This is my first road trip with my daughter! just me and her. She needed a break from her tenth standard studies and I needed a break from a busy week.
Thoseghar is beyond the Satara town off the Pune-Bangalore highway and monsoon is a great time to visit. The waterfalls in its full glory.
We started from Pune at about 4:30am to make sure we beat the crowd and have the nature for ourselves. And it was a very wise decision. It was raining intermittently during the journey. We reached the Thoseghar falls parking lot at about 7:30am. The whole area was lush green from the rains.
I don't think there is a way to go to the bottom of the fall. And you can see in the photos just how lush green the area is.
Thoseghar is beyond the Satara town off the Pune-Bangalore highway and monsoon is a great time to visit. The waterfalls in its full glory.
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| On the way to Thoseghar |
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| Thoseghar Fall, Tarali Dam further downstream |
I guess we reached too early because even the guards had not arrived at the entrance to the fall. Fortunately, the gates were open. This facility is well maintained and a nice walkway toward the two main falls that can be enjoyed from here. We reached the viewing area after about 5 minutes of walk, listening to the sound of the waterfall and birds. We heard a bird that was actually singing !!! almost reminding me of the Mockingjay in the Hunger games movie. We could not spot the bird, so I still don't know which bird it was. I later asked a local who told me that it must be गोगी पक्षी. I need to find out. The water fall can be viewed from a observation gallery, and boy what a site. This place is actually a ravine with steep vertical edges where literally a series of waterfalls constantly dump water. All this water gets collected further downstream in the Tarali Dam.
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| Thoseghar falls, This is the beginning of the Ravine |
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| Windmill at Chalkewadi |
There is a way to go to the other side of the ravine by going to the next village called Chalkewadi. I had read that the views from that end are breathtaking but one has to hike off the road. But before going there, we had a nice hot breakfast just outside the entry gates. The folks who run this restaurant are really nice and we enjoyed our Misal Pav and tea. Here I was told that we will be able to see many windmills, so we were excited to go. Chalkewadi is just a few kilometres away. We took directions from a local person to go see the windmills. Unfortunately the whole area was covered with clouds swept in by the winds (well that explains why this site was selected to install these giant windmills) and we could not see the windmills at all. Fortunately we did not give up and stopped the car for some time and I probably go the best (in my opinion) photo of the trip. I never knew but here I realised that the windmills make a very spooky sound from the rotating blades. Thank god they are not very near the village. From here we came back to Chalkewadi village and again checked with a local if there was a way to get to see the falls from this side. And he guided us to go to a "dhaba" which actually turned out to be a abandoned house, park the car and take a path. A 15 minute walk according to him. But the villagers warned me to be careful about the slippery road due to rain. I was in no mood to go after this warning, but my daughter prodded me and we started walking. The walk was quite safe and the nature did not disappoint. After about a 15 minutes hike we reached the edge of the ravine and we could see the Thoseghar viewing platform on the opposite side. I can confirm now that the views of the waterfalls from Chalkewadi were truly mesmerising. Take a look...
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| On the way to the waterfalls from Chalkewadi |
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| String of waterfalls from Chalkewadi |
... and here is the proof that we were here.
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