The Iron Fort - Part III

By the time I am completing this write up, the trek that we went on already ought to be a bit of a distant memory. The negligent kid in me feels like flinging down the pen and paper and walking off in a huff, miffed at his own inability to string together a write-up in time. The long forgotten trait of discipline! Hmph!

But then, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this was a trek not easily forgotten. The memories stay with me as green as a freshly watered leaf. So here goes.

The Fork in the Road:
We set off pretty briskly from Malavli station, stocking ourselves up with water, chocolates and chewing gum at a quaint provisions store on the way. The group soon split into two: 'the front-runners' and 'the back-markers' - Political propriety prevents me from saying who formed part of which group :). So let me make an ABC case out of it.

A,B and C were the frontrunners whereas D and E brought up the rear. It was quite hot that day, unlike the first trek which had a nice spray-like rain cooling me and Vix on the way. The fact did not go un-noticed and E told me, "Ranga! It is so hot! You should have asked us to bring sun-tan lotion!". Ah well, given that it had been raining the last two times I came here, forgive me for my oversight.

I thought, the weather has the uncanny ability to change the fortunes of many a man, more renowned than me. Take Hitler for instance. It was like the leader of his Russian front troops coming up to him on one fine winter morning and telling him "My dear man, You said Siberia would be nice and breezy at this time of the year and it is 40 degrees below zero - you should have told us to get our fur coats along!"

Hitler would have done two things - shrug his shoulders expansively and then shoot the Russian Commander. Given my placid nature, I thought of doing just the former :D

And shortly, after a rather sweaty climb with many breaks in between, we reached a fork in the road. Well to be more accurate, it was more like a "T-junction" on top of a mound connecting two hills. There were forts on either hill, the one on the right being Lohagad, and the one on the left, Visapur. Since Vix and I had gone right and reached Lohagad easily last time round, we took the left turn hoping to conquer Visapur this time. The fort was clearly visible - the end was nigh, or so I thought.

Our turn to Visapur did not start on the right note, with the track taking a downward turn as soon as we started off... but the hope was that it would rise again. And rise it did, though not as sharply as we'd have liked. It kept winding on and on and on and soon we realized that we might be taking an entire chakkar around the hill without going any higher at all. Serious self doubt began to creep in and the entire team was beginning to blame me for taking them on such a tortuous path. Of course, a 35 degree sun beating on our backs did not help the state of mind either. "Turn back" was the common refrain, but we plugged on for a short while afterward.

Thankfully, our decision was made relatively easy by an almost-impassable stretch of slush and mud replacing the road we were walking on. There we took a halt and decided to beat a retreat. The amount of flak that I had to take for 'guiding' people onto this route was unbelievable! When Vix and I went to Lohagad, we consulted this local stripling, who told us at the T-junction that the right path led to Lohagad and left to Visapur. And those directions I followed, in full faith. Never knew that my faith in the local would turn around and bite me in the shin like that.

I could imagine the gang's state of mind though. The Israelites would have felt the same of Moses, who if, after a long, tedious crossing of the sea had turned around and told them, "Look folks! Here is a desert. Now I would dearly love to take all you guys to the promised land, but you have to make do without water or food for the next twenty years" - not the most charitable of feelings I s'pose.

But then, all the grumbling aside, I was with a team of great sports and they decided to follow me up to Lohagad - we were back to the T-junction in just over 20-25 minutes though it had taken us nearly 45 minutes to traverse the same distance towards Visapur. Good progress made! Now we headed towards Lohagad, again taking a few breaks along the way.

Thanks to our diversion, a gang of trekkers, clearly led by some Team building/Event management kinda company had joined us (we had overtaken them right at the base of Malavli). Now this would have been fine, had the over-enthusiastic trekkers not had an inclination for shouting out "Har Har... Mahadev", every five minutes. We felt like pushing them off a cliff for their chants.

We kept plugging on and many muttered curses, tired steps and determined stair-climbs later, we reached the summit of Lohagad fort.

(rest in next)