Gorakhgadh Fort Trek

Gorakhgadh Peak

Gorakhgadh lies near the Dehri village in the Murbad tehsil, Thane district. Gorakhgadh is a moderately tough trek in terms of terrain as well adventure. We did this trek in in early months of this year. Also, if this trek is done in night it becomes even more challenging due to the rocky trail and boulders on the trail at many places. All the pics in the blog are mostly during the return trail when there was day light.

We did this trek with Travel Buffs and our group was around 10-12 people big. Everyone assembled at Kalyan station. From here we were supposed to take a bus to Murbad but seeing the super overcrowded bus stand, no one could summon the courage to even try to attempt to get on that bus. Since we missed the 11:00 pm bus and the next bus was not soon enough, we decided to take a private jeep. From Kalyan station we went to Murbad. Here we changed Jeeps to reach the Dehri village which is the base village for the Gorakhgadh Trek.

Starting point - Temple in Dehri village

Actually, this was supposed to be a trek to Bhairavgadh but there was one guy who did not show up. Trek to Bhairavgadh was technical in nature and due to no-show of that person we turned towards Gorakhgadh. We got down at the temple. Everyone was sleepy at this point as it was middle of night. We sleepily did our introduction round and moved ahead with the trek. Temple was the starting point of the trek as there was a sidewalk created on temple boundary which led to the trail on the hills.

Steep hike

My partner had cramps in leg due to sitting in jeep for a long time and this slowed her down a little bit. She had to take quite a few breaks to keep moving ahead. We kept a steady pace but the initial climb was a bit steep. Also there were quite a few boulders which made us feel like we were climbing very high steps. This did put strain on thighs.

Resting spot

After an hour of climbing we came across couple of more trekkers who had camped near the trail. we also used it as a major breaking point and to cool off.

Temple at the base of the peak

From there we moved ahead through the shrubs and followed the trail to another temple. This temple is almost two-thirds way to the top. we again took some rest there and then moved ahead to our sleeping spot which was a cave in the mountain, just under the peak

Caves - resting spot till morning

To reach there we had to go through a small tunneled type steps. it took us around 20-30 minutes to reach the cave. Inside the cave there were other people sleeping. There was a fire inside cave but we all slept outside. We did bring a bed-sheet with us to sleep on as we did not have sleeping bags with us.

Moon shot during night

I did not get much sleep. Hence, I took some beautiful moon shots in the night. Everyone woke up in the morning and we all got to see the beauty of the surrounding hills and the cave where we were. In the morning we realized that we all were basically on the edge of one side of the mountain.

Almost vertical steps to reach top

We all took our time to get rid of sleep from our eyes and move to the last leg of the journey which was to the top of the Gorakhgadh peak. To reach top we moved towards left of the cave (left when we had our back towards cave). There was a narrow path which led to a very steep, almost 90 degree steps. The steps were very narrow and each step had good height. We climbed the steps one by one. There was grooves in the steps for us to hold which made it easy for us to climb the steps.

Adjacent hills

Once we all reached top, we all had breakfast provided by the group leads. On top there was a small Shiv temple and we could also see some fort ruins.we waited for the sunrise and chilled with group on top. This peak is basically extended part of Bhimshankar. Adjacent to the peak we were on, we could see Bhairavgadh on our right.

Getting ready to climb down

We rested for around 30-45 minutes on top and then made our way down. On the way down after climbing down half the steps, we tried to do rappelling  to cave but there were not proper marks to hold the rope and so we discarded the idea. We had kept a lot of our bags and stuff in the cave itself before going up. We collected our bags and started to get back through the same way we came up. Since I was not feeling so well even before starting the trek, I took a couple of medicines during the trek to keep me going.

On our way back to village

We took the same route back as we used to reach top. We climbed down to the temple at the base of the peak. We assembled there, took some rest and from there we took the trail to get back down to the Dehri village. We made our way back to the Gorakhgadh temple and there we had watermelons and few other fruits to recharge ourselves, while we waited for our jeep to come. We went back to Murbad in jeep and from there we went back to Kalyan station and back to our homes.

Overall it was a little challenging for us because we both were not in peak physical condition for trek. Otherwise the difficulty level of the trek is moderate. The trek in itself was fun and consisted of various different elements of trekking. A big thanks to Travel Buffs for this wonderful trek.

On top and edge of the peak

Till next trek... Toodles

Hill Skippers
hill.skippers@gmail.com

P.S. Do not litter. Keep the nature clean