Thoseghar

By now, people had started giving up on an outing every weekend. I was tired. It turned out on judgment day that it was just me and B for tomorrow. We agreed to bike, though in the morning the whole laziness in me got us moving in my car towards a Thoseghar for a drive. Thoseghar is around 35 odd km from Satara and is home to two beatiful waterfalls that plunge down the Sahyadris. Around 5 kms from Thoseghar is a place called Chalkewadi plateau thats home to thousands of windmills that generate around I guess 350 MW of windpower which is I guess quite a large wind energy installation as such in entire India.

To get here : Reach Satara via NH4 from Pune. Take a right into Satara, continue to Ajinkyatara, cross it to continue towards Thoseghar. Enroute, one hits Parali dam and Sajjangad [ 12 Kms odd from Satara ].

We continued till Thoseghar. There is a forest department office here, they have put up railings and a balcony as such for tourists to enjoy the sight. Ironically, there is no clear access route to the base so one has to live with the sight, savor it and be happy with it. Crossing these railings is dangerous and is not advisable, dont attempt to get into these waters for there have been quite a lot of deaths here.

Importantly, there are leeches out here, so dont - dont at all venture into any bushes or water as well. I got at least three of these on me. I had not seen a leech for my life, though the first encounter did not prove to be a nice one. We continued to Chalkewadi from here. Though since it was real cloudy, there was a little opportunity to spot all windmills at once. These windmills are massive and quite scary and huge if you reach the base of one. These are spread till Patan from here over the length of Sahyadris. The Koyna backwaters are just 1/1.5 hour of leechful trek from here though visibility is a big issue due to clouds here in rains. Maybe some other time...

P.S. I have moved from Imagestation to Shutterfly as they are closing down soon. I am struggling with image sharing options of Shutterfly so no album this time till I figure that out.