Wandering into Sandhan Valley

I was thinking about to trek last one in summer of 2012 and saw the excellent photographs of sandhan valley on Shrikant’s website Shrikant Escapades while surfing on the internet. That time only I decided to take on this trek. Accordingly I called Suhas who lives in Nasik and off course Rhishi and brother ,they both agreed to take this and we planned for going, before a month.

Unfortunately, on the day of leaving, the plans went in the tentative status because of me itself, due to some office reason. I might have to work on Saturday to complete some pending work. However at the last moment, almost at 6:00 PM in the evening on Friday, I came to know that I am free of work on Saturday.

Accordingly ,I informed everyone brother, Rhishi and Suhas that we are going on Sandhan Valley trek and left the home at 10:00 PM in the night. We might go to the base village of Sandhan Valley, Samrad directly, but Suhas was about to join us, so we headed towards Nasik first. Around 3:15 AM in the Saturday morning we reached at Nasik and decide to take rest.

We woke up early in the morning, got ready. Had the breakfast at Suhas’s home and left the Nasik at around 9:30 AM. We started our journey towards Bhandardara Dam first.

Our destiny was Samrad which is the base village of Sandhan valley and located in Bhandardara dam region. No one of us knew the way towards Samrad, so we just started by asking pedestrians the way towards Samrad.

Samrad is around 93 km from Nasik. We were passing by Bhugur Village, Which is the birth place of the great freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Sawarkar.Due to lack of time; we couldn’t visit the place but decided to visit while returning. We headed towards Bhandardara dam by asking the way.

Travelling on the road, we could see how the people live in such remote places. The houses are built like to be protected from heavy rainfall. They are just like houses in konkan region. The very simple structures. The wind was just spelt bounding. Around 11:15 AM, we reached Bhandardara dam region.

Little dam where children playing in

Having some fun

We decided to stop by for some time, because we saw one little dam there. The children were playing with water in the dam. Even in summer, we can experience cool atmosphere here, so we started capturing the images from here itself. We got fresh by cool water in the dam and headed towards Shendi. 

One can see the AMK(Alang, Madan, Kulang) and Kalsubai Peaks from here, however need to explore more deeply for that to identify.

Then we reached Shendi village and asked the way towards Samrad. We got to know that there is another village named Udhawne around 15 km from there and around 7 km ahead from Udhawne we will be reaching Samrad.We took deep breath and started our journey towards Samrad.

Reaching the Samrad

Entering into the village

We reached Samrad village around 12:30 PM in the clock. The village I saw after long time, feeling was just like being in my home town. There was hide and seek of Sun behind clouds and pollution free atmosphere.

Reaching Samrad, we got to know that we just forget to bring some eatable. We were so excited to reach there that we forget to bring something. We asked the villagers the way to go to the valley and headed towards the entrance of valley.

Walking towards entrance of valley

Ratangad Khuta and besides that one can see Ajobagad

From the village itself we can see the Ratangad khuta and beside that the Ajobagad. We felt better there and got shivered because we were going to see something exciting and adventurous after long time.

Reaching valley, at the entrance itself we got the feeling of paiavasul as brother whispered. Sandhan Valley is one of the unexplored nature wonder in Sahyadri Ranges. Situated in Bhandardara dam region of the western ghat. It is also called as valley of shadow.The way of deep narrow ravine formed by two high walls of mountain. So we started walking to feel new experience.

Going forwards we came across the first water cisterns of few ponds in the valley. There are 2-3 waters pools in the way. The water level changes according to season. Due to water level, the valley is not accessible in the monsoon. It was the extreme summer outside in month of May. We were feeling chilled atmosphere inside the valley.So we easily crossed the water pool and started exploring more.

After crossing the second water pool we headed towards end of the valley.

And here we comes at the end of Sandhan Valley and beginning of second phase of the trek called as "Sandhan valley to karoli ghat trek" which is quite difficult and adventurous and needs the trekking equipment to go further. There are 3-4 rock patches that need the rope to descend down near to karoli ghat. The route is just like a Nalichi Vat which is one of the ways to reach Harishchandra Gad.

As we were not carrying equipment, we were going to stop by there.So we took some rest there,captures some beautiful images and decided to return back.

Reaching Samrad at around 2:15 PM ,after wandering here and there in the village, we decided to visit Konkan Kada. So left the Samrad at 2:30 PM

Reaching Konkan Kada cliff we got spectacular views of Bhandardara dam and Ajobagad.

In this way,we finished our last trek of Summer 2012, took the lunch on the way and reached the Nashik by 6:00 PM in the evening.

It was absolute fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wowwwww..........