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Mangad fort is situated in Borwadi in Mangaon taluka in Raigad district in Maharashtra

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Mangad fort is situated in Borwadi in Mangaon taluka in Raigad district in Maharashtra. The base village for the fort is Mashidwadi.

Bastions at the entrance of Mangad Fort
The directions to this fort are tagged on google maps. There are signboards on the road to, so you sure that you don't go off track.

We parked the car near Mashidwadi. Mashidwadi is a small village comprising of around 20 to 30 houses. It is also the base village to Mangad fort.

By the time we reached Mashidwadi village, it had already started raining. The time was now 3:30  PM on watch. We didn't get any rain cover, but that didn't stop us from visiting the fort premises.


Temple of Goddess Vinzai

There are signboards on the way, but we still managed to get lost uphill and were travelling in the wrong direction uphill, finally 
Dominic took a de tour and met a villager and then we traveled via the stone boulders to reach the Temple of Goddess Vinzai. The villager had informed us to keep the gate of the temple closed else the monkey's go enter the temple premises.

From the temple one has to travel via the stone cut rocks , walk on a tall grass patch and again on stone cut rocks to reach the Main Entrance of the fort.


View from atop Mangad Fort
As it was raining, the stone was wet and had turned slippery due to which we were not able to get a good grip on the rocks, there was also moss growing on the rocks which was making the journey difficult.

Dominic went uphill, he then motivated Manohar and Me to join him, we finally gave in and managed to climb the fort.
The fortification near the main entrance is intact. There is map of the fort here.


Sculpture of Maruti atop Mangad Fort

A orange painted sculpture of Maruti (Hindu God) is present here. There are a couple of water tanks (water is not portable) and a cave on the fort premises. The cave can be used for lodging purposes.
The thick vegetation atop the fort premises and the rains made travel difficult for us. We then made our way and reached the orange colored flag posted on the fort premises. The view from here of the neighboring forts and valleys is just amazing. I am just hoping that my phone doesn't get too wet in the rain and stop working. Still managed to get a couple of shots.


Cave and water cistern atop Mangad Fort

Map of Mangad fort, on the fort premises
Ideal time to climb up the fort is around 45 minutes, 20 minutes to see the fort and another 30 minutes to return to base.

Tall grass near a water cistern atop Mangad Fort
By the time we reached the base the time was around 6 PM.


Saffron flag atop Mangad Fort
We had one more fort to conquer, the Surgad fort near Pali, but we decided to skip that fort as we were running short of time, we then decided to head back to Mumbai.

On the outskirts of Mashidwadi village we noticed the remains of the Mahadev Mandir, the podium of the temple is made of black stone. Nothing much remains except for the statue of Nandi.


Remains of Mahadev Mandir

Statue of Nandi at Mahadev Mandir
Out of all the fort we saw today, Avchitgad and Talagad was the best as it had a lot of ruins atop of it, Birwadi fort just had the Main Entrance which was intact, felt sad as we couldn't explore Ghosalgad in entirety, Kude Caves no doubt were a good and clean set of caves, the actual adventure part was when we climbed the Mangad fort. 


The entire journey  starting and ending at Ghatkopar Station, inclusive of food, stay and travel cost us just Rs.2155 each. 

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