Sahastrakund waterfall, another one of the waterfall which I have never heard about. I tried to Google for more information about this place, but could not find much. I happened to see a video on this place, with gurgling water cascading down. Soorya, my friend who happens to be a lover of waterfalls and has a knack of discovering some unknown territories, planned a trip to Sahastrakund. This time, my family also joined in his trip. My kids, aged 10 & 6 were all geared up and excited to go on his trip. When I informed them, they would need to walk for almost 6Kms, they agreed easily. On August 30th, 2015, the trip was planned. Soorya had taken care of our travel tickets and as usual, he had planned everything and shared with all.
Very little details known about Sahastrakund waterfalls, I tried look up in the Google, but did not come up with much information. Sharing whatever information, I could dig and gorge on...:-)
Sahastrakund waterfalls is at a distance of 4.5 km from
Islahpur village, 60 km from Nirmal, 100 km from Nanded, 116 km from Adilabad
and 282 km from Hyderabad, Sahastrakund Waterfalls is a nice waterfall located
in Nanded district of Maharashtra. Sahastrakund Waterfall is an amazing waterfall on the Penganga River, a
tributary to Godavari River at Murli village. The water falls can be visited
throughout the year, though monsoon is the best season.
The water drops from a
height of 50 feet to form the breathtaking waterfalls. The rock pattern in
surroundings of the falls is also interesting, as the black rock appears like a
metal. The water force is quite high during monsoons and not advised to get
into the water.
There are two temples near the falls on both sides of the river. The ideal time to visit the waterfall is during monsoon (August to October).
From
Nirmal, the waterfall can be reached via Dhani, Swarna & Islahpur. The road
from Nirmal is average and can get worse during heavy rains. Public
transportation is limited to this place from Nirmal (one bus that runs four
times a day). There is also a railway station (Sahastrakund Railway Station)
which is half km from Islahpur and 5 km from the waterfall. This station is
connected with Hyderabad, Nagpur, Nanded and Adilabad.
The only
solution for us to try get out of bus and see if we can get an auto or
something which will help us to reach the station in time. With that in mind,
we jumped off the bus at the signal, crossed the road and took the next
available auto. Meanwhile, Soorya had
called me twice and told me that they are already at the station. He provided us the coach number, seat number
and the platform number where we can board the train. The
auto wala took over from there, we do not know what road he took, and it was 5
minutes to 9 PM, when we reached the station. It was just mad rush for us to
catch the train. All four us, just ran and got in the train, as it was leaving
the station. It was touch and go for us. You should have seen the grin on our
face…
Finally,
we got settled, introduced ourselves around.
We found that there were two boys in our group of the same age group of
my kids. The kids got introduced, shared
Mogins cupcake to cement their friendship. Some of us had got dinner, so we had
quick dinner and decided to call off the day. We were told that the train stops
at the Sahastrakund station about 3:30 AM in the morning. Thankfully, our train was slightly delayed
and the station at 4:00 AM morning. My
son was pretty wound up that he was up by 2 AM and every half hour, he would
tap me ask me if the station has come.
The moment, we told him, we are approaching, he could not hide his
excitement, he was immediately got down, ensured that his sister was wide
awake. The train stops for 10 minutes,
we quickly made our exit from the train. We grouped together, started walking
out of the platform. From the station, we had to walk about 6 kms to reach the
waterfalls.
Since, it was early morning hours, it was difficult for us to get
any mode of transport for the kids. It was pitch dark, with no streetlights, so
we had to pull out our flashlights to We found that a small shop had its doors
open, which was quite a surprise for us. I peeked in, picked up water bottles
and few more munchies along chocolates. By the time I made the payment, started
to walk, I found group had covered quite a distance. Pavan, who had stopped at the shop along with
me to pick up water bottles, picked up pace to rejoin the gang that was
marching in the dark.
On the way, we had stray dogs barking at us, as if we
were the intruders, who have shaken them from their slumber. The roads were
full of potholes, filled with rain water.
We had to be careful while walking, it was nice brisk morning walk for
us with jokes, talks and lot of leg pulling. With the first morning light, we
were reached the waterfalls. As we walked towards the elevated ramp, we found
there are two temples on both sides. You can have darshan, if you want to. From
the elevated ramp, we saw the waterfall in its full glory, like a mini Niagara
waterfalls. It was just beautiful, I am falling short of words to describe the views
that was breathtaking.
For about
an hour or so we stayed around the elevated the bridge, basking the beauty of
the waterfall and tranquility around the place. Around 7 AM, we decided to have
our breakfast before proceeding to the other side of waterfall. With that
decision we all walked back to the entry point of the elevated ramp, where we
had seen small shack, kind of eatery run by a family. We had hot, spicy batata poha along with
sweet tea. As soon as we finished our breakfast, we started to walk towards the
other side of the falls.
To reach the other side of the waterfall, you need to
cross a bridge that is built across the river, should say about a kms or so
from the shack. There is no road that we found, we walked through open rocky,
muddy terrain to reach bridge. I noticed that bridge was complete, we could
actually get down on the pillars to sit and enjoy the view for few minutes. This
walk through the terrain and bridge was refreshing, we took our time to click
pictures.
Once we reached the other side of the falls, we girls and the kids
did not need coaxing to run towards the water. Soorya informed us that the force
of watre was high, as it was close to the waterfall. We did notice that the rocks
are sharp and slippery, we had to be very careful while getting into the water.
We spent about an hour in here, then decided that we needed a safer location
for all of us to have fun in water. For that reason, we walked back towards the
other side of bridge. On reaching there, we found the banks were muddy, and for
about few feet, it was covered by algae and moss. In another 15 minutes, we
knew, we need to find another location. Soorya, went ahead, got down near the
bridge, tested the depth and gave us a green signal to come down. That’s it…we
all ran like crazy nuts who have not seen water for ages…
We played
in the water till lunch time, dried and changed our clothes. We all started
back towards the Sahastrakund station. Since
we all were exhausted to the core, and with four kids, we found it would be
difficult for us to walk back. We
decided to hire an auto who could take us towards the station. We wanted two to three autos, but we got only
one auto, so it was decided that the ladies along with kids with go ahead in
the first batch, then auto wala will come back to pick up the remaining people. With that decision, we got into the
auto. But believe me that was the worst
auto drive for us because the route taken by the auto guys had craters, not
just potholes. At many places, we had to get down and push it…well that was fun.
Somehow, we managed to reach market area. We requested the auto driver to wait
for us as we wanted to have lunch before proceeding to the station.
Since, it
is a small town, we did not have much option.
We found one decent place to eat, ordered masala rice, poori and aloo
sabzi to eat. Unfortunately, the poori
was not cooked properly, so we could not eat them. We paid the bill, then got
into the auto to proceed to the station.
The auto driver asked us to inform the remaining team members, that he
will not be able to pick them up as the road was bad. We somehow managed to inform them. The guys walked all the way to station after
finishing their lunch. We waited for our train, which was scheduled at 4 PM
from Sahastrakund station.
Since we did not get direct train to Hyderabad, we
had to break our journey at Mudkhed. The train journey to Mudkhed was just fun,
where we all discussed the pictures taken.
We would swap the cameras & smartphones to see the pictures
taken. Arif's photography was awesome, (let me mention it is here, he is a great
photographer and has trekked with Soorya in too many treks).
Arif had taken
some of the pictures of us in the water.
That chotu camera (I forgot the name, I will try getting the name from
Arif) has done amazing job. It was short trip to Mudkhed, before the blink of
our eyes, we were all getting down.
At Mudkhed, we had enough time to kill as
we waited for the connecting train to come in. Finally, we all boarded the
train, found that our seats were spread across the entire compartment. We noticed
that the our compartment had only few people, so we decided to sit together,
play antakshri (complete mix of Hindi, Telugu songs), boys v/s girls. Omg!! What fun it was….At Basar, we had to
breakup as other passengers started to board the train.
It was about 9 PM (do not remember the exact
time), we all reached Secunderabad, bye to say goodbye for us. We ensured that
it was not a goodbye, we exchanged numbers and still touch with most of the
group members.
Another
beautiful memory made, with another set of strangers…
More
details on Sahastrakund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahatrakund_Waterfall
Photo Credit:
Arif, & Soorya
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