Lohagad Fort - Beginners Trek
If you are new to trekking & figuring the trek to start with then this is the one you should go with. Lohagad is amongst those beautiful place, where every time you go, you would be falling in love with it all over again such is the beauty of the place.
" A Trek for beginner "
If you are new to trekking & figuring the trek to start with then this is the one you should go with. Lohagad is amongst those beautiful place, where every time you go, you would be falling in love with it all over again such is the beauty of the place.
Difficulty level : Easy
Endurance level : Simple
Height of the fort : 3400 ft (around 1050 mtr)
Base Village : Lohgadwadi, is the base village. ( Pune - Maharashtra, India)
Best time to visit : Monsoon (best time - most preferred time to visit)
Winter (best - chill atmosphere)
Summer (average - as due to open environment more dehydration will take place)
Entry Fees : NO fees are applicable.
Build in the 18th century, this fort was build for the military purpose during the era of 18th century.
Its located near the west of Pune in the Sahyadari ranges of maval in pune district. It is close to popular hill station Lonavala & Khandala, the fort stands tall at 3400ft above sea level.
Visapur fort is also situated near to it & is also known as twin fort of lohagad as it stands next to eachother.
The base village also gets it name lohagadwadi from the lohagad fort.
How to reach Fort:-
Railways : Nearest railway station is Lonavala.
You need catch a train which can reach to Lonavala railway station & from there you can catch the local rickshaw/ tumtum to the base village lohagadwadi, it will take around 20-30 min. You can also check with the ST Bus as they are also plying but the frequency is very less.
Charges would be around Rs 50 per seat
Road ways : Nearest known location is Malavli.
You need to catch the NH48 highway its easily accessible from Pune as well as Mumbai also, you have to take turn from the Malavli village to reach the lohagad fort. Being an well known Mumbai Pune highway road conditions are too good & if you love driving then this journey is for you.
To note, road conditions from Malavli to lohagad fort are fairly upto average, it is around 6km distance journey from malavli to lohagad fort.
Trek Experience :
This trek was done in the month of August, 2015, back then we were a circle of around 7 best friends & to explore the beauty with camera, a friend of us had brought 2 of his friends who turned out to be good at photography.
We started out journey from Dadar Station, we catched the early morning train Indrayani Express at around 5:50 am in the morning. It was heavily overcrowded train but due to friends, we enjoyed that journey of 2 - 2:30 hours in great fun.
We reached Lonavala station at around 8:20 am in morning, enjoying the cold breeze around us, we had started feeling pleasant by the environment around us.
From there outside the station, we had our morning breakfast of some tasty samosa, misal pav & tea. We took the rickshaw from there to reach the base village of lohagadwadi, it took as arounf 15-20min to reach & they had charged us around Rs 50 per seat.
The view which we got after getting down was just admiring greenery, waterfall, cloudy sky, cold wind blowing cross our body made our adnerline high. Slowly gradually admiring the nature & having fun we started our trek at around 9:30am, passing through numerous waterfall, bushes we enjoyed every moment of the journey.
At around 10:30 we had our interval for having some home made tasty Paper Dosa ( credit goes to our friend's mummy for making it ready so early in morning).
There are also various small hotels serving delicious food near the base of the fort.
Restarting our journey ahead we had fun at our private waterfall we can say, also we can across some beautiful scenery worth admiring.
Passing through the scenery we reached the top of the fort at around 11:30, we would out there were small lake, well & a shiv ling on top of the fort.
The water was too cold, winding blowing across the body, raining continuously all this left our body shivering but again the moment was so high due to friends that none of us we feeling so.
The feeling of finally reaching the top, was marvelous & with such fun loving friends it was worth trekking.
We started our descending journey at around 1:30 pm, it took us around 2 hours to reach to the base village but it was also of great enjoyment.
We took the tumtum back to lonavala station & reached around 4pm over there.
We took the Deccan Express which is scheduled at around 4:30pm from lonavala, we reached to Dadar station at around 7:00pm.
It was time to depart to respective home worst part of the trek.
We were left with such beautiful memories in this trek which that made our friendship even deeper & it is due to this trek we are still best friends & continue to trek every now & then.
References :
If you are planning for trek at this beautiful place then following links may help you
