Mission - Peb Fort

Our group Amdocs DVCI Trekkers recently organised a trek to Peb Fort. Fort Peb (2100 ft) is situated on northeast side of Panvel, on Mumbai-Pune road, at a distance of 3-4 km on west side of Neral.This is the most beautiful one day trek. But there is a dense forest on the way to the fort Peb. The fort is also named as ‘VikatGad’. Fascination spots are cave on the fort is occupied by disciples of Swami Samarth, a great saint.


Saturday, March 11, 2006. I woke up at 03:30 in the morning. Suprisingly, I was the first one to arrive the boarding place and first time we started the journey in time. We started from MagarPatta City around 5.00 am in the morning. We picked up everybody on the way and continued the journey through Mumbai-Pune Expressway. In the end, we were a team of 16 members with one girl. The first halt was at Food Mall on the expressway. Everybody had tea there and got fresh up. The second halt was then at Karjat Chowk where we had a nice breakfast which had Wada Pav, Meesale Pav, Kanda Bhaji and off course a nice hot tea without which breakfast is not complete. We reached the base village around 10.00 am.

So at 1000Hrs we started walking towards our destination. First we crossed a river which was totally dried up. In the way there were two difficult rock patches to climb. But the team never gave up. In between the way our half of the team were confused from which way to go, since othe half team members had gone ahead. But we found the correct way and joined the group ahead. We crossed all the hurdles and reached the cave which is below the actual fort at aound 1300hrs. It was hard to hide the smiles.


There was a statue of Shivaji Maharaj inside the cave and the cave was basically occupied by disciples of Swami Samarth. We rested there for a while before we could start trekking towards te fort. At 1345hrs we started walking again. The first step was to climb up the fort wall. It was 10m high where large nails are stuck in and also there was a ladder to climb up. But our team had so much courage that insted of climbing from ladder they chose to climb the wall through nails stuck in the wall and this was the best moment during the trek. Now, when everybody climbed the wall successfully, members could hardly resist themselves from taking some snaps. But, the life was not still easy for the team since the path to fort was not that straight. We had to walk through narrow paths which was almost like aar ya paar.

After an hour we finally reached the top of the Peb fort. There is a flag post at the top which is quite long. There is a ladder attached to the flag post. Some of them went up with ladder and others took some snaps. We could also see the railway track on which the Neral-Matheran toy train runs.


We started our journey back to the cave around 1400hrs. On the way, we went to shiv mandir on fort. After reaching the cave, we had a nice lunch together and everybody took a short nap. We then started walking down the mountains at around 1545hrs. And this time it took us almost one and half hours to come down. At last, we compeleted the one more trek successfully and third one in my list. I had a great thrill and a very nice fort to visit also. Although there is not much to see there, but the trekking experience was very exciting.