The Karnala Konquest

Well this is my first blog of my life, I was thinking what to write as a blog and thought that the whole description of the trek I had just some days before on 24/12/2005 would be a better one for my first venture in bloging.....

The plan was to meet at Panvel station by 8:30 am. All the members had reached before 8:30 Am, I reached a bit late though in time as per the plan. It was 8:30 dot in my watch. I had a formal introduction of the two new faces. One was an online group member and the other one was his best friend. We were totally seven to begin with Abhijit with a personality next to ambani’s (he was working in the same group before venturing in MBA at IIT) his two younger sisters. Fourth one was a special person who is known to have a hyperactive personality and passionate about photography, fifth was nagesh whom I was meeting for the first time face to face the sixth being his good old college best friend, lastly myself. One thing was that my cousin who is 14 year old though younger amongst all of us had the enthusiasm to go in for a trek comparable to ours. The journey began from Panvel we caught the shuttle bus to alibagh at 8:35 AM. Mr. Ramesh the hyperactive person had a bit of a handshake with the door of the ST bus and the handle almost coming in his hands. We reached karnala bird sanctuary at about 8:50 AM. A big group of people was already there who had also come for some expedition. The ticket cost was rupees 20 per person. We started to walk inside the sanctuary and we saw a board with the history of the karnala fort. I saw a board which said that “The birds are kept in cage for temporary period and soon it will be released from the cage” in marathi and we could see some birds captive in cage. Interestingly I had seen the same board about six months back also with birds in the cage. I don’t know how many months or years do these “soon“mean. What caught our eyes was a dead duck in a pond of the cage. Nagesh had decided to get this thing to the notice of the whole world, we took some pictures of the duck and we were to begin the ascent to the fort. From bottom we could see the thumb like stone of the fort. Three of the group members were having cameras and I was missing mine a lot, after a bit of imaginative and trick photography we decided to start with the ascent. We crossed the dam and started to move on. It was not much steep though and my 14 year old a bit happy asked “Is this the tuff path? It looks easy ”, to which I replied that this is just the beginning just see what lie’s ahead ;-). Again the photographers started their job and one of our group member uttered “Digital camera ka yahi problem hai”. After 10 min of the ascent the slope began to get steeper and everybody started to feel the slope. It was not so steep though, we had to use roots of tree and branches for climbing. Most of the group members were trying to conserve their energy to make it to the top. We made a halt for a moment in between were we could see the sun and also the greenery and the highway from the only opening between the trees it was really marvelous to look at. Most of us were a bit tired and thirsty but one person was in an urge to finish the trek and it was my 14 year old cousin sister. We started from this point and moved forward and we reached the plateau though it was only half way to the fort but the next phase was going to be easy one. The photography continued. Nagesh captured a burnt ant hill in his camera and we moved further. One thing special and most common was that we were linked to a particular group and we had the same thought of a person and we were talking mostly about the person only, the person might have got a lot of hiccups and yawns that whole day. Finally we reached the fort and the big thumb like rock stood in front of us smiling and kind of boasting about its height and firmness which every person aims of having. We had some creative persons in the whole pack and trying to give some life to the boldly standing rock. It varied from a king looking at the whole dynasty with proud ness and royalty to a queen having a firm beautiful face with a nakhani on her nose. We reached the fort at 11:45 AM with relaxed for some time, and thought of having lunch. Some of the group members were hungry. The lunch menu was a good one which included chapatti, methi paratha, cauliflower and batata bhaji. Nagesh had started to tell a real life story and the ups and downs that went behind the marriage of one of our group member while everyone was having their lunch. I sincerely hope that it comes to a happy conclusion. Mr. Ramesh was very much inspired and a bit enthusiastic in helping him in whatever way he can. Now the mood and tempo was set to hear stories from other people. The story about how the youth wing came up and how it got dissolved. Our eminent photographers thought of a photography session with photos in group, single and not to forget the two lions guarding the grand door to the fort at the rear end. We spent almost one and a half hour at the fort and finally decided that it was time to start the descent. While coming down near the main gate we could see a lot of school kids coming towards the fort and it looked like a group of small ants. We meet them in the middle and the kids were mostly were of high school level and had come here for picnic. We wondered what in the world did these people thought of having a picnic at the fort, some of the kids even had brought football, badminton etc for playing there. We even enquired a kid as to how many kids were in total? 400 was the answer, and most were thirsty and somebody told them that water is available at the fort!!!! . By 3:15 PM were near the base of the hill, we saw a water tap and most of us quenched our thirst. Our hyperactive ramesh was in some mood of taking the photo of the monkey, as soon as he took the photo the monkey made a peculiar face as if getting ready for a photo shoot. From there we moved on to the main entrance one the main thing we noticed that the dead duck was not there in the pond. At the entrance ramesh informed the security about the school kids and told them to count the number of kids they might be less. There were fresh honey from the forest on display and most of us took one bottle each. Mr. ramesh got some info that there is a hotel nearby and we decided to go there. In the mean time nagesh noticed that we hadn’t been talking for almost one hour about the famous person we knew and the talking began on the same person. We all walked for 1 km to find the hotel called “kshanbhar vishranti”. One thing what had all of us wonder was “how many minutes or hours does a kshana mean?”. We had ordered for vadapav and missal pav but after a good 20 minutes he comes and says that it is not available. Then we ordered for something else and that too we confirmed him that we will get it soon. We got it after about 15 minutes, the bill came in real quick time. The “Kshanabhar vishranti was converted to tas bhar vishranti” ( kshana means a moment to be precise its 75th fraction of a second, and tas means one hour in marathi). We stood near the highway for bus to Panvel bus stand, initially we couldn’t get a bus as not even a single bus was stopping there. We finally got a ST bus and we came to Panvel and as we had met in morning we separated towards our home. Nagesh was more than ready for another such event. But one thing was that everybody was happy with the expedition and made new friends.