Trek to Karnala.a safe but Adventurous trek.
It was late August and this was my first trek experience, we were a group of six. We started at approx 8AM from Chembur and travelled to Karnala by bikes approx 1.5 hrs from Mumbai. Reaching to Karnala is pretty simple you have to go to Panvel and from there just follow Mumbai-Goa highway and approx. 30mins from Panvel, you will see the board of Karnala Bird Sanctuary on your left. You have to buy the tickets and there is a sufficient parking place for vehicles little up the hill.
We were carrying 8 to 9 water bottle, sufficient food items and had decided to cook Maggy once we reach the top. Before starting the trek we all wanted to get fresh and visited a nearby hotel approx. 5-7mins bike distance from the sanctuary entrance. The hotel was decent and Batata Vada’s and tea were good too.
We started the trek around 11AM, the trek is full of rocky paths and continuous climb atleast for initial 2hrs till we reach the top of the mountain. From there we have to walk through the jungle for about 45mins to 1hr and then final 15mins climb to the fort. As this was august, it was green everywhere and the scenery was simply fantastic. Once we reached the fort, it was a great feeling….
After spending approx 30mins, we started going back and finally stopped at a point where no-one was there and we had sufficient space for starting a new adventure….i.e. to cook the Maggie when it was quite windy and it required great efforts from all of us to cook the Maggie.half of the Maggie masala was in pot and rest was blown away by the wind. But still the Maggie was testy. We found ourselves really short of water as there is no place from where you can get some water, strangely we even couldn’t find a small water source throughout this trek(this was the one thing that I missed during this trek). After having Maggie and 15-20mins of rest, we started the backwards journey. It was really hot and in short time we all were feeling really tired(we didn’t have water that made it so difficult). Somehow we managed to reach back to the base.by then we were all exhausted. We just had a lot of water, few cold drinks at a small hotel which near to the parking area.
While we were on the way back to Mumbai it started raining….which completed the picnic.
Thanks,
Ruturaj.