A trek to the iron fort-Lohagadh

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Lohagadh is one of the many hill forts of Maharashtra state in India. It is situated close to the hill station Lonavala, Lohagad is at a height of 1,033 m above sea level. The fort is connected to the neighboring Visapur fort by a small range. The fort was under the Maratha empire for the majority of the time, with a short period of 5 years under the Mughal empire.

The nearest train station is Malavli, which can be accessed by suburban trains between Lonavala and Pune. The nearest major train station is Lonavala, on the Mumbai-Pune railway line. Lohagadh is also connected by the Mumbai-Pune Highway.

One of the many treks with office friends, this time, it was to Lohagad. Like usual, the day before the trek preparations and night before the trek was no sleep. Waking up early I headed Dadar to board the train to lonavla, the rest of them were going to board from Thane; Friends boarded the train but were in a different compartment so I spent the two hours reading a book. On reaching Lonavla, there was a local to Malavli and we ran to get it as It left in some time. Getting down at Malavli and having a small photo session at the station we started to the fort.The Fort is nine km away from the Station. On the way after a km or two, we found the diversion of the baaje caves. We visited the caves after pying an entry fee of Rs 10.

After visiting the caves we started towards the fort Lohagadh, its a normal tar road to the fort, the walk was a plain and it can be termed as a walk or hike and not a trek as it just included walking on the normal road, after two hours we reached the base of the fort.On our way, the mighty lohagadh and visapur forts gave us company all the way.

At the base, we had a small snack of poha and tea and started making our way to the top of lohagadh; here too some steps leading all the way to the top.

After reaching the top we visited the various locations on the top the temple, the ponds were some of the things we saw.Then we also had to visit vinchu kata that is the far end of the fort, but to reach that location we had two options one the easier option that was walking around the steel rock patch or climbing down the rock patch.

Some of us walked around it while some of them as an adventure got down from the rock patch.After walking for some time, we reached the point vinchu-kata had some selfies and some photos and started heading back home, on the way back we waited for a lunch halt and ate all that we had carried from home.Rested for some time and then started our descend.

The descend didn’t take much time,we went to malvli and waited for our train back home, as the train had a hour to come we had tea and ate misal and wada pav. We waited for the train to arrive, the train arrived we headed to lonavla from there we caught a connecting train to our respective homes.

Thus a relatively easy trek to lohagad came to an end, it wasn’t one of the adventurous ones as it was walking on tar road and climbing stairs to the fort.Finally, another Fort near Mumbai visited and it was one of the easier ones visited.

Grade: EasyThe cost of the trek wasn’t much only travel and food (Train tickets 100 and snacks and lunch another 200) thus a trek in 300 was worth it.

This trip was originally published on Pravasibaba