Harishchandragad via right side gully of Konkankada (Jan 2017)

We were thinking of going to Harishchandragad via gully to the right side of world famous Konkankada (while facing it from bottom). When we had undertaken super ambitious project of climbing Konkankada (KK) via its most difficult and impossible looking center route in 1988, we had discovered several routes going to the Fort from the left gulley (Makadachi Naal), traversing from KK base camp. It took almost 35 days for us to climb KK via its fascinating center route and going to the fort on weekends was like relaxation.

Since then, this right gully route was left to be explored by us, primarily due to its approach to fort was too long. From the base of Shendi pinnacle, there is no direct approach to Harishchandragad via KK's left ridge, but has to traverse on the back plateau then via Junnar Darwaja to Balekilla requiring 3-4 hours after an exhaustive climb of 4-5 hours upto Shendi pinnacle from base village of Valivare (Belpada).

But, this time, we had decided to climb from here in the winter and fixed dates, team members and logistics. We limited the members to 7 and only experienced climbers were selected.

We knew that the route is difficult, time consuming and challenging so decided to reach base village on the previous day night and start early morning on Saturday (6 am). Due to abnormally high traffic at Kalyan junction, could reach Valivare at 12 in the midnight (after having dinner at Titwala), slept for few hours and were ready to ascend at 7 am.

The route started climbing steadily from Valivare (950 feet elevation) towards KK Base Camp. The overall route is shown "marked up" in below picture. Red line indicates the location of the rock patch where we need to fix the ropes.

Gigantic Konkankada was looking awesome from here.

Just before KK BC, we bifurcated to the right and the route started ascending at a much higher gradient. There were numerous small rock patches of 15-20 feet height, which we had to negotiate without fixing ropes to avoid wasting time.

After 3.5 hours of climbing, taking lot of photographs enroute, we reached the base of 70 feet rock wall. Fixed the ropes on the same and started ascending using Jumars (ascenders) to make the life slightly easier.

Our old legacy “Makadnal” route was seen from here and was looking scary.

We then reached on the top of the wall, finished balance 200 feet of ascend and reached col between Rohidas & Harishchandragad. This is where the base of Shendi pinnacle exists.

We decided to take a Lunch break & had sandwiches prepared by Girish & Sujit, rested for 30 minutes and started for Harishchandragad via Junnar darwaja.

The route descended for 15 minutes to the lower plateau through bushes and then traversed for almost 2 hours to reach the base of the final climb. The route until here was virtually non-existent. We had to cut though bushes, locate the path which we lost many times, tripped several occasions, had bruises and cursing ourselves for selecting this difficult terrain. At 3 pm, we reached the base of final climb and estimated that it will take 1.5 hours more to reach the top of fort. We then took a call to head towards Khireshwar, the base village of famous Tolar Khind route. Our estimation was 2.5 hours, but reached Khireshwar at 7 pm instead (4 hours), again traversing many mountain ranges and dried water streams. The route has also broken at 3 to 4 locations making it more difficult.

Finally, everyone was very happy and had a feeling of accomplishment after an exhaustive and difficult trek comprising of 12 hours of non-stop climbing, traversing and descending.

Kudos to the outstanding team members - Abhijit Dandekar, Sujeet Sathe, Vilas Sathe, Pradeep Mhaskar, Sujit Sawant, Girish Sathe & Bhushan Amrute....Cheers !!!!

Shown here are some glimpses captured during this high endurance trek….Enjoy.

- Abhijit Dandekar