The trek to Salher
Salher fort is the highest fort in Maharashtra located near a village called Waghamba in Nashik. Its near the Gujarat border you can see Gujarat from the top of the fort.This was the first time we were visiting this fort, so we just had a fair idea about the travelling details from the Internet.We started off on Friday night from Shivajinagar, Pune, we caught a bus at 11:30 Pm for Nashik. Reached Nashik by 3:30 early morning, the bus left us at the new ST stand we had to catch a bus to Satana from Nashik, the bus for Satana was from the old ST stand which is 5 mins walk from the new one. The bus for Satana was from 5 in the morning. We thought we would hang around there till then but we met a paper delivery guy who had a van and was on his way to Satana at the same rate and we decided to hitchhike with him. We were waiting in the van and the paper delivery dude had gone somewhere for a couple of mins a police jeep pulled next to us.
The sign of the times they felt something suspicious and came to us with a barrage of questions, thankfully they were satisfied with our answers and we were on our way. We reached Satana at around 6:15 in the morning. The bus for Waghamba was pretty late so we caught a bus to Taharabad, we had a good breakfast of usal pav and poha at Taharabad. It was 8:00 and from Taharabad the next bus was at 9:00. If you ask people directions from there to Taharabad they would ask you to go to Salher village and start your trek, but dont do that you need to go to Waghamba village.There are lot of jeeps plying from Taharabad to Mulher so we decided to take that and from Mulher we got an ST to Waghamba village. At Waghamba village we got a localite to accompany us till Salher. We had planned to do Salher and Salota (which is the twin fort) together but he told us that to do Salhota during the rains would be very dangerous so we decided to do only Salher. we started the trek at 10:00 and readhed there by 12:30 with lots of breaks coz one of our fellow trekker wasnt feeling well. Salher is an amazing fort its huge and seemed to be very well made. Its pretty clean coz its not grossly commercialized like Sinhgad or Harischandragad for that matter. You would find very less litter out there. There are caves like Harischadragad where you can stay. There are some water tanks and a pond callled "Gangasagar Talao". We visited Parshuram temple which is the highest point on the fort where Parshuram is said to done his penance there.We spent the night on the fort itself. The view from the fort is wonderful especially in the morning. The world is different from 5000 feet.It was so peaceful out there, you couldnt imagine that around a lakh soldiers had fought for that fort !!! You could see Gujarat on one side and Maharashtra on the other from the fort.We started off next day at 8 and we got an ST to Satana at 11 from Waghamba itself. Finally we reached Nashik at 4 and since it was a Sunday all the buses were running jampacked we managed to hitchhike in a Bolero which was going towards Bangalore and reached Pune at 10. Overall it was a very satisfying trek, would post the pictures later.
