Bhandardara (Monsoon), Igatpuri

Away from the Busy city, the place is located at about 180km from Mumbai, the place is amazing.

The trip is ideally for a couple of days but can be done in an entire day as well, for that you’ll need to leave very early in the morning and will need a couple of good drivers.

You will also find Kalsubai peak (Maharashtra’s Highest peak) nearby but you have to keep it for some other day as it’s an entire one-day trek.

The place is very beautiful and has mountains, dam, river and waterfalls around it.

I have personally been to this place twice, during monsoon and summer, the place is remarkably different during both the seasons and won’t fail to amaze you either time.

Monsoon

During Monsoon the entire landscape is covered in greens and blues.

It’s amazing during the monsoon, with so much of greenery and water you won’t feel like leaving the place.

Throughout the journey you’ll come across small rivers and dams, the place is beautiful.

The above-mentioned attractions are the must otherwise the is no point of visiting this place.

The water flow from umbrella falls is extremely high during monsoon, it’s advisable to keep safe distance from the waterfall.

Monsoon trip 2016

So, it was the second week of august 2016 and we were looking for an awesome place for hangout, we had already been to a lot of places that year and we recently graduated from college few months back and while we all were quite busy in our own lives, we were looking for some reconnecting trips.

Initially its was supposed to be a 2-3 days trip but later due to some reasons it got reduced to a single day trip, I was so against it as I wanted to be out for a longer time, still at the end it was just a 1-day trip.

Since we had to cover about 350kms in a single day we had to start early, very early, so we started around 6 in the morning from Borivali and within no time we covered 40-50 kms and stopped after seeing a beautiful lake on the way, there we stopped for few minutes and had some chai.

We continued our journey for about an hour more then stopped at a hotel on way for some breakfast.

We knew that we had to cover a lot of distance in a single day so we had to reduces our breaks and reach asap.

Within an hour we were near Igatpuri, we could see the beautiful mountains, greenery and fogs on the mountains.

I have been to this place to a couple of times and both time we forgot to take the right we were supposed to coz both times we were busy shouting something, coz of which we had to take a very long u turn after few km’s.

Soon after turning from the highway we could see a small beautiful river, I wanted to jump into it but no one wanted to hear me, so few minutes later there was huge lake, it didn’t look so deep but it was huge, the water was brown over there coz of the mud.

The next right took us to some villages and then ghats, we could see the kalsubai peak, trekking at kalusbai has always been tempting to me but it needs an entire day so we just ignored it and continued for our destination.

The ghats were very beautiful, also the roads we good to, we stopped for a while and continued.

We were supposed to be tired but the view of this place made us more active, could see the beautiful river flowing through the rocks and then we saw the “Umbrella falls”, now I have not been to much places so maybe that’s why I think it was very huge.

We immediately parked the car at some place and rushed to the falls, I even fell once.

The waterfall was so huge it could take away all the people around the area within 1 seconds.

We were at least 10 meters away from the fall still we were entirely wet within few seconds because of water droplets bouncing after hitting to rocks from the fall.

I wanted to feel the water flow but it was so fast that it would take away an entire person away if anyone gets close to it.

We clicked some pictures and went down further to bathe in the water, there we had some snacks and left for the dam.

This is the same dam from which the water was flowing down.

We got back into the car and drove further to the dam which was few minutes away.

The dam was overflowing, the water overflowed from the dam onto the roads and then downwards, the water flowing thorough the road was something I never saw before.

We parked the car and went to the dam (the dam here is actually a huge lake).

We could see the water, mountains and greenery everywhere, we could see the small waves in the river due to the wind flow, we could see the waterfall, we could see the mountains, all at once.

We enjoyed the view, clicked pictures and then pitched out tent, it was very difficult because of the wind but somehow, we managed it.

We got some oil fried snacks for the nearby shop and along with the Maggie.

The Maggie really taste much better at such places.

we stayed there for about an hour and while we were enjoying the view, suddenly it started to rain, luckily, we had pitched the tent so we went inside and enjoyed the climate.

It was about 3pm when we decided that we should better be heading back coz we needed to be back back in Mumbai by 10pm.

Now while coming here in the morning it took about 4-5 hours but while going back it took way more time because of the traffic.

As it was the weekend the place had too many visitors, it took more than an hour just to cover first few kms.

We all were way too tired, few of us slept in the back seat, but we had only one person who could drive, so he drove in the morning as well as the way back. So better have an additional driver coz it’s a huge road trip.