Peb (Vikatgad)

Location: Neral

Base village: Fanaswadi village near Neral

Altitude: 2100 ft

How to reach: From Mumbai take the train to Neral. After getting down at Neral you can ask the villagers to guide you to Fanaswadi. You need to take the waterfall route. Guide is advised for this trek.

Grade: Medium/Difficult

Trekking time: 3-4 hour climb and you reach Matheran. You can taxi a taxi down to Neral.

Trip report:

We boarded the early morning train to Neral from CST. After alighting at Neral station and a quick vada pav and poha breakfast we started walking towards Fanaswadi. We visited this fort with group called YatriSahyadri. My daughter was only 6, the youngest among all. We werent aware of the gradient and nature of the trail or else we wouldn’t have taken Paehel. There were some serious risky patches on this trek! But nevertheless she did it with flying colors 🙂

The group leader led the way. It was a long walk from Neral station on Tar road.

The U shape in the mountains that you see was where we were supposed to reach. The road finally ended and we started walking on the path leading upwards.

After about30 min we reached the caves.

After resting for a while, having some snack and collecting the rainwater in bottle through leaves we started again. The trail led to a ladder from here.

We started climbing the ladder one by one and then it was the chance of baby Paehel.

Beaming Paehel after she climbed the ladder

There are many such ladders along this trail. However after some time we reached the most dangerous section of the trek. Here only one person could go at a time and my heart skipped a beat when it was Paehel’s turn to walk alone!

Further we kept climbing and came across a reservoir and there were some more ladders before we reached the top. There is a temple of Pebi devi on the top. The views were breathtaking.