Biking: A Visit to Torana Killa

How often does it happen that you plan an outing after a grueling week and the outing turns out to be an experience to be treasured for a long long time? Well, that is what I felt after I came back from my half-day bike tour en route Torana Fort, one of the jewels in the Maratha Empire setup by Shivaji Maharaj in his time.

These days i.e. after I got my bike, on every Saturday morning, I go out for a short outing somewhere nearby Pune. I have found that the rejuvenation that you get from such an outing is a perfect medicine to counter the stress that gets to us during the week's time. Especially for a software engineer. To bust the stress we usually splurge our hard-earned currency on things like shopping, movies, eating out etc etc. While I am not saying that these are wastages, I do believe that these things don't always bring with them the peace-of-mind, the happiness that we are seeking in the first place. They stop making any difference after a while. The 'gyan' part aside, all I am trying to say is if we are ready to spend a couple hundred bucks on petrol, there is a pleasant surprise awaiting us. All that you need to do is just feed your bike with enough juice to last for around 100 miles. There are a lot of scenic sites that will leave you spell-bound. The greenery, the fresh air, the silence, the solitude, the history (if you are inclined) of the places, the ghats, the passes, the roads less travelled, the laid-back and completely out of touch villages, the little children along the route and their antiques-due-to-ecstasy seeing a bike (which happens to be yours), the 'wow-factor' in their eyes and a big smile on their face ….. …. …. … it's just amazing. Whatever it is, it's very rejuvenating, and it goes to have a calming effect on you. Anyways, enough gyan.

So, I started for Torana fort on my bike on one fantastic Saturday morning of 9^th August 2008. There was a slight and pleasant drizzle, not much wind, completely overcast, no sun. In short, a pleasant monsoon weather, perfect (IMHO) for a long bike ride. For the starters, you need to go to Sinhagad while going to Torana. From Sinhagad, take a right towards Khanapur and from Khanapur, there are two routes to go to Torana. Madhighat-Pabe pass-Pabe-Welhe-Torana Fort is one route. While the other one is to head straight to Panshet Dam and from their go to Welhe using the Kadhave Pass. I used the former route while going, and the later one while coming back.

1 Road leading to Khanapur - Near Sinhagad

After you take a left from Khanapur village, starts a very scenic ghaat called Madhhi-ghaat. It's a kind of dense forest on both sides of the road and the atmosphere is like - as if some big cat might pop-up from any side of the road – you know - just to say hi to you.

2 Madhhi ghaat starts ...

This road takes you to the top of the hill and you can find a spot there from where you can enjoy a breath-taking view of the valley down below. I parked my bike near a turn where I felt like there is a good spot out there. The drizzle was heavy now. I was in a hurry to get there and I was finding stones to hop on, I stepped on one and arrrggghhh … cow-dung (curbed the urge of using the BS word)… was what is was! Fresh at that. For next couple of minutes I cursed the eternity while simultaneously I was trying to get that thing off my floaters. Finally when I came back to 'senses', I found this amazing view into the valley below. Eventually I realized, I was actually standing on top of the hill.

3 A Dream home in a heaven like this would satiate one for a life-time

By now I was really missing my camera. I had to use my cell-phone based 2MP camera to capture this heavenly beauty.

I roamed around the hill for some more views and then started back towards Torana. Along the route, I found the roads to be in drivable but bad condition. Also there were no boards on few of the bifurcations. I lost my way a couple of times because of this and had to come all the way back from some totally unknown village which has only one small bridge as a link to the outside world. Check out the bridge in the picture below –

4 The lifeline for a village - only 1 bike can go in any one direction at a time!

The bridge was so narrow (and in a very bad condition) that only one bike could somehow manage to cross it in either direction at a time. The biker would be in constant fear of the bridge collapsing due to the weight and falling into the stream below.

Then started the Pabe ghaat leading to the Paabe khind. This portion being remote from the hustle-bustle of the Pune city, the traffic on the road was almost non-existent. Hardly a few bikers here and a few there. The area is full of huge mountains, and hence very scenic because of the greenery in the monsoon. So overall, the equation was - small roads, absolute silence except for the bird-chirping, huge mountains, nobody on the roads, zig-zag turns through the ghaats, splendid views on the valley side of the ghaat and the distant greens and mounds and mountains visible due to the height at which you are driving. Truly it's an experience to savor.

5 Huge hills draped in green - very poetic

6 Am I in Europe?

I let the view sink in and slowly reached the top of the hill near the pass – Pabe Pass.

7 Pabe Pass - bears a board indicating routes for the forts in the area

After the Pabe pass, starts the road down-hill to the Pabe village. This latter half of the ghaat is equally scenic and breath-taking as was the first. From Pabe village, there is a bifurcation. For Rajgad fort, you need to take left, while for Torana you should take right. So I took right, and in 15-20mins (because of the good roads and a hitch-hiker cum guide) I reached the base village of the majestic Torana fort – Velhe. As per the local guy who hiked a (free) ride on my bike from Pabe to Velhe, the Torana fort is very dangerous to trek during monsoons because of the very steep and slippery routes and other live dangers like abundance of snakes and scorpions. According to him, summer is the best time around the year for this trek. So I shelved my (non-existent and very weak if existent) plan of parking the bike somewhere and actually doing a trek uphill, till the summer. Interestingly, I hear from my friends, that they don't allow you to stay there on Torana fort in the night as the locals fear there are ghosts up there. Even the regular people from the village always climb down in the evening. This proposition makes the trek and the stay, even more adventurous.

8 The majestic Torana fort as seen from the road to the base-village of Velhe

So with a desire of trekking on the fort in the near future, I started my journey back towards home. While coming back, I decided to take a different route than the one that I took while coming. So rather than going through the Pabe pass, I started for the Kadhave pass which connects Velhe and Panshet dam and the surrounding villages. Again, the Kadhave pass is the route that Shivaji Maharaj took while starting out for a famous attack on Surat to win it and connect it to his empire. So being a historically inclined, it was an added turn-on for me to imagine and live the things, the way people would have lived four centuries ago.

Initially it looked like I am in for a majorly pleasing route back home. Initially I found a weird animal farm which hosted the Imus – some creatures that looked like an ostrich. I was seeing them for the first time in my life.

9 Imu Farm

Then next on my way back, I found a waterfall big and noisy and scary enough to give an adrenaline dose to my fatigued mind and body.

10 Big, very noisy and hence scary waterfall, that I met in the ghats while coming back

The noise, the size, and the force with which water was flowing really made me nervous at the thought of doing what they call as white water rafting. I really love and fancy being part of a team that is in to these kinds of adventure sports. It's really fearful to wrestle with that monstrous a force. It sets my heart pounding. But I subscribe to the school of thought where they say to face your fears and do the things that scares you a lot. That helps in building your guts. That makes you strong. I find this thinking, somewhat similar to the Chinese acupressure technique, in which they ask you to keep pinching that acupressure point in your body that hurts most when pinched. After incessant pinching, that point stops hurting anymore and your associated ailment goes away with it.

Anyway, I took some pics of the waterfall from different angles and again started my reverse journey. From here started my ordeal. Even through the surroundings were scenic and beautiful, I was driving for almost 4-5 hours now and my body had started talking. I was feeling a bit of travel fatigue. To make the matter worse, the road that I was driving on now, had started deteriorating very fast. It reached its pinnacle of being a pain-in-the-ass when the actual ghaat section started. To top it all, I lost my way and went deep into a pathetic road toward a village called Antroli. A board at a bifurcation had been set to show the wrong direction! The damn thing cost me almost half an hour of highly painful driving experience with my lower back going for a toss. I started for Paanshet dam again, this time of the correct route, but still the road condition was not at all good.

11 The pathetic road in the Kadhave Ghaat section

The road was very small, just enough for a couple of bikes to squeeze in somehow. Other surprising thing was, during my whole journey of around 20kms, I didn't meet a single bike, let alone a 4-wheeler, passing in either direction. Not even a passer-by was there treading that route! If your bike starts throwing tantrums mid-way, you are done. You don't have any other option but to beg your bike for mercy. If something happens to you, there is nobody to help you there; absolutely nobody. The place is completely deserted.

So after driving my bike through that scary route for almost an hour or so, at a miserable speed (because of the road conditions), I reached the Kadhave pass.

12 Kadhave Pass

From the other end of the pass, one can have an amazing view of the valley covering the Paanshet and Varasgaon dams and adjoining areas.

13 View of the Valley from the other end of Kadhave Pass

Apart from the view, there is a very little encouragement from here, as you can see that for the next 10-15kms you have to traverse a similar torturous route, which has been killing you till now.

With a lot of frustration and cursing, I somehow completed the punishment and once the route came back to being smooth, my bike was racing towards pune at a blinding speed of around 70-80kmph. I was consistently touching the nineties for small durations. The speed was again bringing back my spirits. The road was smooth, and heads were turning when my bike passed. So it had started getting pleasant again …. I was quickly forgetting the pain in the last leg of my journey and the blowing wind, raining skies, scenic ghaats, and the valleys and mountains laced with a lots of shades of greenery everywhere, were soothing the mind …. I was feeling very relaxed and rejuvenated …