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.
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| Bastions at the entrance of Mangad Fort |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Cave and water cistern atop Mangad Fort |
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| 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.
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| Tall grass near a water cistern atop Mangad Fort |
By the time we reached the base the time was around 6 PM.
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| 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.
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Remains of Mahadev Mandir
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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.
