Katraj to Sinhagad - a moonlight trek

One of the common passions shared by all the directors of Acuminate is trekking. All those who come in contact directly or indirectly with Acuminate get infected by it. A couple of weeks ago we all Acuminators went to Kenjalgad. And at the end of that trek, we fixed the next trek – Katraj to Sinhagad moonlight trek.

But somehow only three of us – Amar, Tejas and I – found ourselves on the list. The rest of the members withdrew for various reasons. Nevertheless, we persisted.

Now I had never been to any outdoor night event – be it campfire, overnight trek or any such thing – even once in my life. So I started wondering about the safety factor. Well, not from wild animals, but from the animals called human!

The trek was supposed to be made up of almost 14 hills, which we needed to climb and get down to reach Sinhagad. And all of these were away from the road. So there was no easy escape. We had to complete the trek or walk all the way back. I kept on thinking about what can go wrong … What if the torches did not work? What if we step on snakes unknowingly? What if we feel sleepy? Is it safe to sleep in tent? Endless questions….

But Amar answered all of them in positively, so I was ready to go… We passed the tunnel in the old Katraj ghat. I felt as if I was traveling through a pipe… Immediately after that we started climbing. It was 10.50 PM. I was soon out of breath…more than the climbing, probably because of fear. That being a weekend and an almost full moon night, some two busloads of people had started the trek. So we had lots of trekkers along with us. But there was no nuisance, no noise or a picnic kind of mood because the target was not easy… everyone was busy in walking. Our plan was to exit one hill before reaching Sinhagad and go to Kondanpur. The path was winding, so the tower on the fort used be on our right hand for some time and on our left for some time.

After climbing two hills I realized we were not at all using the torches, the moon light was more than sufficient to see the path. We walked over the top of both (old & new) Katraj tunnels. And the view of the lit Pune city was magnificent…and a good breeze used to take all the tiredness of climbing.

One after the other we were climbing and getting down… climbing was easy compared to getting down …as the way was steep and slippery. Some time it felt as if it was the end of the road… we couldn’t see anything further… but once you reach there, you get cold breeze and another slide and a hill next to that. We decided to rest for a while on the plateau. We were flat on our backs, looking at the moon, which was playing hide and seek with the clouds. It was indicating a possibly rainy night, but luckily it didn’t rain.

Though it was series of hills lined up, the experience was different from one hill to another. While looking back we could only see the line of torches following us at distance. Till the dawn we could see lots of people (torches) marching towards Sinhagad. Slowly, the toes started aching and body was refusing to walk further, but there was no escape…

Post 4 AM, moon started  getting yellowish orange and the light was not as bright as before. Then we had to switch on the torches. By five it was completely dark….and within half an hour or so, sunlight started spreading all over. We started heading towards the plane road to catch 6.15 am bus from Kondanput  to Katraj. We had to speed up to catch the bus … and at the bus stop the trek was over… from 10:50 PM to 6:15 AM we were walking… of course with 45 minutes rest and few stops here and there… What a exotic trek it was! Unfortunately we didn’t click a single photo….
- Sonali Rane