Purandar 3rd January 2012

Photo Credit Abhijit Awalaskar

Purandar is a fort situated approximately 40 kms. from Pune. This fort is extremely significant from a historical point of view. Purandar was the first battlefield for Shivaji Maharaj's Swarajya. This was the place where Sambhaji, the crown prince was born. The Treaty of Purandar, between Mirja Raje Jaisingh and Maharaj was signed at this very place.  Murarbaji Deshpande, a soldier in Shivaji Maharaj's army died defending this fort from falling into the hands of Diler Khan, who had laid siege to fort.

This was the first trek on which Nisha, Shalaka & Navin had accompanied me, the others included Nikhil & Sourabh. We had planned to meet at the Swargate Bus Stand at 7 am, from there we would take the first bus to Saswad, after reaching there we would have breakfast and take the next bus from Saswad to Kshetra Narayanpur. But as with all our previous treks, we were late and by the time we reached Saswad it was 8 am. This meant that we were a complete 1 hour behind schedule. Due to this we reached Saswad at 9:30 am. We took the next available bus to Narayanpur and had breakfast in a small hotel here. There is a Hemadpanti temple dedicated to Lord Shiva just next to the hotel. Narayanpur gets its name from the name of this temple, which is called Narayaneshwar. After taking darshan of this very old and very beautiful temple, we started to walk towards Peth Narayanpur, a very small village some 3 kms. from Narayanpur. This village is the actual base village of Purandar fort.

The trail for climbing up to the fort begins from this point. There is also a tar road which connects Narayanpur to the NH-4 highway, one can use this road to get up to the first Darwaja of the fort. There are two trails going up the fort from here; one with a gradual climb and one with a less gradual climb. We took the steeper path, since we were behind schedule. Thus, we started climbing the fort at about 11 am. Since, I had never been to a trek with Nisha, Navin & Shalaka, I had no idea about their trekking ability. It took us about 2 hours to reach the machi. By the time we reached the first Darwaja, Nisha was ready to kill me! 

After we cross this Darwaja, there is a old, ruined church. 'When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!'. Nisha had brought along all the required ingredients, so we made and drank some lemonade, and started to walk towards the fort again. At this point we were walking on the machi of the fort. To get to the top of the fort, we had go to the small valley (khind) between the forts of Purandar and Vajragad. From here the route to Purandar is very clear. It takes about half an hour to reach the balekilla from here. We followed this route, climbed the stairs and reached on top of the fort. By this time all of us were quite tired, and eventually only four of us, namely; Me, Nikhil, Sourabh & Shalaka climbed up to the Kedareshwar temple, which is the highest point on the fort. We waited for some time at the temple and descended back to the place where Nisha and Navin were waiting for us. We had our lunch in the shade of the of the Darwaja of the Balekilla. By the time we had finished lunch it was almost 3 pm. 

We immediately started our descent, as we had planned to return to Pune by 8 pm. On the way we visited the Purandeshwar temple and explored the machi a little, and started to descend again. I was trying to find a simpler route for us to descend, but was unsuccessful in this endeavor. We lost the route once or twice, but finally managed to reach Peth Narayanpur at around 4:30 pm. We took a jeep from Narayanpur and reached Saswad around 5:45 pm. Luckily, there was a Asiad bus leaving for Pune at 6:30, which we managed to catch. We reached Pune at approximately 8:30 in the evening.