Monday, June 23, 2008

Semi adventure sport # 2


Like completely overexcited, impatient fools who got carried away with the weekful of rains last week, we planned a trip to Durshet. Its a small forest Lodge close to Khopoli, that encloses close to 43 acres of land. Its a beautiful contrast to the cemented, commercial getaways we're generally used to. There was no television, cellular network or vehicles.

For once, you could hear the sound of yourself breathe, look out of the room and see an expanse of greenery and nothing beyond. The only spoiler (and what a spoiler it was) was the small teeny meeny itsy bitsy fact that IT DID NOT RAIN. However, the weather was overcast, cloudy and kept manipulating us into thinking that it will, in fact rain. But it did'nt. Darn it. Darn and Double darn.

source
The picture above is of the river Kundalika - where three of us from the group that had gone, went rafting. A must-do if u like thrills. Add this to the snorkelling we did at Maldives and im slowly striking off things i want to do from my list of 'Things i Have to Want to Must do'.
Its a whole lot of fun, although not life defying as we had expected it to be. As one of the people in our group said ' At no point were my balls in my mouth' lol. For the crass language, i apologise :). The rapids had interesting names -'Johnnie walker', 'Morning headache', 'Butterfly' etc. Our guide too, was the right combination of fun, serious, dispensed a lottt of information about the place and the sport which was good to know. The coolest part was jumping off the raft and into the river and swimming alongside for a nearly a km or two.

The drive to this place is absolutely picturesque, its as though your driving through small villages which have been untouched by technology and modern life. The roads are surrounded by lush greenery on both sides, and the other vehicles (!!!) will be the occasional meandering cows.
Did i forget to mention that like last time, im Tanned AGAIN?

9 comments:

Abhishek said...

Awesome... Nice pictures too... :)

Aditya said...

I need to know how to get there. Help me out here! What was the place you stayed at, and do they have a website? I'm looking at an August trip, hopefully the rains will be well and truly in session then...

Psyched said...

hey champ...

"balls in your mouth... heheheeh hahahahaha...can't stop laughing"

seriously if you really wanna have fun with white water rafting... there is a small stretch of abt 24 kms from Hrishikesh to Haridwar, the rapid there ranges between 3 to 5, and if that doesn't suffice the adrenalin... then try brahmaputra river... I've heard that is scarier...

but this Haridwar one is comparatively doable and there are certain places where your raft is actually perpendicular to the water surface and couple of them where it is totally in air...

smiles

Serendipity said...

Thanks Abhi.

Ad - we stayed at Durshet... its a forest Lodge abt 40 kms away from where we had to go rafting, but the drive was absolitely worth it.
Its by Nature trails and heir website is -

http://www.naturetrailsindia.net/cgi-bin/rez60load.pl?0003/ab0003.html

Or u can call # 2540-1601 and book rafting as well as your stay on the telephone.

Durshet is only about 100 kms from Mumbai, and theres a small exit on the Pune expressway that will branch into the place. Nature trails will give u brochure with good instructions.

Note - DO NOT take the Khopoli exit off the expressway, the note clearly mentions it. (we took it, cos apparenrtly none of us read the instruction saying 'DO NOT TAKE THE KHOPOLI EXIT') lol. And Aug will be fantastic. :)

Anything else? :)

Serendipity said...

@Psyched - HELLYEAH, totally next on agenda. Im also looking at striking off Bungee jumping off my list. got any suggestions?

Psyched said...

BUngee jumping is more like an organised sport... as in a set up can be done anywhere... you don't have to go to a prticular location for that...

it can happen during one of the big events in mumbai itself... u'll just have to wait for it to happen...

However, bridge jumping: that happens in haridwar for sure... what ahppens here is from one if these bridges on River Ganga... there is an extended rope hanging... you can monkey crawl to as long as you can and then jump straight into the river... though it is nothing like bungess jumping but still is fun...

Aditya said...

Thanks for the details, s :)

Though it has now become the *alternate* plan for August, first choice is now Goa. I'm sure you'll approve :)

But wait, I have a two-month vacation coming up. No reason I can't do *both*!

Serendipity said...

A two month vacation?

Please to list out reasons why u deserve it.

Aditya said...

Because I can?

:D

I'm leaving for a Master's in September. The project at my current job is over. No point in me sticking around through the start of another.

And this will be my first greater-than-four-days vacation since I had knee surgery three years ago!