A Road Trip to Varandha Ghat

Pune, the city of lush green surfaces during the rainy season, always has been luring people to hang out and travel on their weekends. Me along with my office colleagues Ashish, Kanishka, Dipti and Nishant decided to have a road trip to Varandha ghat including Shivtharghal on bike . So we woke up early in the morning and decided to meet near Hinjewadi flyover, though it was drizzling in morning at 6:30, it cherished our mood at the beginning itself. We picked up Ashish from Warje, and started our journey, but since it was raining and going by bike might be dangerous in ghats, we changed our mind to go by car, so finally we started at 8:00 am and headed to Varandha Ghat.

Passing through wonderful scenic views with mild rain, made us more impulsive about Varandha Ghat, we reached Bhor Gaon around 9:15 and enjoyed the beautiful scenic view of Neera river for few minutes and started over.

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Driving around 1 hour through narrow roads, we reached beautiful Neera-Devghar dam, it was really awesome. The cold breeze and the long distance river with wide span  and rocky mountains in background magnified our thrill. the lush green surface of mountains and clouds over it were describing their own story. Since it was not raining heavily the dam was not overflowing. we stayed there for some time and started over towards Varandha Ghat.

Finally we reached Varandha Ghat around 12:30 enjoying and snapping nature's panoramic pictures, we reached about 800mtr high altitude (thanks to Kanishka's Casio watch) and encountered with nature's own beauty, with lovely high waterfalls, and lush green mountains with deep valleys.

We stayed their for some time and enjoyed with  a cup of tea along with walk. This place is known as Waghjai but people call it the monkey point because you see so many monkeys here , however they are not dangerous.

According to local people  it is not advisable to travel through the ghats in night ,so we headed towards Shivtharghal. There are 2 ways to reach  Shivtharghal. One is approx 30 km from Mahad and other is the shorter route of 9 KM , which is rough and a bit steepy but time saving. In between, we stopped in one place from where you can easily see Shivtharghal from top and cheer the beauty of Nature.

 We reached Shivtharghal around 1 pm and visited the cave where Samrath Ramdas had written "Dasbodh". We prayed and spent some time inside the cave. Ashish was chanting maruti mantra written by Swami Ramdas. Near to caves there are few ladders to go up, and you can see the origin of a huge waterfall, which flows down creating panoramic scenery, it was so peaceful staying there.

While returning we stopped at one waterfall, which is down below and near the road which was not big but nice. The water was pure and cold but also seemed dangerous since it was flowing from top which was steep, so had chance to get hit by stone. however we decided to take bath and all we started putting off the clothes.


 We took bath and enjoyed the water force approx half an hour. 

We took a lot many picuters of that place and started back to home, because we had to cross Varandha  Ghat before evening.We reached Warje around 7:15 and headed to our respected homes, with happy feeling of visiting nature's wonderful place which is still uncommercialized and free from human garbage.