Mahuli (June 2008)

Mahuli

My third trip to Mahuli. Friends come and go but the place still remains my favourite getaway during rainy days. All the three times I had different company, but the route was the same, the stream was the same, the temple was the same and peak was the same too. I had been bugging my busy (I am sure they pretend) friends for quite sometime now. Finally they agreed. A little bit of shopping for booze and snacks the Saturday evening at DMart made sure our lungs will keep firing for the trek the next day. Early morning we boarded the local to Asangaon from Mulund. A quick but expensive autorickshaw ride brought us to the base camp( pardon my exaggerations but this is my Mt Everest). An half hour climb and all of us were panting our ass out. Man I have grown old. Regular smoke breaks werent helping our stamina either but old habits for old people die hard. Nevermind, slowly and steadily we did reach the summit (took us about 4-5 hrs). There were some scary moments/slips but we lived to tell the tale. So what some ten groups overtook us and three of them even returned before we reached up there, but our spirits(pun intended) were high and we were high too. The summit was worth it. We picked a distant rock and parked ourselves there. Finished our booze and gave rest to our lungs. We explored and admired the fort the marathas had built up there. Man how did they do it. No wonder the enemies never cared to take it. We returned by evening. It rained on the way down and I did not like my ass get wet. There was a sense of accomplishment that we were still fit for the adventure, however the reality dawned the next morning when I woke up with a tremendous all body ache. May be I should do it more often to get used to it or completely stop..Nahh... will go again..may be with a different set of friends..
Adios