Where shall I start to try to capture this adventure? Let me begin at the beginning.

As the popular version of the great battle of Pawankhind goes, Shivaji Raje was under siege at Panhala fort surrounded by Siddi Johar’s forces for months. They broke the siege and escaped the enemy forces on 12 July 1660. The ensuing battle is well known in Marathi history where a handful (600) brave warriors including Baji Prabhu Deshpande fought the enemy forces and lost their lives. (a detailed and historically accurate version of the life and times of Shivaji Maharaj can be found here in Marathi). Even today a lot of hikers and trekkers try to trace the route of this escape from Panhala to Vishalgad fort on foot. To relive and reimagine history. (I have of course abridged this version for the sake of this post but worth going down this rabbit hole if you are into history. Also worth mentioning I know only the text book version of Maratha history).

AH in our running group is neck-deep in Shivaji Raje’s history. So when he surfaced the idea of reliving this adventure a bunch of us jumped at the idea. Traditionally this is a multiple-day hike/run. But we like to add fun to the challenge so it was decided to do it in one day. A lot of funny and confusing polls were created to gather data and gauge interest. Sharing a sample below so you know how NOT to create polls.

Anyway, the good sense of humor across the group helped prevail sanity, and 11 of us signed up for this adventure in various forms. Few opted to do a portion (~10-15 km) of the 57 km route (I’ll come to it in a bit) and later offer support, few would do 2/3rd (~43 km) and the rest would do the entire long haul.

The Route

Legend (history) has it that Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (this is before he was coronated btw) traversed this route with 600 of his men on foot (he was in Palkhi obviously) by road taking over 20+ hours. At some point, few men stayed behind to hold and fight the enemy forces and the rest moved forward. Now how much of that original route still exists is a puzzle for someone else to solve. This is the route we took. Thanks to AH this is now available as a public route for anyone to use. While plotting this he also realized that segments were not created on this route. So if you or anyone you know wants to do this hike/run then you know which file to follow! (It is detailed and chalks out various points and villages well enough to plan the entire itinerary in a day or over multiple days).

Any talk about the route will be incomplete without Psycho Prashil Ambade. He is a Maharashtra-based YouTuber who vlogs about his escapades in the Sahyadris in Marathi. His engaging, genuine, and funny videos provided all of us with the needed guidance and a much-needed respite for the preparation for such an arduous trek. And also the fun lingo to fall back on during the actual hike!

The logistics

We booked our stay at Panhala (starting point) and Vishalgad (Amba valley near Vishalgad). We also booked a tempo traveler (tt) which would also work as our support vehicle enroute. Our driver’s name coincidentally was also Shivaji! Our plan was to reach the base by Friday evening, start the hike/run on Saturday early morning and retreat to our resort at Amba on Saturday evening post the adventure. As the d-weekend came closer so did the excitement, leg pulling, and camaraderie. There was no dearth of food being packed for the 3-day weekend. From energy bars, gels, salt tabs, drink mixes, bananas to mava cake, bakarwadis, theplas, gharge, chakli, banana chips to puran polis we had it all! If someone raided our vehicle midway they would wonder what part of the planet we were traveling to with so much food on us!

Our कूच (campaign) started on Friday afternoon by picking up folks dotted across the city and we were out of Pune by 1.30 PM. All along the journey, there were no signs of rain or clouds. That did unsettle us a bit, cos hiking/walking/running on a non-rainy day would prove a lot harder! So what did we do when faced with impending doom? We joked about it! A good sense of humor kept on prevailing. We joked about various scenarios and how we could do the hike during the night instead of a day in such weather or how we could just take the tt to the endpoint and enjoy the views. Amidst all this chatter and a coffee/tea break midway, we made it to Panhala, our base camp by 6-6.30 PM. Panhala welcomed us with spectacular pink skies and a lovely natural lighting show!

AH later also told us that when Shivaji visited Panhala for the first time, he was so taken by the fort that he spent the night just wandering around. I guess we were too by the modern-day Panhala. We roamed around, took a ‘London bus’ ride, few of us tried the segway ride – all the fun! Then we celebrated SG’s belated birthday over dinner of Pithla, bhakri, matki usal and daal khichadi and KP’s mava cake. The next day was going to be a long one so we retreated to our rooms to pack and prepare our adventure kits.

D-day

With all the packing, and planning completed the day before, we – at least us ladies – woke up at 4 am. After attending to respective business and gupshup we had nice strong coffee thanks to SG. Ready by 5 am, we were raring to start. There was no sight of rain. It was foggy and humid. We assembled in the resort lobby by 5.15 am and started our arduous journey in the pitch dark. Most of us had live tracking enabled on our Garmin watches which was shared with folks back at home base camp (KD our home base camp support manager FTW!) so it was going to be easier to track our progress and report in case anything bad happened or someone wanted to quit.

Geared with headlamps we traversed the tricky, muddy trails and made it to the first patch of tar road by daybreak. SP, SG, KP, and AH (group A) who were going to do a smaller portion of the hike then continued on the road while the rest of us took the trail. We hit the first village on the route – Mhalunge – around 3KM and realized we could have taken the road like group A and avoided muddy trails. Never mind! As we approached Masai Pathaar, a huge meadow, group C (AH, VS, AP) had already broken into a run and vanished into a distance. We i.e. group B (AT, YP, PP, and me) took our time savoring the open, vast meadows and clicking pictures. We started slow jogging as this was a good trail to run on.

(Also from now onward, the description is more from my/Group B’s perspective)

Around 8 km we reached the main Masai Mandir (there is another small one midway). From here on the meadow section was largely over and we would hit trails and roads dotted by villages. We reached Kumbharwadi around 8 am. Group C by this time had कूचed so ahead of us that we lost hope of ever catching up with them. The 4 of us were taking it easy – chit-chatting, clicking pictures, and sharing random anecdotes along the way.

We also witnessed a unique rock structure mostly formed because of friction with the elements. It’s captured below (thanks to YP who told us about this and asked us to keep an eye out! This is visible from the tar road patch between the trails after Kumbharwada and before Khotwadi)

This was around 10-11kms. By this time AT and I were discussing how we were going to think of just the next 5 km at a stretch and will take a call about quitting/continuing when that situation arose. Around this time we also did a mini breakfast of salt tabs, energy bars, theplas, and rajgira. With the 5km marker strategy in mind we continued and to our surprise made it to the 21km mark past Karpewadi without any issues. We crossed Khotwadi, Mandalaiwadi, and Dhangarwada (first) along the way. Some unique doors from the villages captured below.

We crossed the 21.2KM marker at ~10 am. By this time, group A had made it back to the hotel and was already on their way to Amba. Group C was ~5km ahead of us at this point. The weather gods were still not working their magic and we kept on begging the विधाता (iykyk) to show some mercy. The sun was making its presence felt in spite of the eye-soothing lush greenery around.

All of us had done some form of Himalayan treks, but this part of Maharashtra offered such unique visuals and greenery that I wondered if this one life is enough to explore these wonders! Around 11 am विधाता did send some showers our way. Much needed distraction on the trails! At every village we crossed on the way, by default, the village kids somehow on cue would make their presence felt by stopping us and asking for chocolates (गोळीs). ‘मामा मामा गोळी द्या’ was their war cry. Alas! to their disappointment we weren’t carrying anything interesting to be shared with them.

My mental ‘give-up’ point based on past hikes is around 23-25km, but during this one, I did not realize I had crossed that point well into the 30th km. To lay out the truth, I was hoping to do a 20-30 km hike and happily call it a day. Now at 30KM, the intermediate goal of reaching Pawankhind i.e. 43km point looked doable. Not having heavy rains also proved to be a good thing, as hiking/walking/running in rain would have slowed us down even more! With that in mind and renewed vigor, we started the last leg of the trail before Pandharpani, our aid stop.

Around 35ish km (around 1.15 PM) we ran into another group of hikers at ह्योच तो (it’s a stream that you have to walk through)! Yes ever since the early morning start. They had started the hike from Karpewadi and told us about running into Group C who had already made it to the aid station by then. This was also the first stream that we had to walk through. No option of jumping over rocks. Our shoes and socks were soaking wet. After some chit-chat, we started a slow trudge to the aid station stop. This route had many streams we needed to walk through. Now that our initial inhibitions of hiking/walking in wet shoes were down the drain, we started enjoying walking through the water. This also cleaned our erstwhile mud-soaked shoes! Talk of free wash!

As we completed this last leg of the trail that met the highway, our support vehicle also came driving through. To our shock and surprise! KD from the home base camp was following our live track and had informed them about our whereabouts. Just seeing the faces of SG and AH refreshed and rejuvenated me. KP and SP had tagged Group C in the meantime for the rest of the hike/run. We took our time to replenish and offload some of the things we were carrying. The ladies had to skip their lunch while supporting the two groups! Not sure what I am more grateful for – but finding people who want to support these adventures truly makes it to the top of my list.

Following AT’s mantra of ‘if it’s working, don’t change the configuration’ we started the last leg. This was going to be all road running. To my surprise at least, my legs and brain were still cooperating. It also started to rain a bit heavy so our wish to do a rain run was also granted! We crossed the 42.2 KM (full marathon y’all) mark in 10 hours 14 mins around 3.30 PM and made it to Pawankhind by 4 PM. At this point, YP wanted to continue to Vishalgad to complete the task at hand. Garmin was showing 3 more hours for the remaining 15KM. He decided to move forward as the rest of us called it a day after a quick visit to Pawankhind. As we started our journey to Vishalgad to pick up group C it was decided to pick YP too, as doing this leg alone in the rain wasn’t the safest idea. To add to the fun, we weren’t able to track him! We picked up Group C who were happily chilling at Vishalgad, having conquered the mission. We found YP on the road back to our resort and dragged him to join us in the tt with a promise to do this one more time, some other time, with better conditions.

The time back at the resort was spent cleaning up and waiting for dinner over a catch-up with Group C, A, and chit-chat. We shared our own stories and listened to theirs over the wine that SG had brought for celebration. Maybe this is one of the greatest privileges of life – finding the company of like-minded individuals. What joy to be a part of something so unique and fun and weird. Post dinner more stories and leg pulling later we called it a day at 9.30 pm.

The departure day also started very early in the morning with all of us up and about by 7 am. Coffee, tea, and breakfast later we were on our way back to Pune by 10 am. There was a much-debated stop at a nursery on the way that also bonded some of us, plant lovers. A stop to buy fresh vegetables was ruled out tho 😛 A sumptuous lunch was had at Manas Restaurant on the Pune-Satara highway. This grand adventure came to an end as everyone made their way home one by one. It’ll live in our minds for a long long time to come.

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