Harihar Fort - Maharashtra's 80 Degree Vertically Inclined Trek
17-Dec-22 | Trimbakeshwar - Here we come...
Harihar fort is the latest entrant to my bucket list thanks to the impressive reels on social media. And it's time to tick this off from my bucket list😊.
My colleague cum travel buddy had already researched about this and planned everything. Harihar Fort is located in Trimbakeshwar, 40 KM from Nashik. So we had booked a bus to Nashik from Pune and the plan was to take a bus to Trimbakeshwar from Nashik. For Trekking enthusiasts, Trimbakeshwar is famous for two treks – Harihar fort trek and Brahmagiri trek. So, keeping these two plans in mind, we had booked our stay at Hotel Midtown Inn, Trimbakeshwar for 2 days.
We hopped onto a private bus from Pune at around 3:30 PM and reached Nashik at around 8:30 PM in the night. We decided to have dinner at Nashik and then board a bus to Trimbakeshwar from old CBS. Luckily the MSRTC bus was waiting at CBS, and we hopped onto the bus. So it was just us, driver, conductor and the noisiest bus journey ever experienced. You must travel once to experience what I am saying😊.
Finally, we reached Trimbakeshwar and Hotel Midtown is just walkable from where the bus dropped us. The best part about this hotel is its distance from the main temple(5 minutes walk). So we checked into the hotel and asked the front desk people if they could arrange an auto for us to travel to Harihar fort next day morning. He said he would arrange and shared auto driver's number with us. Plan was to get up early and be ready by 5:30 am for pickup.
Harihar Fort Trek - Bucket List Time 😊
Our driver reached at 6 am and picked us up from the hotel. During our drive from hotel to base point we got some amazing clicks of landscapes with the onset of sunrise.
We reached Harihar fort base point/parking which is the Harshewadi village at around 6:30 am. Our driver said he would charge Rs 600 for one way and if he needed to wait and drop us back to the hotel he would charge 1500. We agreed to wait since we hardly saw any public transport or alternate means of getting back to the hotel.
We started our trek now from base village to the plateau. After crossing some fields, the trail gradually starts uphill.
Once you reach the plateau, you will get the first glimpse of 80-degree incline climb.
Trek to the steps of the fort also was challenging since there is some amount of rock climbing required to be done here. And cranky monkeys will be waiting as speed breakers here.
Finally we made it to the base of the steps. The steps are too narrow which can allow only one person to pass through at a time. But the best part is there are perfectly carved holes in each step so that you can grab them and climb easily.
First warning - People with height fever or vertigo, don’t look down while climbing since it might break your pace. I did the same. I was too scared to even stop and look around for the views 
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Second warning – There are lot of monkeys acting as speed breakers who disturb your climb by trying to grab things from your hand, bag, pockets etc. Luckily even during this trek we had a messenger(Sarathi) with us sent by God just like other treks – our doggy. He was chasing away the monkeys while we were climbing. So, God bless him.
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| Our Sarathi cum trek lead |
Finally, after the tough climb of 200 steep steps, we saw the main gate of the fort. Now I turned around to get a glimpse of my accomplishment. Phew what a view
From this gate, the mountain is carved on the left side where you will find amazing views of the valley on the left and fort wall on the right.
After crossing this, now you will find some more steps inside the mountain. They are also too steeper and scary since if you turn around its deep valley on the other side. I decided to not look down here and focused on my climb.
Now you enter a cave and here also there are steps which are slightly higher compared to what you have done so far.
We reached next milestone of this trek and we took a pit stop here for enchanting views of the surroundings.
We continued walking and came across plain rocky terrain with some tiny ponds of stand still water.
We relaxed here for some time enjoying the cool breeze which was much required after such a thrilling trek.
This was even more challenging than ascent since you will tend to look down while getting down the steps. So I decided to just look at my steps/shoes while descending which helped me focus. But by now, we saw lot of people near the steps trying to climb up and blocking our way during descent. Monkeys were also there as supporting actors here. This is the first time in my life I was chanting Lord Shiva's Mantra at every step I was descending down praying him to get me down safely without causing damage to anybody.
So finally with great difficulty, I managed to get down the steps. By now food stall was open. So we decided to have Maggie and lime juice as our victory meal 😊.
What I liked the best about the food stalls in this area - they use steel cutleries to serve food and cups made of glass to serve lime juice. Hence we couldn't find any plastic waste along this trail. I hope this gets followed religiously at every trekking trail in India to promote responsible tourism.
After this refreshing break, we continued to descend down and reached the parking lot at around 12 PM.
Driver was eagerly waiting for our return since our phones had no network. We hopped onto our auto and shared our stories of this thrilling trek with him. And by the time we completed our narration, we reached our Hotel. Also there was a much-needed satisfaction of ticking this item off my bucket list .
Other Pages from my Pune Dec 22 Travel Diary
Pune Offbeat Travel - Gram Samskruti Udyan and Vishrambaug Wada Palace
Interesting. The steps look really scary. But the view is breathtaking.
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