I was planning for Bhimashankar Trek via Shidichi Vat trek since long but was never successful until 18th of July when finally it came true for me.
Bhimashankar Temple is located in the village of Bhorgiri 50 km north west of Khed, near Pune, in India. It is located 110 km away from Pune in the Ghat region of the Sahyadri hills. Bhimashankar is also the source of the Bhima river, which flows south east and merges with theKrishna river near Raichur. The other Jyotirlinga shrines in Maharashtra are Parli, Tryambakeshwar and Grishneshwar. Regular pilgrims near Mumbai visit Bhimashankar from Karjat via Khandas. The Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary located here is a popular weekend getaway from Mumbai and Pune.
I and Rajiv planned for this trek on Saturday 17th July. Abhijeet joined us later. Rajiv came to Karjat from Nerul while I and Abhi took Sinhagad Express to reach Karjat by 8.15am on 18th July.
We reached Kashela by MSRTC and Khandas by a six converted to unlimited sitter. Half of mine and Rajiv's body was hanging outside for that 12km journey.
We planned to go by Shidichi vat but all villagers and trekkers around fooled us by saying it is dangerous and could not be completed in Rainy season. We thought to give a chance. We found one group from Pune who knew this route and followed them as guide was charging too much.
Apparently group leader was confused about the way and started asking every villager in the way. So we took decision making in hour hand and took help of one villager and headed towards destination.
Abhi and Rajiv were little conscious about us finding wrong way. But I was confident about finding correct way due to previous experience. One more time villagers threated us about the risky way but still we continued.
We met two people on the way who knew the route exactly so now we were relaxed. As we progressed , we found that it is the steepest way to top. We did find first Shidi after half an hours trek. Fortunately it was new and was replaced recently.
Few tricky rock patches and two more Shidi's took us to top and we realized that we just covered half way. :( Now the other route to top i.e Ganapati ghat also joined our route and number of trekkers increased a lot.
We took breakfast break and then continued towards new discovered top. Due to lack of stamina I was slowest while Abhi was very fast ( We knew afterwards that he was chasing someone ;) ). Within 4 hours we reached the Bhimashankar temple.
We ate lunch(Misal,Bhaji and Tea),took Kalas darshan, bought some Prasad and boarded return bus by 3pm. MSRTC safely( only Abhi got some ST prasad on hsi right ear) dropped us at Shivajinagar.
After all this hectic trek I saw Khidakya play in Sudarshan Rangmanch from 7-9 pm and the went to Relatives home for rest. Hot water bath was never felt that beautiful :).
Hope you liked our journey. Now enjoy the pictures.
Regards
Shridhar Purandare
