A Day in the Fort!!

27568 steps. 2200 ft. 1500 stairs. 22.9 kms. 5 hours. Every bone of my body aching and screaming for rest. A whole night journey by bus without an ounce of sleep. Dance. Fun. Sweat. Striving physical hard to reach somewhere and actually reaching there. Revelation. Drinking from the fresh stream of water which runs between huge rocks. Getting lost in fog and loosing yourself in the mist. Getting drenched in your sweat and in the light drizzle. You still don’t care. You still have a long way to go. At every turn on the step you feel your body is going to lose it. The unknown physical strength and perseverance. Selfies. Lots of them. Clicks. At different positions. Confusion of which point is better than the other. At every corner of the mountain. Every inch of the fort. Reliving history. Relishing the deep rooted hatred towards British Raj in India and devotion for the pre-independence era.  Cherishing the feel of walking among the clouds. Literally. Your sweat drenched and self-dried t-shirt taking a bow to the sun. A village lunch. Eating on rocks. Reflecting on the difficulties of people staying so high up. Dropping dead into sleep at the first sign of civilized comfort. Praying so hard for the appearance of a chair or a bed from out of the blue. A not so long a bit silent drive back home. Finding your precious bed and expressing your deep coveted undying love for your mattress and pillow. Sleeping with a smile after gutting down several pills and emptying a few tubes of Volini.

Yes yet another trek. This time it was with office folks to Raigad Fort. Again. Unknown people. Rather semi known. I have not even worked with all of them or even know their names properly. Just the company of besties is enough to inspire such decisions. Something new this time. Parents were worried sick about my health. Can’t blame them actually. So, the main question here is... How was it? Well, it was good. Came across seem amazing moments with the hide and seek of clouds and fog with the hill tops.  Loved the occasional drizzle which was a relief for our heat scarred souls. Loved every moment of the trek. Even the ones where I was sweating like a pig. Even when my stamina was going down to negative levels. Sometimes it is so hard to believe that I could ever actually reach the top of the mountain so steep which would make 90 degrees feel ashamed of its accuracy. But I did it. We all did. Some much faster than us. My friends were slowing down mostly because of me, and sometimes when they wanted to catch their breath or other times when we wanted to capture moments in our camera.

We started early in the morning just after we reached Raigad through a whole night journey, freshening up and swallowing down a pathetic breakfast in what we would call the primitive limits of civilization. The first sight of stairs brought out every memory of Kung Fu Panda where he says, “my old enemy, stairs. I hate stairs!” Yes. The whole trek was more or less a series of high and steep set of stairs which almost killed me today. Almost. Five minutes after we started climbing, I was wet and swimming in my sweat like the temperature was suddenly 57 degrees only around me. It hurt. A lot. Every fat of my body was screaming names to me. Abusing me with words even I can’t think of. But after heaving my body and my spirit through the last set of stairs to the top of the mountain, I realized we just reached the entrance of the fort and that Delhi was very far away in my dreams! We had yet to take a round of the 100 acres of area over which Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj had decided to build one of his strongest forts. Raigad was the capital of his kingdom and many defense tactics up its sleeves which could give modern Indian defense system many years of strategic advantage.

Anyways, when we reached this entrance, it was all foggy. Not a soul was visible. But still we are young India. Future of this great nation which has the richest history in all of the world. We take up all challenges with a smirk. So this strain of Indian future felt their way through the several view points of the fort and we were simply captivated by the view and the history behind each brick of that fort. Every corner, every window took our several breaths. We might have caused serious oxygen level depression up there today. Every time we were awed and blown away by the cunning and brilliant brain of the 17th century warrior who is treated nothing less than God by the natives. His justice amazed me the most. There is this mountain peak named "Tambaktoo". If you even try to see down from that cliff, you would recall the names of all your ancestors and all God’s you possibly know. Chatrapti Shivaji’s justice was that anyone committing a serious crime would simply be thrown from this cliff. As simple as that. Brilliant, isn’t it? Only if Indian legal system could adapt this approach, we would have many less pending cases with faster results. Is there anything wrong in re-adapting your history? Something to think about.

So after that dreadful path to “Tambaktoo”, we went to visit Shivaji Maharaj’s Samadhi (tomb) adjacent to which is the tomb of his favorite dog Waagya. The tale goes that when the king died, his dog also died with him out of pain and sadness for his master. The king also adored his dog a lot. Animals and their undying devotion is sometimes beyond any humane explanation or logic. Then, was the time for lunch. Among the rocks. Literally. For the first time in my life, I was speculative about the hygiene of the food I was eating since I was literally sitting among the mountain goats poop and washing my hands from a pond which was infested by crocodile sized frogs and bat sized mosquitoes. What we ate, is better not to be described, I somehow filled my stomach and gathered the energy required for the last few hours of the day before we hit the bus.

At last, we came to say hi to civilization when we had to wait in the waiting room for rope ways for going down to our bus. We had chairs there. Imagine! It was a feel that we might be seeing chairs for the first time in our lives and not the fact that we curse the same chair for every working day and every extra inch of fat that our bodies gain after we became professionals. Every one grabbed a chair and dropped dead. A sound sleep, not power nap, for 45 minutes, which took me to heaven and back. The way down by rope way was precisely 4 minutes and 36 seconds. The 5 hours hike descended only in 4 minutes and 36 seconds. Humans and their inventions, I tell you!

And now we are heading back to our dear old Mumbai where our homes, beds are waiting patiently for us. When we were descending in the cable cars we saw and the realization hit of the height (2200 ft.) and steepness of the mountain we had taken upon ourselves of proving Tenzing Norgay what we can do!

In a nut shell, it was an adventurous day spent well among the clouds, fog and mist. The impact of which will be decided the following morning only and measured through the scales of body pains and stomach upsets. But given a chance again, I would not think twice to say... Yes, of course!!