After summers, the first monsoon trek is the most awaited thing. It wasn’t even a week I was back from Spiti and I was going back to the mountains, I was excited. To my delight, we were going to have a bike ride to the base village of Siddhagadh. I couldn’t be happier, as I believe monsoon and bike rides are just made for each other!
One can go Siddhagadh via Narivalli village and from there it is the highest fort climb in Maharashtra. But we took another way through Jamburdhe village which cuts around an hour’s climb.
We parked our vehicles and just before we began to walk, we noticed this old well. Such sources of water on and around the forts in Maharashtra is common. My eyes were pleased to see some purple flowers adding to the green colour scheme around. For the first time, I saw houses with a block that had the year written on it. My friends said it is the year these houses were made but I am not sure of this.
As we were walking we found this two things. The one on the left is microbial in origin. It could be slimy fungal species or a slime layer produced by some bacterial species. The one on the right is a common mushroom one can find on monsoon treks in the Shyadris.
We reached the caves. We took pictures and left. Later, we noticed the Ganpati on the bottom right corner of this image.
There are a few difficult rock patches and if you are new to Sahyadris, kindly be more careful. I and a new friend who also searched the slimy bacteria for me were having fun as we climbed together.
There is a ‘nandi’ and ‘shivling’ at the top of the fort. But they weren’t placed together as they should be as seen in temples. We were waiting for a few and it began to rain heavily with strong breeze too. I was so happy, I sang and danced until all arrived.
After exploring the fort, we took a different way down and came across a beautiful old door. We walked past it and reached a temple. It had ‘shivlings’ and ‘nandis’ found around the place kept together. There was also a broken ‘tof’ kept ourside the temple.
There were also this stone structures called ‘virghals’ kept around the temple. These structures are found around many forts in Maharashtra. They depict the history of the maker of the fort.
The walk down got more slippery but it was worth it. We had some hot tea before we began our ride back home. I can surely count this trek as one of my favourite monsoon trek experiences.
