The Madhu peak and Makarandgad fort are situated side-by-side near Mahabaleshwar, above a village named 'Hatlot'. Though there is no specific mention of this fort in Maharashtra's history, one may guess that this fort was built to protect Wai before Pratapgad came into existence after which Makarandgad became redundant. Makarandgad is at a height of 1236 mts. from sea level and has dense forests which support a large variety of flora & fauna.
We started out from Pune at 11 pm on 25th April 2009 and reached the base village around 4 am where we slept in the veranda of a school until 7 am. After that we had our breakfast of Maggi and started to climb the fort. The first part of the climb was through the dense Javli cha Jungle which is an evergreen forest. The first part of the climb ended when we reached a plateau on which there is a temple of Shiva and a small village named Ghonaspur. From this point onward the tree cover starts to thin out. This was the first official stop where we took some pics of the temple and surrounding area and started to climb the fort.
This part of the climb was very tricky since the path to the fort was quite steep and full of scree due to which it was risky to climb and had to be done carefully, also the sun was now high in the sky and the heat was increasing. The final part of the climb is especially tricky because the route to the fort has steep valleys on both sides and is full of scree so the climb was very slow and exhausting. Finally after we reached the top of the fort there was a small temple where there were some trees under which we had some rest. Beside these trees near the temple, the fort is mostly barren with little or no trees. Unfortunately by the time we had reached the top of the fort we had used up all of our water and there was no visible water tank in sight. There was one water tank which was a small descend from the temple but the route was again full of scree. We had little choice so we decided that some of us will take the bottles of everyone in a small sack and bring water from the tank.
This part of the climb was very tricky since the path to the fort was quite steep and full of scree due to which it was risky to climb and had to be done carefully, also the sun was now high in the sky and the heat was increasing. The final part of the climb is especially tricky because the route to the fort has steep valleys on both sides and is full of scree so the climb was very slow and exhausting. Finally after we reached the top of the fort there was a small temple where there were some trees under which we had some rest. Beside these trees near the temple, the fort is mostly barren with little or no trees. Unfortunately by the time we had reached the top of the fort we had used up all of our water and there was no visible water tank in sight. There was one water tank which was a small descend from the temple but the route was again full of scree. We had little choice so we decided that some of us will take the bottles of everyone in a small sack and bring water from the tank.
At about 11 am, after filling the water bottles we went back up to the temple and started descending the fort slowly due to the loose gravel on the path. We reached the base at 1 pm where we had our lunch of 'puran-polis' and parathas. After lunch we left Hatlot and started our journey back to Pune, stopping in Mahabaleshwar for strawberry with cream and reached Pune by 9pm.
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