Malshej Ghat: Stairway to Heaven

About midway down the state highway to Malshej Ghat, everything that a big city stands for vanishes and the ethereal beauty of the surrounds begins to assert itself. You don’t need a signboard pointing out the route to paradise, you will know you’re there when you reach Malshej Ghat. As the car enters a short regular-looking tunnel, little do you expect that it’ll emerge at the other end to reveal waterfalls cascading down the misty mountain tops. It seems as if the entire scene is part of the set design in a Bollywood movie, wherein the designer was suddenly overcome with recklessness and saturated the area with too much beauty for one place. The drive up to Malshej is marvellous, but the first view of the backwaters of Pimpalgaon Joga Dam has the kind of ethereal quality that makes your breath catch in your throat.

Malshej Ghat is a wildly beautiful haven of towering peaks and bottomless valleys, home to a hundred different kinds of flora and fauna, and mountain air so fragrant and pure, you wish you could capture the scent and take it back home with you. Miles upon miles of rolling meadows and paddies neatly stitched into a huge quilt of varying greens, the peaks hiding behind rolling mists and blue-grey monsoon clouds all vie for your attention. It is difficult to decide where to rest your wondering gaze amid all this loveliness.

A cascade in the hills

Courtesy MTDC

However, all this is no match for Malshej in the monsoons. These hills are transformed when the rains come. The ghats come into their own when the rains begin to lash against them. And the beauty of the drive to Malshej at this time is almost unbearable. Wet tree bark along the road and soaked valleys that make a long curve towards unmoving distant hills and, of course, the unavoidable clichés of mountain scenery, all coexist in a breeze that is mostly feeble and an August rain that’s sometimes gentle, and sometimes harsh.

THINGS TO SEE AND DO

Perched on the very edge of a plateau, the MTDC hotel here, managed by a private party, is gifted with the best location. Merely 160 ft away from its restaurant, in the hotel’s very backyard, is land’s end. The topography changes dramatically as the plateau drops suddenly into a steep valley. You can walk to the edge and peer down the gorge, but do be careful where you step.

As you trek up the hills, you can see a giant waterfall that rises up majestically into the air instead of falling down into the valley – a water-rise! Such is the force of the wind in some parts of the mountain heights that water falling over the peaks is forced back over them in what seems like brilliant bursts of crystals, which shower down on you with icy splendour.

On the Run

Malshej is home to a variety of nature’s amazing creations – the giant Indian squirrel and the giant Asian moth are among the more famous ones. However, wildlife enthusiasts planning on visiting the Narayangaon-Malshej belt must tread here with caution. The thick forests of Malshej and Junnar have for long been the natural habitat of leopards. With the human populace now encroaching into the forests and the consequent drying up of natural food sources, these magnificent cats have started coming out at night from the lush sugar-cane fields and into villagers’ backyards to make meals of their cattle over the last couple of years. The Forest Department has in the past nabbed some leopards and packed them off to the Melghat Tiger Reserve (see p364). When traveling through this belt, do make sure that you are not out after dark in thickly wooded areas or fields, and be careful when travelling on two-wheelers because you are more vulnerable to attack.

WHERE TO STAY

Flamingo Hill Resort (Cell: 08422822100, 09822043175; Tariff: ₹1,950–3,800, with meals, tea/coffee and snacks), an MTDC property, faces a hill is beautifully located. The signboards around the hotel are chiefly prohibitory, such as, ‘No Parking’, ‘No Entry’, ‘No Left Turn’, but it does afford a comfy stay with bonfires, a children’s play area and games.

The popular Sushant Holiday Resort (Cell: 09527007374; Tariff: ₹2,000–4,700), facing the dam, is currently under renovation.

Another option here is the Ramwar Residency (Cell: 099201-79616; Tariff: ₹2,000–2,750) in Madh Pargaon Phata, about 7 km from Malshej Ghat.

WHERE TO EAT

MTDC’s Flamingo Restaurant serves the regular local Maharashtrian cuisine like varan bhat (dal-rice), usal pav, misal pav, etc apart from Chinese, Punjabi, south-Indian and Gujarati meals. Sushant Resort’s restaurant also serves pretty average local food, and regular Indian and Chinese fare.

AROUND MALSHEJ GHAT

Lenyadri Girijatmaka Temple (35km) Lenyadri village in Junnar Taluka houses the holy Girijatmaka Ashtavinayak. The drive itself is a wonderful experience, most of it on a dirt track with sugarcane fields on either side and later through a canopy of green formed by giant Eucalyptus trees. The first sight of the Lenyadri Vinayak temple, perched high up on one of the Sahyadri range’s majestic peaks is phenomenal, to say the very least. What you can see from ground level is an entire face of a mountain in which Buddhist monks carved caves (dating as far back as the the 3rd century) for their monasteries. One of the caves came to be the home of the Girijatmaj Ganpati. The temple itself has been declared a national monument. You have to walk up 307 winding stone steps to reach the temple in the cave, frequently stopping to catch your breath. Be warned that it is a tough climb.

Should the climb up to the temple work up a huge appetite, you can tuck into the Maharashtrian thali at Hotel Girija in the foothills – a typical no-frills meal that includes varan with rice, chappatis, usal, pickles, papad and sweet-and-sour chhaas.

Pink-legged European flamingoes

Malshej is as close to nature as you can imagine. And the pink-legged European flamingoes knew this much before the humans caught on. The villagers will tell you how great droves of flamingoes arrive at Malshej for about a month between July and September every year. They’ll also tell you of the mating dance of these graceful visitors. Often, bird lovers and village kids alike wade far into the backwaters of Pimpalgaon Joga Dam, just when the sun is beginning to peek out through the mist, to see the ballet performance.

Pimpalgaon Joga Dam, about 4 km away from Flamingo Hill Resort, is a long bund blocking Pushpavati river, which springs out of Malshej Ghat. The dam has created a lake that swells in the monsoon. And its expansion quietly submerges vast tracts of plains and many trees, leaving the taller ones standing with their heads barely out of the water. The still lake looks like a creature out of a sci-fi movie. It’s a pale green, unmoving force that drags you from above the bund to its very edge. You just sit there in silence, which is echoed by the lake. It’s the kind of stillness that you know you may never find again.

But you never know; if it’s in July or August that you’re here, the flamingoes may darken the sky and swoop down to break the calm.