Monday, 5 August 2013

Matheran via Garbett Point

Height : 2600 ft.
Awesomeness : Exceptional, at least in the rains
Difficulty : Tough (actually, scary, not tough) at the final 15-minute stretch for inexperienced people without a guide, or if you climb up the wrong spur. Easy otherwise. First time trekkers with a sedentary lifestyle find it tough.
Endurance : 4 hours of no to low to medium climb. (Total time : 1 day ex-Mumbai - early morning to late evening)

Travel mode : Local train
Cost : ~ Rs.200 including travel and grub

Region : Karjat
Trek route : Bhivpuri Road -> Garbett Plateau -> Garbett Point (Matheran) -> Neral

My trek date : 03-Aug-2013

Ramblings :
Returned to this trek last week after more than a decade. August 2001 was when I had first taken this route - my first trek. It was a gang of about 50 hostel-mates going on the traditional 'sophies trek' then - starting on foot from campus at 4 in the morning - waking up effortlessly since we hadn't slept - to catch the first Karjat local... Last Saturday, it was a group of 5 techies, hung over from late Friday night coding horrors, fighting to make it to the 5:20 AM local. My adventure started right from CST when I just missed the Karjat local. Fortunately, it was a slow train, slower than the taxi that I took to catch up with it at Dadar.

All I remembered of my last trek to Matheran was lush greenery, low flying clouds, stinging rain, a well (- weird, I know), a couple of risky spots on the way, and great fun - mostly useless. So I did a bit of google search before the trek, and a couple of hours of blog and google-map review later, I had it all figured out... Or so I thought.