An adventurous, very scenic trek to an unique rock formation in Panvadi Ghat

Panvadi Ghat is a place so close to Pune, yet so remote! My first visit to this valley was in 2016 and it has been a regular on my list for every monsoon since then. The stretch starts a few kms behind Saswad and goes all the way until the Bangalore Highway at Kikvi, around 28 kms of scenic beauty as far as the eye can see!

The most popular (don’t worry, the crowd is still very very less) spot is the place where the dam overflows and forms a waterfall. The local folks have put up a snack shop and made it family friendly so that people of all ages can enjoy the waterfall. But Panvadi has so much more to offer. Lot of remote temples on hilltops, small diversions from the main route into remote valleys and more.
On one such drive, i saw a rock formation far away on top of a hill. Got very curious abt it, looked it up on the map. The hill even had a name – Navari Navaricha Dongar. There was no close-up photograph of the rocks, but they looked very cool. Thus was made the plan to climb to those rocks. And what an adventure it was!

This trek is moderate in nature. A little tricky because there is no trail. You just have to make your own way. I will put up all the map locations below. Please do read the entire blog as you SHOULD NOT climb down the way we did! Before you start the trek, have a general idea of where the rocks are on the map so that you will have a reference when you are on the ridge.
The starting point where you park and start the trek is here. This is also a great view point. On one side you will see a small building on the hill, that is the direction you have to start climbing. No trail, just make you own!

In the photo above, you can see our cars parked in the distance and also the small structure. That’s where we started from. The climb is not so steep, but the lack of a trail can make it adventurous.

The begins the walk across the ridge. When we went, it was very foggy and visibility was down to few metres. This made it very scary as we didn’t know what was on the side or how deep it was. But once the fog started clearing up, we realised that it was not as steep or deep as we thought it was. But still, the ridge is narrow at places and requires caution, particularly if it is raining or there is lot of fog.

Keep having a loop on the map as to where the big rocks are, as you can easily lose track of the distance you walk on the ridge, From the point you reach the highest point, the walk on ridge is at least 15 mins to reach the rock formation. Up close, the rocks look really cool. They are quote tall, easily more than 25 feet. There are multiple clusters. You can keep crossing each cluster to go to the next.

Photo sessions over at the rock, now we needed to climb down. Due to the fog, our climb up was quite scary. We decided that the lack of a trail would make the climb down the same way very difficult (wrong assumption!). So we started thinking of other ways to climb down. The road below was visible. So we decided that we would take the shortest path down, through the hill side (as you can see marked on the photo at the top)

We had thought that what we did until now was an adventure, but we didn’t realise that we were about to do was was crazier that what we had imagined! What looked like small shrubs on the hillside turned out be 3-4 feet high grass. Thick grass, no trail. This meant that we had no idea about where we were putting our next step – could be a rock, could be a cut in the hill side! So, we decided to take it slow (and a bit of fun) and started slowly sliding down the hillside.
Try to imagine a bulldozer flattening grass on a hill side, that’s how it was. I went down first creating the trail, getting lot of bangs on rocks and ankle twists on the way. The kids came down next on the path created and then the rest followed the trail.

DO NOT climb this way down. What we missed to think about was the fact that there could be snakes here. Tall grasses, no one goes on these slopes. I heard later from another wildlife group that these hills indeed have lot of snakes. Luckily, we came down to the road with just my shoe’s sole going missing! So, to go back to the parking use the same way you climbed up along the ridge. It is a rocky trail with no grass and hence visibility (of the ground) is quite good.

Overall, we enjoyed the adventure. I would definitely recommend this trek as a good half day trip from Pune.