Matheran Trekking
1-Apr-2007
By Pavan Tambay
1-Apr-2007
By Pavan Tambay
We started off from thane railway station at around 6:00am. Only three of us could make it to the railway station so early in the morning. We had extracted the trekking route’s initial information from several blogs on the internet itself. Although there are several routes for trekking, we decided to go on one of the most exciting routes. It is said that Matheran is a hill station discovered by the British to beat the summer heat of Mumbai. People believe that it is a wonderful place to visit during monsoon season because there are a lot of waterfalls and the mountains are lush green. The lakes are overflowing and it is a very panoramic view from the top to see the lake reservoirs. We thought that it would be nice to visit the hill station in summer to see how much heat it beats. Further it is not advisable to traverse waterfall routes in monsoon.
There is a narrow gauge train that goes to the top of the Matheran plateau. It starts from Neral railway station and takes almost 2.5 hrs to reach at the top. There are also taxis that leave you at the entrance of the famous hill station. There are no vehicles allowed on the roads up there, but surely you could hire horses for a leisure ride within the small town. The railway route that could be looked at for reaching there is: Mumbai->Thane->Kalyan->Neral->Karjat.
Here is how we went. We, Pavan, Mangesh and Shirish, went up to Karjat from Thane. We reached Karjat at around 8 am. We hired an autorickshaw up to the point called Pokarwadi village. Now the distances are approximately as follows. From Karjat railway station, Chowk is around 9 km. But, there is a village called Borgao which is around 3 km off main road to Chowk. You need to take a turn nearly 4 km. before you reach Chowk. And from this village there is another small village called Pokarwadi a few km away. The road to this village goes alongside Morbe Dam reservoir. This dam reservoir gives a fantastic view from Matheran.
From Pokarwadi, there are two routes that go to Matheran. One reaches Rambaug Point and another one reaches One Tree Hill Point. The later one is thought a bit tough route because it is a bit longer. We had already decided to traverse the long forest route. We picked up a local person from the village as our guide by paying him a nominal fee.
It was another wonderful experience going up the waterfalls and a not so dense forest. The first half of the road did pass through a couple of very small villages and small farms initially. There were no big shady trees that we could find in the path. We could see The Matheran Plateau very far and high above us.
The later half trek was through shady trees. The route crossed several waterfall sites.
We kept hearing the wood peckers echo their screams and kept mocking. There were no wild animals as we were expecting. We were hopeful to see some snakes but could not. So we entertained ourselves with the wood peckers noise assuming it was the rattle snake making that noise.
It took us almost 2.5 hrs to climb up to One Tree Hill Point. It is not bad when compared to the time taken by the train. We were a bit tired but soon got refreshed after having three different cold drinks at a small shop at that point. Matheran is a bit cool due to a lot of trees on the plateau, but the height from the mean sea level is not much. Again we set off for exploring the Hill Station Plateau on our foot. We saw a lot of people there unlike our trek route where there was none other than us. We saw people riding horses and hand-driven carts. The Maximum distance between the two end points of Matheran is around 6 km and it is very less if we have a complete day with us to visit all the places. We had our lunch in a fine restaurant and visited some good site-seeing points of Matheran. We also did some light shopping at the Market place. Charlott Lake and Echo Point are worth paying a visit. There are a lot of other site seeing points nearby.
The points were nice but not as exciting as compared to the trek route that we had climbed up.
Finally we decide to come down by the mini-train but found that all the seats were pre-booked. So we fascinated ourselves by having a small photo session with the mini-train and traveled on foot on the rail-track, to the other end the Matheran, Dasturi Naka, where we could hire a taxi up to Neral. It took the taxi 15 mins to come down the hill. We reached Thane railway station around 7 pm. It was overall a wonderful experience.
There is a narrow gauge train that goes to the top of the Matheran plateau. It starts from Neral railway station and takes almost 2.5 hrs to reach at the top. There are also taxis that leave you at the entrance of the famous hill station. There are no vehicles allowed on the roads up there, but surely you could hire horses for a leisure ride within the small town. The railway route that could be looked at for reaching there is: Mumbai->Thane->Kalyan->Neral->Karjat.
Here is how we went. We, Pavan, Mangesh and Shirish, went up to Karjat from Thane. We reached Karjat at around 8 am. We hired an autorickshaw up to the point called Pokarwadi village. Now the distances are approximately as follows. From Karjat railway station, Chowk is around 9 km. But, there is a village called Borgao which is around 3 km off main road to Chowk. You need to take a turn nearly 4 km. before you reach Chowk. And from this village there is another small village called Pokarwadi a few km away. The road to this village goes alongside Morbe Dam reservoir. This dam reservoir gives a fantastic view from Matheran.
From Pokarwadi, there are two routes that go to Matheran. One reaches Rambaug Point and another one reaches One Tree Hill Point. The later one is thought a bit tough route because it is a bit longer. We had already decided to traverse the long forest route. We picked up a local person from the village as our guide by paying him a nominal fee.
It was another wonderful experience going up the waterfalls and a not so dense forest. The first half of the road did pass through a couple of very small villages and small farms initially. There were no big shady trees that we could find in the path. We could see The Matheran Plateau very far and high above us.The later half trek was through shady trees. The route crossed several waterfall sites.We kept hearing the wood peckers echo their screams and kept mocking. There were no wild animals as we were expecting. We were hopeful to see some snakes but could not. So we entertained ourselves with the wood peckers noise assuming it was the rattle snake making that noise.It took us almost 2.5 hrs to climb up to One Tree Hill Point. It is not bad when compared to the time taken by the train. We were a bit tired but soon got refreshed after having three different cold drinks at a small shop at that point. Matheran is a bit cool due to a lot of trees on the plateau, but the height from the mean sea level is not much. Again we set off for exploring the Hill Station Plateau on our foot. We saw a lot of people there unlike our trek route where there was none other than us. We saw people riding horses and hand-driven carts. The Maximum distance between the two end points of Matheran is around 6 km and it is very less if we have a complete day with us to visit all the places. We had our lunch in a fine restaurant and visited some good site-seeing points of Matheran. We also did some light shopping at the Market place. Charlott Lake and Echo Point are worth paying a visit. There are a lot of other site seeing points nearby.
The points were nice but not as exciting as compared to the trek route that we had climbed up.Finally we decide to come down by the mini-train but found that all the seats were pre-booked. So we fascinated ourselves by having a small photo session with the mini-train and traveled on foot on the rail-track, to the other end the Matheran, Dasturi Naka, where we could hire a taxi up to Neral. It took the taxi 15 mins to come down the hill. We reached Thane railway station around 7 pm. It was overall a wonderful experience.
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