A trip to Naneghat

Shortly after the mid-semester examination, everyone was planning for a trip. We didn’t have a plan. But we are super excited to go on a trip to Naneghat. You may think of why? Let me tell about our motivation.

It is found that the ancient Brahmi scripts containing numbers are in Naneghat caves. And we were planning about the trip shortly after Dr. Meera Nanda had talked about the caves in the humanities class. I don’t know actually what is there. But that is part of human history.

Just before the day of our journey we four people, me, Nandu, Gayatri, and Akhil discussed the trip. We didn’t have any plans. The only thing fixed in that discussion was the destination. We could find that going by train isn’t at all good options. So we need to go by bus.

The next day morning, about 5:00 AM we began our journey. We went to the Shivajinagar bus stand, which is closest to our campus. Actually, there was no direct bus to Naneghat. We had to take a bus to the Junnar bus stand and from there we were expecting a bus which would go to a place nearby Naneghat. Usually, the state busses aren’t well maintained, and in Maharashtra, one could rarely or cannot spot private buses as a means of transportation. But buses are much cheaper as that of trains. Actually, the location is about 120km from our starting point, which means we had to travel about 3-4hrs to reach Junnar. As it was a raining season, we are not sure whether the roads are clear or not.

About 9:00 AM we reached Junnar. The bus was quite small. The place was not a city, but not a village either. We could find some hotels much like a teashop and could get something to eat. Later we returned to the bus stand. The building was pretty old. We could find a board having the details of buses. But, there was not a single word in English, everything was in Maratha. Even the numbers were in Devnagiri. We decided to ask the person sitting on the inquiry desk, and could understand that there will be a bus at 12:00.

We were happy that we got the bus exactly at the same time. But we had to cover another 26-30km to reach to the nearest bus stop. As going there the roads became narrow but rich in green. After some distance, small huts began to appear on both sides of the road. Large green fields and mountains seem like guardians. The road was a little tough. We could see villagers sitting in front of their houses and grazing animals.

The nearest bus stop was 2km away from the caves. Shortly after reaching there we could understand that there was no other bus to return to Junnar except the same bus. But it would return within one hour. So we were helpless. But luckily got a goods autorickshaw, and the driver agreed to carry us to Naneghat and back to Junnar.

When reached Naneghat we could understand that we are already at a significant altitude.

The site was not as we expected. It was not a tourist place at all, as we are not generally interested in history. But still, we could find some people enjoying the scenery. We were glad to find that the place was blessed with nature. As you could see from the pictures the mountain has a cliff, which increased the beauty it. The steep edges are dangerous. The clouds were kissing the mountain. We could see a large landscape, just like a merging of the earth with the sky. The sight was so mind-blowing, that I have no words to convey that. We didn’t expect such a beautiful sight, as we only expected the inscriptions.

After seeing the amazing beauty of the place we went to the caves.

Caves are great in their historic value, but not great in beauty or structure. It’s some short caves. The paths to the caves are paved with boulders, lacking a perfect shape. It had a rough shape of steps.

Caves which are on the sides of the mountain don’t seem well maintained. There are even some “love stories” written by our great modern poets, which destroys the beauty of those inscriptions. One could spot cracks running through those inscriptions.

The inscriptions found in the cave.

If you could observe it closely, you could clearly identify zero from the inscription.

After viewing the inscription I and Nandu returned to the starting point. We were waiting for others. But even after 45 minutes, they didn’t return. But we were again helpless, as even phones don’t have a signal. Nandu was terrifying with his usual negative comments. But hopefully, we could get a signal and could call Akhil. We could find that they went down to explore more about the caves. After about half an hour more they returned.

After that, we planned to climb the mountain, but couldn’t do that as it would take about 3-4hrs. And we couldn’t see the reverse waterfall either. And we cannot wait for a long as the transportation wasn’t available.

The village was quite undeveloped. Some election campaigns were going on. We couldn’t spot anything like a restaurant. There is absolutely nothing for transportation, like a cab or bus.

We returned to Junnar in the goods autorickshaw. We covered 26-30km in that. But then we had to take care about some more thing, as the driver was a stranger, and we didn’t know anything about him. And he stopped at one place, waiting for one of his friend. I could spot anxiety and fear on my friends faces much like me. But, tried to hide that, as appearance may make us weak. I believed that everything will be good. And everything was good.

more than anything, more than the destination, the feeling that the trip gave us was great. I have no words to explain that.

(The photos are taken from the collections of Nandu TS and Akhil Javad with their permission)