KASHID BEACH, MURUD BEACH

Approx 122 km driving distance from Mumbai, this is one of the best beach (white sand, clean water) nearest to Mumbai. All other beaches found in and around mumbai is mostly polluted. The water bed of kashid is like a swimming pool and quite safe to enjoy the waves.
From mumbai kashid can be reached either by driving or from Gateway ferry rides are available up to alibaug. From alibaug taxi/autos are available to kashid.
5 km away from kashid is the murud beach. The sand bed of Murud beach is  like a huge flat surface, and the sunset view at murud beach is amazing.
There is a hotel name "Patil hotel", a very wel known for sea food prepared in a traditional way and mostly everyone visiting kashid have their lunch at this hotel.
Its a very good one day picnic trip to kashid, mururd. Another unique site is Janjira Fort and is worth visit atleast one. This fort is situated within sea and can be reached by boats. In  a day trip one can plan to reach kashid by 8 am and enjoy the beach up to 12 noon afterwards go to murud to have lunch at Patil hotel and then can go to janjira and take a boat for janjira fort. before evening come to murud beach to enjoy the sun set and tea at the beach. after sunset back to Mumbai. There are many hotels and resorts are also available for a stay.

TREK TO SAJAN WADA

The perfect place to hangout on weekend for a day or two with friends, colleagues ; Village Sajan , situated appprox 50-60 km from Thane. We had a one day trip for a trekking. We had booked the resort “Naturetrails” and taken a guide from the resort for the trek.

Thane------à Bhiwandi--------àWada--à Village Sajan

Resort : NatureTrail

Though the resort provides many other activities like rappling, kayaking, valley crossing etc, we had gone for a nature trekking around the Moho Khurd Dam covering approx 15-20 km. it took almost 4-5 hrs to complete the trek.

One can have a complete day activity in the resort itself. It is a very well managed resort ad the food provided was simply awesome. They provide the facility to stay overnight with there various type of accommodation. One can check their website for further details.

Our team member size was of 30 Nos and we did a simple valley crossing apart from trekking. It was a complete day picnic and full of fun and adventure.

I would like to visit again with family for a outing.

TREK TO KALAVANTIN DURG

9 th March 2014 (Sunday) we started early morning @ 5:30 am from Chembur Mumbai towards Thakurwadi, Panvel for start our trekking from thakurwadi to Kalavantin.

Kalavantin durg, a fort situated exactly opposite to prabalgad at an elevation of around 2300 ft. Its named after a Queen during Shivaji Maharaj period and from its structure, height and elevation it can be understand that it used to be a watch tower during that time.

The route we followed;

Chembur---àPanvel--à we went via Mumbai Pune Highway(old)-----à-Shedung Phata to Thakurwadi----àparked vehicle in the village  ----àstart trekking-àPrabal Machi Village--à Kalavantin durg

We reached Thakurwadi at around 7:15 am . Parked our vehicle in the village and start our trekking. The weather was quite pleasant in the morning. We could hear the sounds of birds. From the road we could see the tip of Kalavantin and prabalgad. There was an orange flag visible on top of both. Our mission was to reach there at Kalavantin. We have to trek the first mountain to reach prabalmachi village from there again the second phase of trek to kalavantin. Though there was a well trek path to prabalmachi village we took a “Saral” route. In Marathi “saral” means straight path. The elevation was quite straight and it was an amazing, exciting , adventurous  feeling while climbing up. It also saved around 30 minutes time for us. Enroute we could capture some amazing pics and scene.  We reach prabalmachi village around at 10:00 am. There was a small place to have breakfast and lunch at prabalmachi village. They provide facility for staying overnight and also guide for the trek to prabalgad and kalavantin. It’s a well managed place. We had our breakfast there and ordered for the lunch for the day.

We started the second phase pf trek to Kalavantin. It took aother 1 hr 30 min to reach the peak . It was an amazing view from the top. We halted there for an hour and enjoyed the scenic beauty. Afterwards we returned to the prabalmachi village and had our lunch and returned back.

It was one of the tough trek and more adventurous  than any other trek I had before.

One can plan for a 2 days stay there at prabalmachi to complete both the trek of prabalgad and kalavantin.

Trekking team: Jaideep, Ajit, Yogesh, Nalin, Amarnath, Patel 

TREK TO NANEGHAT

Approx. 50 km. away from Kalyan and just after the village Tokawde , the road to Naneghat trek starts. No one of us ever gone to that place, it was a last moment trek planning where five of us had headed towards exploring natural beauty of Naneghat, just before the well-known Malsej ghat, with an information from Wikipedia that “Naneghat is a mountain pass in the Western Ghats range near Junnar in Pune district of Maharashtra, India. During the reign of the Satavahana (200 BCE–190 CE), the pass was extensively used as a trade route between Kalyan and Junnar.”

It was seems to be a simple nature trek in the beginning, with beautiful view of landscapes and clouds floating far away near the peak of the hill. The freshness of air was making us energies. Going out of the city after a long time, it was just an “WOW” moment for all trying to embrace the greenery as much as possible and capturing the scenic view with smart phones. Within an hour of walking, we started entering in to the jungle terrains following the path alongside the waterfalls and the beautiful flora and fauna of the nature.  Initially conscious on our shoes, we started walking through the streams flowing across the route with a let go attitude.  The trek route started getting more and more adventurous without any landmark for direction. We started entering in to the rocky lane. The only thing guiding us was the peak of the ghat and the only motivation was to touch it.  The more we are getting in to the floating clouds, it was seems to be at far from us. Though enroute few of us wanted to return, we started inspiring each other to reach up to the top. After climbing few steps of rocks we met a local person of that place coming down from the peak. On request he willingly escorted us up to the Top. The nature trek became three hours of adventure trek. Atlast we hold the clouds and the sprinkling rains making us feel the accomplishment of the trek. “WOW we did it…” The view from Top was amazing. We were trying to make out the route we had followed, but the clouds brushing up the canvas view. There was a cave at the top and many people were coming from the other side to enjoy the weather.

There were few small Dhabas were there to cook and serve food on order basis with a menu of Zunka and Bhakari. Though we all had carried some food from home, the menu made us to try the traditional Bhakri and Zunka. It was awesome … and took away all our tiredness.

In most of the trekking the climbing is tough and coming down is easy, but here the rain has created slippery surfaces and made our path more difficult to climb down. With carefully placing our steps we managed to come down and it took approx four hours to reach to our vehicle.

One of the Memorable trek in our life!

Trek Members:-  Jaideep, Ajit, Amarnath, Vikram and Jagdish.

Best Time to Visit: September – January

Please don’t spoil the nature by throwing plastics or other stuffs here and there. 

For any further info i am available on ajit.majhi07@gmail.com