Trek to Peb Gad (Vikatgad) forced me introspect why all the enthusiasm and the hyper activity in me just before the start of trek dies as I begin to climb the path to the summit. I keep pondering all the way when will this hardship end and when will I lie again on the soft bed of my house. Damn! You should watch my face at the end of trek. I vow to never trek again and the next day, I am ready with the plan for next trek.
This trek too was arranged hurriedly which I hate the most and it got finalised on the previous night itself. So much less time and I started to take the necessary things with me. This is one of the few treks that didn’t force me to wake at 5 in the morning. I aroused from my bed around 6:30 a.m. to catch 7:51 train to Karjat from Kalyan.
You can reach Peb Gad by alighting at Neral station on KYN-PUNE route. Catch any local to Karjat or Khopoli. We had a small breakfast at a local eatery which served a good dish Misal-Pav which had a slight taste of Chicken Masala in it. The Chicken Masala taste has a distinct signature of local ‘Agri’ community which lingered throughout the trek in my mouth.
There are two ways by which you can reach Peb Gad. First one is the one I am describing below:
Walk form Neral station to the base village Fanaswadi which takes roughly 45 minutes. Keep asking locals for directions to reach the base village. From our initial survey on net, we had found the path to trek a bit tricky and decided to hire a guide. We bought down the price of our guide from INR 400 to INR 100 and decided to take the young boy with us. He was wearing only slippers for trek! The trek started with a beautiful waterfall awaiting us after base village. We decided to give it a slip as we had come for trekking and not to soak ourselves in waterfall. The initial path was of medium difficulty with steep climb till you reach the plateau. The initial climb blew away all the energy I had in me and we still had a decent half way to go. The heart beats were being heard in my ear and we took a small pit stop on the way. I sat on a rock while my friends wondered to take snapshots of the beautiful plateau and the green carpet surroundings.
After a small rest, we all started proceeding towards the final challenge. The second part of this trek passes through dense forests which can mislead you. The guide showed us the correct path and we started to climb a small waterfall. The climb is bit steep here and sudden change weather had me and Shardul giving out heat waves from our body. You could literally see the water vapour waves coming from our body. The humidity factor was striking us hard but in the end we reached a point where we could finally see Peb Gad and the ridge joining Peb Gad and Matheran. Then came the rocky patch about which I had read on several bloggers site. The rope was hanging dangerously from the rocky cliff and we had to put the whole weight on the rope and push forward our body to clear the patch. Good Samaritans had made the job easy as they had preinstalled the rope firmly to the rocks. A small walk leads us to the caves which are well maintained and has a small bust of Shivaji Maharaj.
We had a small lunch and proceeded towards the ‘Buruj’(wall or protection of the fortress)which overlooks Matheran. En route, you will have to climb steel ladder which vibrates due to heavy gush of wind. One step wrong while climbing the ladder and will fall down in the valley. So be extremely careful here. Keep walking straight to the Buruj. The view from that point was simply amazing and breath taking. You could clearly see the ridge joining Peb and Matheran. The deep valley, the dense forests and cool air took away my tiredness instantly. We were also able to see the path from Peb Gad towards Matheran. The toy train line is also clearly visible from here. After initial heated discussions, we decided to take this path towards Matheran as our return path. We bid adieu to our guide and started going towards Matheran. This path was completely new to us and another group guided us till the end. The return path is very simple and straight forward with no twists. You literally cross over from Peb to Matheran over the small thin ridge. Here we encountered extremely heavy rain and our path turned into muddy water stream. After sometime the path became more or less manmade with concrete steps laid till you reach the toy train tracks. A bench awaits you installed by railway authorities and a sign board signalling the Peb Gad is visible from here. Walk down with the tracks to reach theNeral-Matheran road. Many small waterfalls awaits you on the track route. If u take opposite path, that is, if u start to climb upwards with the road, you will reach Dasturi naka. We easily got a lift from a Taxi who dropped us till Neral station. You can take this opposite path if you want to avoid rope climbing. This is the second path viable for newcomers and is very easy.
In the end, the trek was completely a new experience for me. The beautiful surroundings of Peb are simply breath taking you ought to visit this fort once if you are an avid trekker.
