Kalavantin Durg – The World’s Most Dangerous Fortress, A Trek Not For The Faint-hearted

Monsoons are the preferred season for trekking when weather is superb and the landscape looks more attractive with the presence of mountains, hills, meadows, and dense forests.

Maharashtra is home to part of the esteemed Western Ghats. Every year during monsoons Maharashtra transforms into one of the beautiful and hottest destinations in India.

It’s rugged mountains of Sahyadri offers ultimate trekking destinations around Pune and Mumbai. Sahyadri mountain Range is an adventure seekers paradise.

The Prabalgad-Kalavantin durg is one of the most difficult forts to trek but a favourite destination for trekking around Pune, also known as one of the topmost beautiful abandoned places in India.

Sitting at an elevation of 2250 feet ( 686 meters), the summit offers breathtaking views of the surrounding Western Ghats. Located in the Sahyadri’s, the place is replete with scenic views. Exploring the wilderness in the monsoon season is altogether a different experience. The hues of green becomes more vibrant. The trails also become cleaner and more beautiful. It also blows you off with scenic series of mountains and hills.

The monsoon season would make this place much more fascinating with its lush green views. So once you reach the top, you would get an amazing view of Sahyadri mountains.

It is one of the most offbeat and exciting adventures in Sahyadri’s. This trek is as challenging as it is rewarding, but all the efforts to make it to the pinnacle will be worth it, as you will be rewarded with some breathtaking views.

This trek from Thakurvadi village leads the traveller to the Kalavantin Durg located right next to the Prabhalgad fort. One can see Kalavantin durg from Prabalgad top. So we decided to do both the treks. You can also enjoy the wide shots of lovely green mountains and narrow valleys as you continue your trail. The beauty of this trek is the amazing rock-cut steps that zig-zag their way up to the mountains.The steps will be 80 degrees inclined.

The rock-cut stairs aren’t that dangerous as they seem to be in the videos on the internet. One needs to be just a bit careful while traversing them. On a weekend, me along with my other trek friends planned this trek with Backpackers and City Freaks. And from Hyderabad, it’s a weekend gateway.

On a friday evening, I logged out of my office, packed my backpack, and reached Begumpet station. This is the station that I need to catch my train – Mumbai express at 8.40 pm.

My friends and organiser (RK from BCF team) are expected to join at Lingampally station.

We all met at Lingampally station, there were 5 more new trek-mates, we introduced ourselves and had our dinner (packed) in train and started playing some fun games.

We were waiting for Wadi junction, we may reach that station at midnight to have tea which is quite famous. After having tea at Wadi we went to sleep, so that we are not tired for the next day trek.

We woke up in the morning and got fresh up in the train itself, instead of getting fresh up at station. We prefer finishing it off in the train, so that we are not running late for our trek which is expected to start in the afternoon.

Vada pav: The ‘Indian burger ‘ McDonald’s can’t master

I had been on plenty of trains before( train being the backbone of our country), transport for the masses, poetry in motion, havens of sweet chai, and hot vada-pav sold through windows by vendors. As this train is enroute to Mumbai, vada pav ( vada pav has grown to be the darling of the masses) was sold on the train, which I never want to miss while going for Sahyadri treks. And that was my breakfast for the day.

We reached Pune and most of the office going crowd has dropped at the station and the train got empty. Our trek group gathered at one place and started playing fun games as we have 2 hrs more to reach Karjat (the place from where we have to go to Thakurvadi village and start our trek )

We reached Karjat, had our lunch, and also carried snacks and energy bars for our trek. And then we got into a private vehicle and started to Thakurvadi, we are expected to reach in 3-4hrs. Thakurvadi is the village from where we will be starting our trek to Prabalmachi village and there are two trails one to Prabalgad and the other one to Kalavantin Durg. Season being monsoons ,all the surroundings were green on our way. Our journey was fabulous on the route to Thakurvadi.

We stretched ourselves and started our trek, as we need to finish Prabalgad before the sun sets for the day.

To reach Prabalmachi village it would take 1 to 1.5 hours. We started our trek with full josh enjoying the scenic beauty. In the middle, it started raining and we had to wear our raincoats and cover our bags with rain covers. We didn’t stop our trek though it was raining.

We reached Prabalmachi, there is only one family who will be arranging the homestay and food.

We kept our backpacks in our homestay and started to Prabalgad. While ascending rain was heavy and the trail in the dense forest was too good.

Due to the rain, the trail was full of water and slippery, so luckily I wore shoes with good grip and few people had missed out a turn and they went straight which made them miss our trail. After a few minutes, we realized that few of our mates were not coming with us.One of us went back for them and got them back to the correct trail.

About 1.5 hours later we reached Prabalgad. It was raining continuously, because of heavy rain it was full of fog. We couldn’t see the people who were standing just two feet apart from us. Because of the fog, we were not able to see the Kalavantin durg peak from Prabalgad.

While ascending, steep and muddy trails,slippery rocks will leave you breathless, and make your way through thorny bushes to reach the tops of these hills.

Not many are brave enough to trek during monsoons, fearing rains will spoil their plans. In fact, the fun of travelling in monsoons is double. Not only the weather is therapeutic but the monsoon foods, bonfires make it more adventurous. Specially in the monsoons, the Western Ghats are transformed into a tropical green paradise

After clicking few photographs, we started descending to Prabalmachi village. And it was getting dark, we used our head torch and reached to Prabalmachi in an hour.

Everyone was tired and hungry, got fresh up in our homestay, and were ready for dinner. People at the homestay served us hot roti, chawal, and dal curry and everything was so yummy.

After dinner inside the homestay we played till 12, one of our trek mate’s birthday was that very next day. So we wished him and gave him some birthday bumps

And added a wish to my wish list ( For one of my birthday I want myself to be on top of a mountain ,peacefully with no mobile signals and connectivity with the outside world)

We went to bed early, keeping in mind that we need to start early in the morning to Kalavantin durg.

Everyone woke up early in the morning got fresh up and carried few snacks and energy bars and started our trek to Kalavantin durg.

It was raining continuously with heavy wind. The trail was easy except the last bit which was 80 degrees inclined and had very high steps.

The trail gets even more treacherous until climbers finally reach the pinnacle of the Kalavantin Durg, once you witness the bird’s eye view ,you will forget all the trouble that you had climbing it.

Everyone stopped before that last bit, we were scared to climb further, took few minutes of break and we were discussing on how to climb.

Meanwhile, a local guy had crossed us who was wearing only flip flops/slippers and he went ahead with so much ease, as if it was a daily routine for him, we were shocked by looking at him.

And we started ahead with some inspiration, if we looked down there was nothing visible and only heavy wind was blowing. We had literally crawled up and reached the top of the mountain in half an hour.

Clicked few photographs 📸, had some snacks and started descending .

We reached Prabalmachi and had our breakfast poha which is a must try. In that rain, hot hot poha will be truly a blessing for your taste buds 😋.

We carried our backpacks from homestay and started our journey back to Thakurvadi.

We reached in less than an hour. Got into the private vehicle and returned back to Karjat and boarded our train at 4.30 pm and said bye-bye.

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