If you have saved up your holidays for a rainy day, and are planning to spend a few days on the lofty mountain peaks of Maharashtra where clouds don’t rain but gently sprinkle water, I have a suggestion. Skip the oft-visited hill stations of Matheran and Mahabaleshwar and head straight to Bhimashankar, situated at an enthralling height of over 3700 feet. Here you will get the best of three worlds: a hill station, a wildlife sanctuary, and a 300-year old temple - all rolled into a neat, green bundle.
Legend has it that a demon called Tripurasura was creating havoc on earth. With flying citadels called Tripuras that protected him (are they perchance the space stations of today?), he was near-invincible. The only option left for Lord Shiva was to take the form of the mighty Bhima and vanquish this demon. Vanquish he did. But in the fierce battle that ensued, Bhima was made to sweat profusely. And this sweat, it is believed, now runs as river Bhima.
This 18th century temple is built around a swayambhu, or self-created, jyotirling by the Maratha strongman Nana Phadnavis. The ling was impressive, but this impression grew ten-fold when a holy mendicant explained to me the meaning of a shivling. He told me that it’s the visual depiction of the divine act of copulation that caused creation, seen from the inside of a woman’s body. Much like the view from the camera that’s placed inside a tiger’s cave by National Geographic.
From the temple town, unlike in all the temples I have seen, you have to descend not ascend, a long flight of steps to reach the temple. And as you take one stone at a time, all along the path you see a veritable gallery of gods guarding the two sides.
Just behind the temple is the trail that takes you to Gupt Bhima or the origin of the Bhima river. Once you get to the river, you walk through the flowing waters till you come to a small waterfall, marked by a smaller shivling, guarded by the sacred bull named Nandi.
While sipping hot tea laced with lemon grass, and savouring the piping hot batata wadas, I saw a priest sitting near me. To avoid the glass that we mere mortals sipped from, he insisted on a ’brand new’ plastic glass to sip his holy milk from. And I realized that his misplaced sense of hygiene was detrimental to the environment. Instead of opting for a clean and washed glass that could be ’reused’ by all, he chose a ’use-and-throw’ glass that will remain an unholy scar on the face of this earth at least for the next 300 years.
From the tea stall, we took the trail to the highest point in Bhimashankar. On the steep climb of over 300 feet, a group of youngsters chided me and my wife saying we won’t be able to make it to the top. But both of us were determined to reach the summit of our own little Mount Everest. And we were encouraged by the words of Mike Horn the legendary South African explorer who advised people to never give up on their mission. He said, ’If you can’t run, jog. If you can’t jog, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But never, never, never give up.’
The view from the top was absolutely stunning. Undulating mountains capped by majestic peaks in rows after endless rows as far as the eyes could see. It extended left to right, almost like a 70 mm screen. Curtains of clouds hid them for some fleeting moments, and then the peaks reappeared magically, grander than ever. And we realized that we would have missed this magnificent view had we given up the arduous climb half way up the mountain.
The drive back to the beautiful Blue Mormon, the only resort in the middle of nowhere, was through dense patches of forests that cast mottled shadows on the forest road. Without checking in, we drove straight to the sunset point just at the edge of the resort, racing against the setting sun. Gazing at the crimson horizon, I realized that no two sunsets are the same, even from the same sunset point. The angle of the sun changes every day, the cloud formations are distinctly different, and the light is uniquely magical. And as the sun lit up the earth with the passing rays, I marvelled at how this one single ball of fire lights up every single object on this planet, without the help of an additional light. Contrast this with number of lights we need to light up a single house.
It was only the next day morning, standing in the verandah cocooned in our woollens that we discovered that this 175-acre plot has a private helipad, a private lake, and a private jungle trail that takes you to a nearby adivasi village. But the call of the wild was too strong to ignore, and we decided not to tarry any longer at the resort.
The forests at Kondhwal, barely eight kms away, was a butterflying and birding paradise. Just as we entered its precincts, we were welcomed by swarms of blue mormon butterflies. They were basking in the sun to get their wings solar-powered. Once they stocked up energy, they started flitting about from one flower to another. And I started flitting from one butterfly to another, looking for the ’perfect’ blue mormon. Being extremely agile, butterflies escape from predators but invariably end up losing a part of their wonderful wings and their symmetry. And we cruel photographers go in search of the ’perfectly symmetrical’ butterfly.
At Kondhwal we also saw the elusive shekru or the giant squirrel with its rusty red-and-white fur coat. Highly endangered, it’s among the largest squirrels in the world. And measuring all of three feet, it has a tail twice the size of its body, which helps in the balancing act. It makes its nest on the summit of the tallest tree in the neighbourhood and chooses its slenderest branch so that predators cannot walk that delicate path.
Just as we stepped out of the sacred forests of Bhimashankar, my cellphone picked up signal and rudely delivered an unwanted message. That’s when it dawned on me that I was totally incommunicado for two full days; and I suddenly felt the unabashed joy of having been ’unreachable’.
