Duke's nose trek and valley crossing

On the 6th of this month, I went on a trek with valley crossing on the Duke's Nose which is situated in Lonavla. The trek was conducted by Trek'di, a trekking club I found on google when I was back in Mangalore. The valley was around 850m deep! And for 800 bucks I thought it was a good deal. And when I saw these two pics of the valley crossing on their site, I had no doubt about registering for it. :)


The biggest challenge for me was reaching the station at 6 in the morning, which meant I had to be up by 430! LOL! I could only manage to go to bed by 1am but somehow woke up on time and made it there.

We caught the 620 local train to Lonavla, and reached there at 0750. Some guys from Mumbai also joined us there. When we were walking towards the exit, I heard a couple of guys just behind me talking about Manchester United and Chelsea. I realised twas bcoz I was wearing a cap with 'Chelsea' logo behind it. Thats how I met Albes, Vamsi and Prashant who also work and stay in Magarpatta City. Their offices are next to the Amdocs tower.

We took a sumo from the station to the base of our trek. There we had our breakfast at a small restaurant stall. And after the breakfast, we had to sign an agreement which read "I am solely responsible for my safety and for any mishap during the trek and Trekdi isn't responsible for any of my actions." Everyone was so positive after that..hehe ;)

Then we started off. It was drizzling a bit. And was foggy all around. You could see only a 5 meter radius around you. We reached the top of Duke's nose pretty soon [took around 40 mins]. But the main part was yet to come.

From the top of Dukes nose, we had an awesome view. There were clouds below us. We could see rives, waterfalls far away. Well, we couldnt see them very well. They were just a few white lines among the green landscape below.

Can u see the cable across the valley?
click on the pic to see it

When we reached atop, the cables were being setup. There were two trees acting as the base anchors for the cable. And from there, the cable went to three different secondary anchors (just in case the tree got uprooted because of a really heavy guy ;) ). There was another cable too, connected in a similar way, for safety.

We were first shown a demo crossing by one of the organizers. After that, the participants started to cross one after the other. At midday, it started raining. For a couple of hours, it was ok to stand in the rain. After that, it wasn't very pleasant for sometime.:)

Ropeway to heaven

At four, I got ready to cross. The sky had cleared by then too. I got strapped and hooked to the cables; and was good to go. When I was crossing, I kept looking down. The ground was sooo far away; almost a kilometer down! And it was a great feeling to be hanging on a cable so high above. For the minute, I was crossing, I even forgot that I was scared of heights. :P

Looking at the ground far far below

It was over pretty soon. But I had one of the best 60 seconds or so of my life. The best so far was without any doubt the Bungee jump in the second year. :) Even though this was much higher than the bungee, I enjoyed the latter more; the feeling of free fall is totally different.

Below is the video of me crossing.

Next on the 'to-do list' : Rappelling on a waterfall. :)