Manas Mandiram Jain Temple & Mahuli Gadh (Asangaon) :- A ride that proved that, Some things work out for the best when UNPLANNED :-) {05/07/2010}

It was just the beginning of my quiet a long recovery process after my unfortunate yet quiet life altering accident on my last trip to malshej ghat. I was experiencing personally the words of one of my biker friend who used to say the following:

“Very few things are as painful as trying to sleep every night with a completely bruised Arm, Shoulder or Knee after an accident"

After a number of sleepless & painful nights, I can vouch for the above line to be absolutely true. Anyways the recovery progression was much worse & delayed since I was dim-witted enough to not let my parents be acquainted with my accident, so I had to change my bandages one way or another all by myself everyday by using just one hand & spending countless hours in bathroom trying to do so every subsequent day. By God’s grace I started noticing the healing process picking up speed after almost a week of my accident & one fine morning after a week my mom noticed my big bandage on hand when I was sleeping. It’s altogether a different story of what questions were asked & what stupid answers I gave for my accident but thankfully after a long conversation, my mom understood & I apologized whole heartedly for not informing her earlier. After that life turned out to be so easy all of a sudden & with mom helping me out with my bandages regularly, I was good to go in just a few days.

In the meantime, my riding was just restricted to purely short runs to office & back home. I still had lots of trouble even after a week to put the bike on main stand or ride it in dense city traffic but the situation was recuperating every next day which was an encouraging symptom for me.

Now without any further diversions, I shall get to the subject matter of this blog post. It had been 15 days i.e. exactly two weeks from my accident & I had recovered more than 75% from my wounds. My final CA examination leave were approved & I was just on my last few days in office before my commencement of my leave so I decided to put hold on my bike trips & start my studies on Sunday, 4thJune 2010. I had been studying the whole morning & to my relief, I got a call from my good old buddies Shailesh & Pravin in evening asking me for a one day trip next day if I was fine. I denied their proposal since I had just started a decent study session & moreover I hadn’t completely recovered from my accident so didn’t want to take any chances with long trips. They understood my denial & we postponed the trip for some time later in the month. I resumed my study session & I got a call from my another friend Percy asking for a short ride to marine drive post dinner at night. Now I couldn’t say no to a short ride, on a lovely Sunday evening, on beautiful marine drive roads, on my wonderful bike, after a long study session. So the plan was set. I invited Najju to join us & as usual it was a prompt Yes from his side too.

I just had a light breakfast at 7 pm so I asked the guys to roll at 10 pm & be back home by 11 pm max for dinner. Percy picked up Najju & we teamed up at thakurdwar signal where all 3 of us asked each other.
“Kidhar Jaana Hai?” (Where should we ride to?)
We decided mutually to ride till worli seaface as marine drive ride would be an ultra-short ride of just a few minutes. Najju hopped on with me as pillion on my bike & we left.  We reached worli in next few minutes & soon to follow was the next question,

“Ab kaha?” (Where next to?)

After a few minutes, we decided to extend the ride till BKC (Bandra-Kurla complex) so I fuelled up with just Rs 100 at worli since that was enough to get us back home. We reached BKC in some time & kept on riding on the beautiful roads of BKC to end up near kurla in no time. It was very clear that all three of us were enjoying the ride & wanted to venture a bit more ahead so we decided the next stop to be Thane to meet our friend Shruti. We were riding towards thane on the LBS road & I was really enjoying riding my baby for such a long distance after almost two weeks so all of a sudden I realized Shailesh/Pravin’s call in evening & I decided to accept their proposal for a long trip tomorrow since I was feeling absolutely fine & all charged up. I stopped somewhere near ghatkopar & called up Shailesh to ask if he was still interested. At first he was a bit reluctant coz he had planned a trip from early morning tomorrow but I modified the plan by including a night ride too but fter a few minutes I managed to convince him. I asked him to gear up while we reach Kalyan by 11.30 pm. He asked us to pick up pravin from thane & convince him to join us too. It took me few additional minutes to convince pravin at 10.45 pm in night after waking him up from sleep. We reached Thane by 11.00, met Shruti & Pravin there. We did some time pass there before leaving. We invited shruti too but she denied so we four were on our way to Kalyan by 11.00 pm. Pravin joined me as a pillion while Najju switched back with Percy & after some nice ripping session we were at our meeting point near Kalyan by 11.25 pm approx. We found shailesh already waiting for us with his good old trusty Honda Unicorn. We all greeted each other, sometime pass & some laughs on stupid jokes & then we were back to the same question which we have been asking & answering so far all night...

Kaha Jaana hai ? (Where to ride)

Before seeking answer to that question, a huge bomb was dropped on us by Shailesh when he asked us if we had full tanks of petrol since it’s an allover city strike tomorrow. Now the reason why Shailesh/Pravin had earlier called me in evening was this all over city strike so it was holiday in our office & a great opportunity to ride somewhere on a Monday morning which is not possible otherwise. The night out trip plan almost sort of died when I guessed I didn’t even have enough fuel to return back home. Shailesh had just fueled up his Unicorn with some petrol so he assured me not to worry much as he’ll lend me some petrol in case I need it but I know my petrol hungry bike very well & judging by the amount of petrol Shailesh had, I was sure I couldn’t ride more than 150 kms even if he would give me his entire petrol. I blamed myself for being so stupid & forgetting to fuel up. It was already past 12.00 am so my hunt for petrol began. I asked Shailesh & Pravin to discuss options for our night out ride while I & Najju were off on our hunt for petrol. After a short search & long prayers to god, we finally got a fuel pump open &so refueled all the bikes. Finally, Crisis averted..

Now the big unanswered question follows again,

Where to Go?

Lots of suggestions & opinions followed..

Shailesh's house, Lonavala, Matheran or Malshej ghat again ;)
But we finally narrowed it down & decided to visit a new place called 'Manas Mandir' & 'Mahuli gadh' suggested by Pravin & Shailesh. We all were excited since we all have been to Matheran, Lonavala or Malshej before but none of us had been to mahuli gadh before.

According to pravin, it was a beautiful destination & his friends had been there recently. Only problem was that it was in close proximity to our current location. Shailesh/Pravin’s idea for the trip was to ride to our destination which was Asangaon railway station which was merely 35-40 kms away from Kalyan, spend night there at the railway station as it was safer there  & then leave early morning at around 5 am to next destination i.e. manas mandir (approx. 10 kms from asangaon railway station) followed by a trek to mahuli gadh which was just 5-6 kms from there.

The plan was approved as we had no other feasible option. Everything was looking good now. 5 close friends, 3 reliably good bikes with enough petrol, 1 super exciting plan. It was just past 1.00 am at night & a wonderful trip ahead waiting for us so what could go wrong?? But unexpected setbacks are bound to creep in as I have always experienced & this time around it wasn’t an exception either. Our share of setback for the night was that Percy denied riding any further from Kalyan. He had not informed his parents, unlike us who had called our parents at around 11 pm that we won’t be returning home tonight. So he had to return home. We tried to convince him but & as much as he wanted to join us, he had no option. So we rode together till Kalyan Bhiwandi junction from where Percy went south & we headed in north direction on eastern express highway.

From here we were 4 friends on 2 bikes. Najju took over my bike & Shailesh took control of his unicorn & myself/Pravin were pillions. The road up ahead was absolutely smooth; virtually traffic free & we were cruising at 70-80 kmph as we were in no rush. We took a brief halt to enjoy the beauty of the wonderful night before reaching Asangaon station by 2.00 am.

Meanwhile Percy had confirmed that he reached home so we were relieved for him. We parked our bikes just outside the station & entered the railway station. There was hardly anyone out there but the platform was adequately lit & we were lucky enough to find a few empty seats with fans above them. However, Mosquitos out there knew they were up for a feast tonight so we weren’t that lucky. We did some time pass out there, clicked a few pics & desperately waited for the time to pass. Few of us did try to sleep.

Some of the pics:

The lonely Asangaon railway platform

Clicked the pic on perfect time - 2:22:22

A video shot by me just before waking up everyone who were trying to sleep

Finally it was approximately 4.40 when almost all of us had lost our patience. I & Najju hadn’t eaten anything in the name of Dinner yesterday night & nor did any of us carry any bottle of water, so hunger & thirst were taking its toll on us. We decided to leave & search for some dhaba & have something first before starting off our day. The first local train was just about to arrive judging by the slowly increasing number of routine commuters appearing in small lots at the station. We seemed to be like total strangers to them. Finally we bid goodbye to the decently comfortable asangaon railway station who nestled us for the night & got on our bikes. I took control of my baby again & we were riding towards eastern express highway(NH3) again through small lanes. Soon we were on NH3 & we found a closed little tea stall with its owner sleeping on the verandah outside. We decided to wake him up & make us some nice strong tea & have some of that seemingly consumable snacks lying in small glass containers on the tea stall’s table. I don’t know about others but I was so damn hungry & my mouth watered at the sight of Parle-G biscuits stored in 1 of the glass container & I was sure I was going to have at least 3-4 packs of it myself along with 3-4 cups of cutting chai (tea). But I guess we were up for a test against our patience as Shailesh continued trying waking up the guy there who seemed to be sleeping peacefully after several days & he showed no signs of waking up. We decided not to disturb the poor soul anymore & move ahead to Manas Mandir - The Jain temple with the hopes to find some hotel open there for us to quench our hunger & thirst.

A pic of my bike near the tea stall

So we moved ahead & saw the exit from NH3 stating Manas Mandir & it was an uneven road from thereon.

 I stopped to take a leak & asked shailesh to carry on & I resumed back soon enough. Within sometime I realized Shailesh/Pravin were nowhere in sight & we were passing through very small village lanes. Finally within a few minutes the narrow village road came to a dead end & we knew we were on a wrong path. We took a U turn & within a few minutes we reached the diversion from where I had taken a wrong turn. I continued riding for a few minutes on the correct path & found Shailesh/pravin waiting for us out there. We clarified the confusions & got back on road for our target.

 Finally we could slowly see the lights of the temple shining in the pre-dawn ambience. We reached the entrance of Jain temple by 5.30 & the security personnel our there were a bit astounded to see 4 young fellows on motorbikes at this early hour of morning in a temple. Fortunately we were not deprived of entry so we were pleased. We parked our bikes just opposite to the temple & went for a quick hand/feet wash. We had a lot of water there finally before entering the temple.
Brief information about Manas Mandir as per http://www.mustseeindia.com/:

A marvelous Jain temple, located at the base of the Mahuli hill is popularly known as shri Bhuvan Bhanu Jain Manas Mandir Tirtha. An awesome panchaloha (5 metals) idol of Aadeshwar Bhagwan adorns the garbha griha (sanctum) of the temple, and it makes the devotee think that the deity will speak at the very moment.
A large temple complex at the top of a hill and a river flowing beneath is indeed a stunning scenario. The 76 feet pillar less dome and its superb ceilings, tremendous carvings reveal the architectural brilliance of the makers of this fabulous shrine.
Another important attraction of this incredible shrine is that, the old temple excavated from Gujarat is located a few meters away and it houses marble statues of 500-700 years old. In the backyard of the old temple, there is a 100 years old banyan tree, which is a habitat for so many rare snakes.
All these wonderful structures and its surrounding lush greenery, makes Manas Mandir, a must seen holy place. 
As we walked into the temple, the aura of the holiness all around lured us into altogether a different sense of peace. The beauty & elegance of the entire temple & the beautiful naturally enriched surrounding was undeniably the most wonderful that I’ve ever seen. The priests & helpers in the temple were busy doing their daily chores of cleaning the entire place, setting up for the first prayers of the day etc. It felt bizarrely stupid to enter the holy place without having a shower but we had no alternative. Finally we were done with the darshan (prayers) of main temple in a few minutes & went out for darshan of the adjacent smaller temples. Meanwhile it slowly started drizzling & the previously cold climate got much more freezing now. Fortunately the drizzling stopped in a few minutes as we were seeing the first rays of sunbeams budding past the beautiful mountains at a distance & it was time for us to try our hands on some photography.

Front view of the temple

A view of the temple in ample sunlight.

View of the vista just opposite to the temple

 

A click at the entrance of the temple clicked just before leaving the temple

After a brief photo session, we were up for the final & most exciting target of our trip. The trek to mahuli gadh. Now we were all charged up after an amazing start to our morning & were eager to find out what more does fate has in store for us. We left the vicinity of temple & took the correct diversion towards mahuli gadh after few enquiries with locals. As the sun came up completely, we could see the actual natural splendor surrounding us on all sides as we rode through the small village roads.

 Shailesh was riding ahead & I was following him at a distance. A small stop enroute when Shailesh/Pravin noticed a mud-crab & stopped to catch him/her.

We left the crab all alone safely back to his habitat after a brief photo shoot.. I must say the crab was not camera shy ;)

Finally we were at a point where as per a local villager, the bikes couldn’t go further & we had to trek ahead. I was not feeling like leaving my bike alone so I asked shailesh to ride inside the forest as much as we can before starting the actual trek. The path almost vanished & it was all off-roading session now with rocks of all sizes & wet mud all around. Najju & Pravin were kind enough to get off the bikes so that I & Shailesh can ride solo while they walked behind us. Finally the obstacles in path were getting bigger & bigger so after crossing a small stream of river on our bikes, we decided to leave them there & trek ahead.

I Loved riding the bike here :)

A pic clicked by pravin trying to capture the splashing river water

Finally Shailesh & I decide to park the bikes here & trek up ahead.

It was just about 6.40 am when we started & since it was my first ever trek, I was just way too excited & surprised by the beauty of nature all round. To describe in few words, there was amazing set of green well flourished trees, several varieties of plants with blooming small flowers all around, mountains & mountains all around covered with a carpet of greenery throughout & small impeccable streams of waterfalls visible from distance. We crossed a decent river with knee depth water & we got fresh there before proceeding up ahead. As informed to Pravin by his friends, it was a short trek of 2-3 hrs. so we were not at all worried. The trekking path was marked well by some fellow trekkers so thankfully there was very less chance of us getting lost.  We were enjoying the nature at its best all around us. We were probably the only four human beings on the entire mountain & it felt really peaceful to be in such a beautiful place with nobody around apart from just a handful of close friends. Few pics.

Beautiful clicks by Pravin of river stream in its full glory

Very simple path in the beginning

First views of the valley from some elevated altitude

Notice the small white patch right in center of the pic.. Thats a waterfall

No Comments pls :)

After trekking for around an hour at decent speeds, the lack of sleep, water & food were starting to show its sign on our bodies. We were getting tired at rapid pace & needed small breaks every 10-15 minutes before carrying on ahead. The climate which was supposedly quiet chilled just 2 hours ago had suddenly turned into a hot summer day in Rajasthan for us as we all kept on sweating like hell. Luckily myself & Najju were just wearing plain t-shirts but Shailesh/pravin were equipped with their wind cheaters which were more of a burden to them now. As if the tired legs, sleepy eyes, hungry stomachs were not enough to test our endurance, we were further greeted upon by mountain mosquitoes who had a treat at every exposed part of our hands/neck etc. The fatigue was building in as we were almost 1.5 hrs. into the trek & the reserve energy levels in our bodies were depleting at a very high pace but still the beauty of nature all around us kept me & Najju positively charged while Shailesh/Pravin were falling behind us a few times & we had to wait for them to catch up. We kept on pushing our bodies to limits in order to reach the peak which seemed to be in sight & just a few minutes ahead but as soon as we reached there we found it was just another roundabout & the mountain offered us a fresh new summit up ahead. We reached a point from where Shailesh/Pravin suggested to turnaround since we all were way too tired & the peak was nowhere in sight. Myself & Najju were not willing to give up although we were tired equally but we wanted to try for just a few more minutes. So shailesh/pravin asked us to carry on while they would wait for us down there. It was just me & Najju now. We continued up ahead & were really happy to view much more amazing vistas so we knew these few extra steps were well worth it.

It was a wonderful feeling to sit here & have a birds eye view of the valley

Greenery all around the trekking path

The path got narrower & bordered by small plants as we reached a point where it was the most difficult part of the trek till now since we had to climb a vertical face of huge boulders of solid rock. It wasn’t that difficult since there were enough spaces to support our legs & hands while climbing up but the rocks were slippery due to rainfall last night maybe & we were dead tired so this made it much more difficult. I was first to take on the rocks &Najju followed closely. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be & in a matter of few minutes I was climbing the last rock & as soon as I conquered that last rock, I was spellbound with the sight of the other side of valley. The entire valley was completely covered in dense white fog & the sight was undeniably the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I cried out of joy to Najju asking him to come up very fast & he was there in a matter of seconds. He was equally shocked by the view & we started admiring the entire valley. Then began our crazy photo session & we clicked pics & shot videos in all possible angles. The small patch of rocks we were on gave us the 360 degree view of entire valley which was covered completely with fog on one side & no fog on the other side on which we had been trekking since past 2 hrs.

No fog on the other side.

Some Videos shot by me

We were out of our beautiful shock in a few minutes & then we realized we were missing something or rather we were missing someone.. Oh yeah, Shailesh & Pravin. I called them up instantly & to my surprise the call wasn’t getting connected even after repeated attempts. There was no way they can afford to miss this beautiful sight & they were just about 15-20 minutes behind us so I was determined to go & fetch them myself if I couldn’t get connected via phone. But for a change, this time I got lucky & finally they answered my phone as soon as it got connected. I knew they were tired but I requested them just not to utter a word of complain & start trekking up ahead for additional 15 minutes & they gladly accepted my request considering they had already rested there since last half an hour. So Najju & I enjoyed the beauty of mahuli gadh & meanwhile Shailesh/pravin joined us too. The look on their face when they saw the foggy valley was equally blissful as we expected it would be. We clicked some really great snaps & finally witnessed the orange flag waving much above at a distance & that’s where actual mahuli gadh was but none of us were in a capacity to make it till there & even if we did, it was guaranteed that we couldn’t reserve enough energy to get back down so we finally decided to end the trek at this beautiful peak for today & accomplish the complete trek really very soon with adequate preparations next time (We did reach that top of mahuli gadh in December 2010 with a whole lot of friends but that’s altogether an another story)

Believe it or not, It was super hot up there so Pravin had a brilliant idea for some pics ;)

So we chilled out on top of that peak for at least another 20 minutes before starting our trek back down. The return journey was way too fast then we expected it would be since every one of us was quiet charged up now after the breathtaking views. We started the return around 9.00 am & covered almost the entire trek downhill by 10 am since we took no breaks at all for rest or for pics. However we did stop a fair amount of time at the river downhill to get fresh in its cold water. Everyone was busy with enjoying the cold fresh water of river so no pics were clicked. From this point, our bikes were parked less just a few hundred meters ahead & I desperately prayed that we find our bikes in exactly the same condition as we had left them. Thankfully we did get our bikes unharmed in the same place where we left them & I was so damn happy at the first glimpse of my bike. So we hopped onto our bikes & said bye to the wonderful mahuli gadh for its hospitality.
The return journey till eastern express highway was still quite a task in itself since there were no proper roads but once we were back on NH3 it was a heavenly ride. I couldn’t let Najju ride my bike since morning due to all those off-roading sessions so finally it was his turn to take on the handlebars as soon as we touched the smooth tarmac of NH3. The trip wasn’t over yet, we were due for 1 last target i.e. a nice highway side dhaba where we can finally get something to eat. After a long search we finally managed to find one amazing Punjabi dhaba on the opposite side of the road & we all entered the dhaba after parking our bikes outside. We ordered tons & tons of food & it was very less crowded since it was a strike today so we got our ordered food incredibly soon. Plates of food kept on coming at our table & it kept on getting empty even faster. To mark an end to our wonderful trip, it started raining damn heavily as we were having food. We wanted to get wet in rain but then again we were too busy eating so didn’t leave the table. Finally after around 1 hour at the dhaba, we were all full. As expected, the total bill was very less since it was a typical truckers dhaba. Rain had subsidized by now & we got back on our bikes & on the road soon. Traffic was almost NIL & we were maintaining decent speeds. Pretty soon we reached a final departing point about 10 kms before kalyan-bhiwandi bypass & it was a shortcut to Shailesh/Pravin’s home so they decided to take the shortcut. We all shared last few words & jokes, exchanged pics clicked & then finally departed on our separate ways.

Najju kept on riding till Thane & then asked me if I wanted to take over but I denied since the fuel for the trip was sponsored by him last night & I wanted him to get to ride as much as he can. Plus the entire highway was virtually traffic free so there was no much of an issue for Najju to ride all along till home. With some high speed cruising by Najju on eastern express highway which seemed as if reserved only for our bike today since there was no other vehicle around for miles at times, we were back home by 2.00 pm. Najju got off at his home & then I rode back home alone. Shailesh/Pravin had reached home safely long before & I informed them about our status as soon as I got back at my home. Mom looked at me strangely since I looked like a mess as if I was just back from a trip to hell. I was aware of the questions that were about to pour in from her side & I was in no position to reply currently so the only solution to all my problems was a much deserved long sleep on my cozy little bed.

I was deep asleep till late evening & got up all fresh & eager to refresh my memories with our collection of pics/videos from the trip & I really loved all the pics/videos.

All in all, it was one of the best unplanned surprises ever.

To sum it up in few words,

4 frnds,
2 bikes,
No food,
No water,
Sleepless night,
Awesome trekking,
All of us back scratch less with tons of never-ending memories,
Pure madness at times,
More than 12 hours of absolute fun.
But above all, the best part of the trip --> It was all UNPLANNED.. ;)

Ride statistics:

Riders :

Shailesh

Pravin
Najju
Mitesh
Percy (for the start)

Bikes:

Honda Unicorn

Yamaha FZ-16 LE
Yamaha FZ-S

Kms covered:

Approx. 245 kms

Route taken:

Mumbai-Thane-Kalyan-Asangaon-Mahuli-Kalyan-Thane-Mumbai (NH3)

Cost incurred:

Approx. 300 per person (including fuel & food)

Rating: ****