A few weekends ago I set off on a journey I was completely not prepared for . . . the trek to Fort Ratangad. I had been trekking several times before, I had my toilet paper, 4 liters of water, a trekking backpack stuffed with people’s blankets and necessities and I thought “Oh yea I got this . . . it’s only a 2 day trek” and for the most part I did have it, but nothing prepared me for trekking with 30 Indians to an abandoned fort filled with adventures of monkeys and some of the most intense partying I have ever witnessed.

The hike to the fort was quite steep but only lasted a few hours (and would have been less minus the stragglers ;) ). We crossed over rivers, up sketchy half hung rusty ladders and stairs carved in stone, eventually reaching the Fort with the breathtaking 360 view of everything beneath us. Just imagining the Maharashtran Fort being constructed thousands of feet high atop a mountain, thousands of years ago, was mind blowing. The Fort had ancient caves filled with Ganesh statues (the god of wisdom and success portrayed as an elephant) of which we spent the night in . . . twas kind of creepy.

Yea this is safe...

steps carved out of stone

The Fort

The cave we slept in

Creepy Cave

Conquered

Although we were exhausted and laid on our oh so comfortable stone cave floor to rest our eyes we shortly realized why Indians like to trek . . . the partying at the top—the never ending camp songs sung at the top of their lungs, ghost stories, and just plain yappin away around the fire. Despite the complete absence of sleep we got that night, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and hiked all the way around the fort, circling the tip of the mountain, like in some lord of the rings type of epic movie.

Oh I forgot to mention that just before we were going to bed, a great samaritan, or should I say forester—Stephen—decided to share his wealth of Parle-G crackers with one of the fort monkeys . . . well one Parle-G apparently wasn’t enough for this monkey and he chased Stephen around the mountain, eventually coming to our group and jumping on Lindsey’s face in efforts to steal the camera out of her hands and then smack . . . Jibron drop kicks the lil guy and he goes scurrying off. It didn’t stop there . . . as we started to walk away 1, 2, 10, then 20 monkeys appear out’ve the grassy hills right above us. We ran back to our cave, the monkeys following shortly behind, and eventually they settled on ravaging through our food (and garbage) taking everything they could find.

Crazy monkeys ransacking our food supply

 Oh yes, this was an epic trek full of crazy monkeys, new friends, and anything but sleep J