Korigad is a beautiful hill fort located at around 20 kms from Lonavala near Amby valley. This fort you can travel any time of the year for one day trek. This is one of my favourite place to visit. I visit korigad fort every year during monsoon. There are many forts in konkan you can explore, but this fort is special. I traveled two months back in August and sharing my experience in this article.
Accessibility:
From Panvel: 73 Kms via NH 48
From Pune: 93 Kms
Activities you can do:
1. Trekking the fort
2. Korai devi temple
2. Circle the fort wall
3. Enjoy in lake at top of fort
4. Scenic view from the top
Things to carry:
1. Sports shoes, spare clothes
2. Food, water
3. Make sure your bike is in good condition
4. Better to visit during monsoon.
My Journey:
I along with my group started our journey on bikes from panvel at 6 AM. We started early so that we have ample time to spend on fort and return back. We took a small halt for tea at palaspa junction (4 kms from panvel). Not being a tea fan, I decided not to have breakfast as well and advised my group members from mumbai as well. My friends from mumbai were famished and I asked them to control for 1 hour more. I have a fix place to satisfy my hunger in lonavala, which I visit everytime I plan for Korigad.
We resumed our journey and decided to halt at my secret place. The roads were smooth and scenic. We were enjoying our ride, suddenly we were welcomed by rain shower. It was amazing to ride in rain. The rain accompanied us till we reach lonavala. The roads are smooth and plain till Khopoli, after that we had to ride on ghat (hill). We were bit careful while riding on ghat, and make sure your bikes are in good condition in case you decide to ride. The scenes were mesmerizing and beautiful. You could feel clouds passing by you and could see lot of waterfalls.
After riding on ghats, there comes a patch where you have to access mumbai-pune express way. You can ride on that road. You could see entire Khopoli village from top of the ghat. We were enjoying our ride, suddenly we saw a long tunnel and it was amazing experience riding through that tunnel. As we crossed the tunnel we saw something we could not believe. We decided to take a small halt to view the beauty of kune falls. We were lucky as most of the times during monsoon the waterfall is not visible due to fog. It was indeed amazing and I felt going against the plan to visit there, but had to resume our journey.
We resumed our journey and just before reaching lonavala, we took a left turn and reached our secret place named bhuvachi misal around 7.30 AM. Observing the hunger, I ordered misal for everyone and then asked for kanda bhaji. We also ordered evergreen vada pav. It was one of the best misal I ever had in my life. The entire group were happy to skip breakfast at palaspa. This place is behind Fariyas resort which is famous resort in lonavala. We resumed our journey after satisfying our hunger.
After riding for another 15 minutes we observed fog getting denser as moving up the altitude. One of my group member clicked an amazing picture from his bike. I could not resist myself from sharing it.
While eating at bhuvachi misal, we had discussion and decided to skip Bushi dam and Tiger point to reach Korigad. The Bushi dam and Tiger point are two famous places to visit in lonaval that en route to Korigad. Usually people stop their journey at Bushi dam or Tiger point, because they do not know about Korigad or they are satisfied. We were adamant on our target and resume towards our destination. We had to cover 20 kms more.
We felt some traffic around Bushi dam, then we have to again ride up the mountain. We did not realize we skipped tiger point somewhere back as it was dense fog all around. After riding for another 20 minutes we reached base of Korigad fort at 9 AM. We parked our bikes in the parking which cost us 50 Rs per bike. The first in the article of Korigad fort is from its base. Imagine the altitude we have come to, as we ride passed two mountains and now going to trek another mountain to reach fort. Now we came to the difficult and most exciting part of the journey. We have to go through the jungle for 20 minutes. The jungle path is slippery and water logged (during monsoon), wearing sports shoes helped us a lot.
Trekking through Jungle:
After crossing the jungle you come to the base of the fort, from where you have to climb stairs. There were around 500 stairs between us and our destination. It was raining heavily. We were careful while climbing stairs as we were facing strong stream of water from above. We took few pit stops to reach at the top. We could not believe what we were seeing after trekking for half an hour using stairs. We reached the top at 9.45 AM. We felt as if we were into the clouds.
We circled the entire fort from the boundary. The view from the top is amazing, at one point we saw entire amby valley from the top.
Amby Valley view:
Then we moved towards the center. There are two lakes at the center of the fort. We spent some time playing in the lake.
Lake View:
We ate what we packed from Bhuvachi misal and then spent some time glancing the view from the fort. After spending 3 hours at the fort we commenced our return journey. I felt sad returning back, but promised myself to come back again next year.
While returning back, we also covered Tiger point and bushi dam. We were again back at Bhuvachi misal around 4 PM.We returned back to Panvel by 7 PM. It was amazing trip full of rain, scenic beauty, trekking and food :). If you feel excited after reading this blogpost, please do visit the place.
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