Welcome to the new Sahyadri Trotter

hello and welcome to everyone reading this blog. this blog is just starting out as a hobby, nothing much really, just to record my trekking achievements in and around the sahyadri range of mountains. for the uninitiated, the sahyadri (pronounced as 'sah - yaa - dri') is the name given to a part of a much longer continuous range of mountains which lines the west coast of india. this long range of mountains is called the western ghats. the word 'ghat' in many indian languages like hindi and marathi means a mountain range or mountain pass. now, back to the sahyadris, this is the portion of western ghats that spans across maharashtra from the north to the south about 75km inland from the west coast. the west coast itself covers a lot of important and affluent maharashtrian cities such as mumbai, ratnagiri, alibag, kolhapur, etc. then about 75km inside the coast, we can see the majestic stance of the sahyadris throughout the west side of maharashtra. and on the other side of the sahyadris, opposing the one to the coast, begins the deccan plateau, inside which, other important cities like pune, aurangabad, solapur, etc lie. the sahyadris form a massive fortress to the region lying to the west of india, almost like the first bastion of defence against attackers. unlike the himalayas, which were formed due to sedimentary rocks colliding into each other and rising as a result of continental drift, the sahyadris (in fact the whole of western ghats) were formed by basalt rocks as a result of solidification of magma from volcanic eruptions, which are now long defunct. the sahyadris abound in both flora and fauna especially in the monsoon season between june and september. that is when they r the tourists' and trekkers' favourite. while the majority of sahyadris wear a forlorn, dull, almost desert-like brown between november and may, they r drenched in luxurious emerald-like green in the monsoon months which entices the folks to pay them a visit and rejuvenate themselves from the fast and hectic urban lives of the maharashtrian cities, especially mumbai and pune. another important factor for these two cities to really head out to the sahyadris is the proximity and the resultant immediate affordability. a weekend sahyadri getaway for one person can be as low as 50 rupees, if all he / she wants to do is roam and trek around and not stay overnight at any hotels, lodges, etc. whereas a typical delhi / kolkata resident has to shell out 3 - 4 figure amounts and travel a mininum of 500 km or more to reach the northern / north-eastern himalayas respectively and a chennai / bangalore / hyderabad resident has to do likewise for ooty / coorg / munnar / kodai, etc, a mountain getaway with return trip for a mumbai / pune resident starts from as low as 40 rupees (local train / bus ticket fares to trekking base camp places like panvel / khopoli / neral, etc). also the sahyadris r easily accessible since the villages / towns at their foothills r superbly connected by railways and roadways and the public transport is dirt cheap. hill stations like matheran and mahabaleshwar and hill shrines like bhimashankar and trimbakeshwar r especially attractive to the new generation with fat sums of salaries and draw tourists in droves every year.

now i have personally travelled to a lot of these places myself by all forms of transport and seen and enjoyed them. yet i felt that it was not enough. every mountain i see is magical and sort of invites me to climb it. i thought that rather than just see and admire these huge structures, maybe i should interact with them, get closer to them. but its too dangerous to do it all alone. fortunately for me, i have two like minded friends, one of them being a fairly seasoned mountain trekker. with our liaison, we started on our long quest of conquering the important and prominent parts of sahyadris. one thing was that it was only possible for me now rather than later. i have a steady job, decent salary, two working parents and working sister, no real dependencies, two day weekends, not a very demanding workload, and mere 4 hours of daily travel, which is a real luxury in the mumbai IT industry. my age is also right for this, i m 25 as i post this, with a gym workout keeping me extremely fit. in short, its now or never, since we never know, how long i will stay here, since IT jobs can land us anywhere, another city, another state, another country, who knows. so on we go. by the way the afore mentioned friends of mine, Yogesh Jadhav who is a seasoned trekker, and Nikhil Kamble, who is a newbie like myself r co-authors of this blog and u can expect occasional posts from them as and when they get the time. one of the purposes of this blog is that we describe in quite a lot of detail about what we did for and during each of our outings, so it can act as a guide for ur own trekking plans. if some search engine hits this blog, gr8, we will have achieved what we wanted from this blog. until the next post, bye !!!!!