Trek to Sudhagad fort

Date : June 20 2010

Destination :  Sudhagad fort

Who : Me, Deepak, Salil, Sanket, Arnod, Arjun and Sankets 2 friends (Renaldo & Ketan)

Me, Arjun and Doc were on bike and the rest were in sankets car.. Deepak was our trek guide..

About the fort :

Sudhagad fort lies very close to Pali (one of the Ashtavinayak devasthan). Its about 2 hours drive from mumbai. 

Base village Paachapur i suppose marks the start of the trek. Its about 20 kms from Pali.

The roads are nice and clean with the internal roads being built under the Pradhan mantri gram sadak yojana..

Trek : Its easy for starters like me who are arm chair keyboard warriors.. The actual trek is said to be of not more than 1.5 hours but i took my own time .. nearly 2 hours from the base to the top..

The idea was to start from vashi at 7.30am. But as usual we had some late comers and the start got delayed by more than 45mins.. 

Doc had already reached vashi at 7.30 and we asked him to move to Datta Snacks panvel where we would catch up..

Reached panvel at 9.00am finally.. Had our breakfast at hotel welcome opposite to datta snacks near the petrol pump..

Left from panvel and took the old mumbai-pune highway (nh4) towards Pali. 

Took the right from khopoli and kept riding till we reached the entrance of Pali Ganapati. 

Ask locals for road towards sudhagad.

Took some detours in between..

Finally we reached the base of the fort which is a village with no mobile connection at around 12.30pm..

After settling down. We started our trek at 1pm..

Reached the 1st major buruj after a lot of efforts.. I was dead tired during the climb.. It was seemingly impossible for me to go any further.. Glucon-d and water helped a lot.. 

Finally reached the first main entrance to the fort..

From here it was an easy walk to the main fort.. Reached the top at around 3pm.. Had rest for a while and sandwiches for lunch and started sightseeing .. 

Tombs of the fighters on top of the fort..

Temple on top..

Mahadarvaja.. 

deepak, arjun and salil went to check out the takmak tok while rest of us started our way back down..

It took just about an hour to get down the fort..

some parting shots..

Started for home from the base of the fort at 9pm and reached home at 11.30pm ..

Tiring end to the day but every minute was worth it !!!!