Trek to Kothaligad (Karjat)

Posted by Dhruwin Charla on Dec 23, 2009 in Treking Experiences | 7 comments

Just after finishing loads of monsoon treks, we planned for kothaligad near to Karjat. Kothaligad is also known as Peth cha killa. Kothali means empty funnel in Marathi language. It was 20^th sept 09 when we decided to complete kothaligad as a pilot trek in one day. It was Sunday and the weather was awesome.

We started off from Mumbai at around 4.30 AM catching first train to Karjat from Dadar. We reached Karjat station at around 7.45 Am. And now we headed towards to S.T bus depot to catch a bus for the base villages, Ambivali. Ambivali is situated around 35 Km’s from Karjat station. When we reached the S.T depot, we came to know that the first bus for Ambivali is at 8.30 AM. So we decided to have some breakfast there. We had hot tea and Vadapav’s. And then the bus arrived. We all got into the bus, the final destination of this bus is, Jamrukh village. We reached Ambivali at around 9.30 AM. We asked a person near the S.T bus stop for the way towards Peth. As he told we followed the way. Peth is again another village which can be said as perfect base for the trek. It takes around 2 hours to reach Peth village from Ambivali. The way is not a perfect road, its rocky and mudy and is continuously slight climbing. It was a hot day with sun at our heads and we were very dehydrated. But we reached Peth village at 11.30 AM.

Now we asked villagers for the way, they showed us and we followed it. The trek is very simple and takes only 1.30 hour to reach at top. We had lots of photo sessions here. From Peth village itself you can see the whole Bhimashankar range. The lovely waterfalls on the Bhimashankar range were just mind blowing. At 1.00 Pm we reached at the top of Kothaligad. We saw some caves there. Some local person takes care of these caves. He daily conducts some rituals and other things. He gave us water from the tanks. Those tanks contain awesome chilled water. They are carved in rocks. Then we went to the top through the carved in steps. This whole structure is like a funnel which means Kothali. These steps are 2 feet each in height. At top, there are two water tanks which supply water to the Peth village for some duration. From here, you can see valleys on all four sides. We can see Matheran range, Bhimashankar range, Padar killa, and whole Peth village. It was not raining, so we were able to spot all of these as there was no fog.

We had theplas and some other food stuff here. Now it was time to descend. We got ready for the simple descend. We decided not to take any snaps..heehehee. We got down very rapidly in just 40 mins. While coming down, we saw big spiders with their huge webs of 5-6 meters. We took snaps of these..finally cameras were out.

Now we were at Peth village and we had some cold drinks here in a small hotel. Soon we started getting down towards the Ambivali village. The whole way was really tiring, because it was hot day and secondly the way is too rocky which pains in the foots. We reach Ambivali at 3.30 PM. We were waiting for tumtum rickshaw or a bus towards Karjat. Finally even the rain poured, we were happy at this time. But soon it disappeared somewhere into mountains. After waiting at the village school, we finally got a tumtum rickshaw towards Kashele. We reached kashele and took another tumtum for Karjat station.
We were at Karjat station at around 5 PM, we had some snacks here. Vadapavs and Dabelis with hot tea.

We then got CST train from Karjat station which was damn slow and packed with public. But hopefully we were lucky that we all got seats. We reached home by 8 PM. It was not that tiring trek, but the foots really pain due to the rocky path of Ambivali to Peth which is damn 8 km.

Kothaligad is a good trek for starters and can be done as a pilot trek without any local guide. Its small and can be enjoyed very much in monsoon.

Click here to see pictures of Kothaligad.