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Katraj to Purandar Trek

Katraj to Purandar (K2P) range trek Katraj to Purandar (K2P) range trek was completed on Nov 28, 2015 with Santosh Kulkarni. Got the info from puneventurers FB page in last week. Its a different trek which goes more from villages/vadi's than through mountains/hills.  Trek Route: Old Katraj Tunnel-Waghjai temple- Mobile Towers (go towards right direction)- Shiv temple- Daregaon-Thapewadi-Durkarwadi-Somurdi-Pokhar-Narayanpur-Purandar. We started from Katraj old tunnel at 6.30 am and reached Narayanpur (base village of Purandar) by 5 pm. Missed the route initially which costed us 2 hours. Met many people in between, mostly farmers and villagers; it was good to interact with them. Most of the route goes through farms and fields. Its 7-8 hours walk if you maintain good pace. Definitely its simple range trek with couple of small hills climbs. Points to ponder: 1. Once you cross three mobile phone towers which are close to the tunnel, you will see a hill, which is not

Kenjalgad, Raireshwar and Rohida

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Choosing a right trek during summer time is really important to make it joyful and enjoyable. It’s always good to start early morning so that we spend less time in the afternoon. Or one can do a night trek if route is simple. I did night trek to Torna on last weekend with my son-Sumedh, my friend-Santosh and his son- Shreyas. This time I was looking for small treks around Pune so that it can be done in single day. Moreover I was not keen to do repeat trek, so decided to visit Raireshwar Plateau- which is 65 kms from Pune on South side. ‘Santosh Kulkarni’ was as usual ready; checked with ‘Mukund Pate’ whether he would like to join. He said Yes and he got ‘Richard Lobo’(with whom he met during last trek) with him. So we four were finalized. I came to know that there are couple of smaller forts around Raireshwar. Collected some info from books/blogs and decided to do Kenjalgad, Rohida and Raireshwar together. Plan was to complete Rohida first and then move to Raireshwar and Kenjalgad lat

Sinhgad to Rajgad Range Trek

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Trek Completed: Feb 19 and 20, 2016 Trek Route: Pune-Sinhgad Base (Atkarwadi)-Sinhgad-Zunjar Buruj-Vinzar-Sakhar-Chirmodi- Gunjavane-Rajgad-Nasarapur Phata- Pune Difficulty Grade- Simple/Medium Trek Mates: Santosh Kulkarni and Sandip Jadhav Actual walk duration: 1 hour on Feb 19 and 12 hours on Feb 20. Sinhgad Fort is one of my favorite for trekking. I have done umpteen climbs till now. There are multiple ways to enter and exists fort; like Katraj to Sinhgad range trek, Pabe khind to Sinhgad range trek, Motorable road from Donaje and Kondhanpur. I had done all these except Sinhgad to Rajgad trek. This particular trek was in mind for long time but couldn't complete it because of other trek plans. After completing K2S for the fifth time last weekend (Feb 14, 2016), I decided to do this trek on this Saturday. Santosh confirmed his participation (as usual) and Sandip shown interest too.  Trek Map- source Google map Sinhgad and Rajgad forts have seen many ups and d

Torna to Raigad through Boratyachi Nal- Solo Trek at its best!!!!

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Trek Completed on 25, 26 & 27 Dec, 2015 Year 2015 turned out to be great for me as it was the year when I started trekking beyond Pune and Lonavala region.  Recently I started liking Range treks or Ghat routes more than typical hill climbs or fort visits.  In range treks you normally cover more than one fort or old trade routes. These range treks are challenging one as you cover many ascends and descends which test your stamina. Few of the range treks are historically significant like Panhalgad to Vishalgad and few are famous due to its rigorousness like Lonavala to Bhimashankar (LoBhi), Chandragad to Arthur seat , Ratangad to Harishchandragad, K2S,P2S etc. I had done K2S, P2S, LoBhi and Makrandgad-Kondnaal-Haatlot range treks earlier and this time I decided to do Torna to Raigad trek.    Route Rote and Map: The trek route was: Pune- Torna-Bhatti-Mohri-lingana-Pane Village-Varangai-Nijampur-Raigad Base-Mahad-Pune. It was 2 days trek. This trek is one o