fort, Mulshi lake backwater can be seen. One road from there takes you to the Mulshi village.

Shiva Temple

Bike Ride -

Flora

If you are planning for bike ride from Mumbai to Mumbai or From Pune to Pune, one can reach at Lonawala from Khadala Ghat and come to Peth Shahapur from Bhushi dam, reach at Korigad and then proceed straight towards the Mulshi Village. If you are coming from Mumbai, you can take Tamhini ghat road which descend to Konkan and take you to Mumbai Goa highway. If you are coming from Pune, after reaching to Mulshi, you may proceed towards Paud and from Paud you ride straight towards Chandani Chauk. This will be very good exhaustive and enjoyable ride over weekend. Especially during rainy season. You might be wondering why I am stressing so much for Monsoon season; only pictures I posted here will provide all your answers.

Add on –

There are no hotels or restaurants at this place so you have to carry your own food and water as well. Just as an additional note, there is small pump near Ambey Valley city to fill the fuel in your vehicle. So don’t panic in case your vehicle dry out. Since this is bit remote location, please carry all required trekking gears.

According to me this is worth visiting one day picnic spot near Pune. Difficulty level is easy. If you plan to visit the Lonavala, you can extend your trip by 20 km and visit this place as well.

Brief about my Bike ride Trip to Korigad –

I had visited this place with my college mates during rainy days. This time we were 10 guys and 5 bikes. Plan was to get wet fully and visit Korigad. No one had visited this before. After getting wet at Bhushi dam, we started ride towards Ambey Valley and reached to the tiger point. We had some snacks and Wada Pav we again started riding. It was raining so heavily that we were not sure what is on the side of the roads. We were completely in clouds. At one point, everybody’s bike started fluttering. No one was sure why so much of wind started. We were able to see only clouds on the side of the roads. So our bike speed went down to 10 – 20 kmph. Cap of two guys flew away due to such heavy wind. While coming back we realized that it was deep valley immediately on the side of the road.

Haunted Place on the way.. Hahah,,,

Haunted Place in between,,,

In-between we stopped at some place looking to be haunted place in that climate. See my picture posted here. There were few well, ruins of old homes and ruins covered with parasites. It was looking like true haunted place. We stopped there and dared to explore the surrounding area. This place is in dense forest on road side. After spending some time we reached at the Peth Shahapur and parked our vehicles there. Rain was not in mood of slowing down. We stayed near parking for some time and finally decided to start the forest trail to Korigad without waiting for rain to stop. And as I mentioned above we experienced heavenly treatment from nature and explored the Korigad and surrounding area.

I must say, dreamland is in Western ghat and if you want to experience it, visit any place during Monsoon. What do you say after looking at these pictures? If you have your own experience please share. 

Stay tuned….

- महेश  आवटे 

“BLOG ABOUT MY TREKKING EXPEDITION TO VISAPUR FORT”

I was wondering every time, that I visited Lohgad but never visited Visapur fort which is exactly opposite to the Lohgad fort. Not sure why I never thought about it until I planned to visit this place in Monson 2011. Before visiting this place I heard as well as read of many cases and stories of this fort that, lot of groups who visited this before lost their ways on return and then other experts called for the rescue. This may be because of dense forest, waterfalls during monsoon and trekkers mistakes.

Here is one of the links of news –

http://www.sakaaltimes.com/TagSearch.aspx?TagName=+Visapur+fort

I just put across my idea to visit this fort during Monsson weekend and asked my colleagues who would like to join. This would be one day trip, I said. Immediately one of my friends interested always for trekking (Avinash Patil) agreed on the plan. Day decided and 10 of us planned to start the journey by train early in the morning.

The day has come and all gathered at Pune Railway station except two, Bhaskar and Amol Patil. Amol Patil indolent fellow was expected to be late as always so we were bothered much. Myself was waiting for train at Akurdi station on the way to or destination Malvali station. Rain has arrived at Akurdi station and I enquired about Amol Patil. Then I learned that, Amol failed to wake up  on time so he dropped the plan. Since we already discussed about the plan night before regarding who will carry what, who will carry breakfast and who will carry utensils to cook the food on the fort and so on, I asked Bhaskar where are the fruits? All laughed. I said what happened? Then I learnt that, Bhaskar came to station Just In Time when train was about to leave the station, and he forgot the fruit carry bag on the bike handle in hurry of catching the train. I said then what to do, we took some Wadapav for our breakfast on next station and reached to Malavali station at around 9.00 am.

If you plan to take your own vehicle, here is the driving direction....

If you would like to see the details on Visapur fort and forest road, You may zoom this map and some ruins of fort, water reservoir, etc can be seen. 

Every one was ready with their trekking gears to start the mysterious journey towards top of the fort. We started out walk and stopped at flyover constructed on Mumbai Pune express way. To our surprise, we saw lot of small waterfalls flowing down the hill. We were of no clue of the road for expedition to the fort. Since Avinash had visited this fort before during summer, he was of great help to us.  We took some snaps of that great magical view and Avinash told us that we have to take that route only. We crossed the road and reached at the base of the fort. As soon as we started out hiking, it started raining. And all screamed with joy… yeee…..

Flyover on Express Way

Mumbai Pune Express Way

Visapur Fort

Walking and Walking...

Forest Road Started

Yee... We have to go there....

Making Our Way from Dense Forest

Escaped from Forest Route

We continued our journey though flowing water touching our knee height, mud of half feet, showering of water from the sky and sack on the back, full of cooking material and drinking water. Within 20 minutes we took first break when no one was sure whether we are travelling on right path, because we came across dense Jungal in front if us and fort was not visible from any angle. So we were not able to judge if we are on the right path. Avinash was confident that he took the same road and this should be the right one. After spending 10 minutes there, with all courage we started walk once again though the dense forest without any clue where we are heading. While walking we had to bend in back to avoid touching out bags to tress and getting trapped. The route was such that only one person can walk and no one can join him from side.

Rest

GOD Hanuman

Finally we crossed the dense forest road and reached at one of the waterfall. We had almost covered 50 % of out hike and 50 % were remaining. Some sort of relief. We thanked Avinash for guiding us to the right path. One advantage of passing from the forest was it was proving sort of shelter in rain. Rain had stopped by the time we reached out of the forest.

While travelling again we came across flat but covered with different kind of flowers. Flora. Looking like its natural shawl of flowers covering entire flat land of the fort Visapur.

And finally we reached at the place where we could see some steps. It was started raining again. This is typical Puneri Rain, (Kind of Pune rain), speciality of this rain is, it starts and stop and never showers continuously for long time. Hanumanji’s temple was out temporary shelter where everybody took their mobiles out of their bags and checked for any urgent miscalls. By this time everybody was completely wet, hungry and tired too. When we reached at the top all were screamed again like we have completed Everest expedition. Haha. Wooo….

Shiva Temple on Visapur Fort

Preparations

There are some ruins of temples, darukothar easily visible where trekker usually prefer to stay. We were in search of place where we could cook the food. Finally we fixed a place where we can cook the food. Rahul the man who was carrying the ready to cook Paneer tikka, took the material out from the bag and started basic preparations. Some were looking for the dry wood for making bone fire to cook the food. This was the toughest task since it was rainy day and hard to find such wood. Some guys were arranging stones to put the utensils for cooking food. All were looking at Rahul, because he was applying mud to the bottom of the container which he was about of put on the fire for cooking. One of our group member laughed and cracked joke saying Rahul we are yet to cook the food, don’t clean it now, to that he replied, Beta this is to avoid blackodising of the container due to fire. Smart…. Hmm….

One group came with some dry wood and finally all arrangements were done. Rahul pulled out ready to cook Paneer Tikka and started cooking. All were sitting around the bone fore on which the container was kept to get some heat and dry their cloths as well. Finally food was ready and all enjoyed having delicious paneer tikka with bread. To our good luck rain did not appear during that time and we finished lunch.

Packed our bags again and we all were now ready to explore the flat Visapur fort with full energy. On this fort various small water reservoirs can be seen. Also strong fortification from all sides of this fort is still intact. We moved from all sides and reached at the opposite side where 40-50 cows and buffalo’s were having their lunch on the fort.  One of our group member disturbed poor buffalo and she started following that guy. All were laughing so hard that it was unstoppable… writing this, I can not stop laughing..

We took some rest there and rain again started. We took the temporary shelter of fort ruins and decided to start the return journey to make sure we catch the train from Malvali station on time.

We started our return journey in rain and as I mentioned above we lost our way. Till the time we realize that we are not on the right path it was too late because we were separated in two groups. Fortunately we connected each other over phone and confirmed that all are there. Then my group decided to take route of waterfall. We started climbing down from side of waterfall and fortunately we managed to make our way down the fort. Other group was waiting for us at the base. We all were happy to complete this expedition safely.

Strong Fortification

At around 5.00 pm we come to Malvali station and decided to take Local train to Pune which was about to come in next 15 min.

All were tired, happy and full of lifelong memories with this tour. No one was in mood of taking to each other and everybody put their head down to mobile screens. Train arrived on time and we left the station……..

Difficulty level is low to medium for Visapur fort. No rock patch…

Hoping to visit this fort once again from Lohgad side and not from the base of this fort directly….. Will try to get the road from Lohgad to Visapur fort next time…

Stay tuned….

- महेश  आवटे