Harishchandragad lies on the route from Mumbai to Ahmad Nagar, around 3 hours drive from Kalyan. There is a bus starting for Nagar from Kalyan ST bus stand once almost every hour, first bus is at 5.30 and last around 10.00. Harishchandragad is supposedly 4671 feet above mean sea level as per the wise old Wikipedia.
On this trek with me were 4 people. Jana, my cousin (who was with me for the pindari trek), One of my uncles , then another two cousins of mine, Anand and Omkar. We had planned that we would all meet up at kalyan station around 6 am and take at least the 6.30 bus in the morning. But Omkar played a master stroke and came almost an hour late. When he turned up at close to 7 I was so frustrated but that was not it. The fellow turned up with a small tour bag where as I had clearly told everybody to bring their change of clothes in a polythene bag, so that we could everything into two backpacks. Well, if somebody had not seen the color Red, they could have looked at my face! lol
As soon as we reached the ST bus station there was our bus waiting for us and on the first seat next to the door was this gal (Ok, Ok, now .... All u ppl who knw me, dnt gimme that smile, I am not gonna try antg here, so please rest in peace? lol). I and Jana dumped the bags next to the driver's seat and as soon as I turned, the gal ask me "Harishchandragad?". I said, " god bless Omkar". The seat next to her was vacant, i sat down, introduced and she started her story of her team going ahead and she trying to catch up. yipeee, now I was in mood for a trek.
But fate came as Jana, caught a seat at the back and started shoutn "Sunil, come back". I signalled and continued. But bro ddn't get the message, he called out again. Now , i can't sit there. Damn! I got up, said my good bye to the gal(lets call her K from now on) and moved back and as soon as I got to him he told me "that's conductor's seat" and I told him "dude, you do that again, u can kiss ur own head good bye".
We started a game of "who am I' and later on K also joined us. We had by now reached Malse Gh
at the whole settings had changed. We started of on clear day (even though it was rainy season) and now we had fog all around us, that too at 9 am in the morning. It was starting to get cold and guess what, none of us could figure out how the driver was seeing the road. After lookn out for a few minutes we saw the tail lights of another bus ahead, and our driver was following it! Vow!Harischandragad looks nothing the same in rainy season as in others. Just to prove the point. Take a look at these images.
ps. Guyz, I am so sorry that I can't help you with lot many pictures this time, since it was raining most of the time, the cameras rarely came out.
