Waterfall Rappelling at Vihigaon

I got a tweet last week which led me to this page about waterfall rappelling at Vihigaon last weekend (17th and 18th July). The pics looked good. The rapel was only of 120ft -around  previous 350ft rapel, but the waterfall would definitely not make the descend easy. But the only issue came up when I called up Zeenat on the number specified on the page and she told me that I had to reach Shivaji Nagar at 4 in the morning! That meant I had to leave my house at 3AM and would have to wake up at around 2! That like the waterfall rappelling was something I have never done before! But after booking seats along with 3 of my colleagues, I didn't have much choice.

So on sunday morning, after my alarm was successful in waking me up at 2.30, 4 of us, Prateek, Mansi, Vinod and I went to Shivaji Nagar in a  call taxi. Trekmates, the group conducting the event was waiting there for us. We hopped into the bus and in 10 minutes we started off to Vihigaon. It was a long journey, most of it was along the Pune-Nasik route. We made only 2 stops along our 7 hour journey - the first one when we saw a hyena on the way and the second one for breakfast.

A friend we met on the way

When we reached at 11, the group from Mumbai had already begun rappelling. The guys waiting for their turn to rappel were having a nice time watching the waterfall and people rappelling or enjoying in the water. . Within a couple of hours, they stopped for lunch. Prateek had brought tasty puris from home and Mansi had cooked some good pulao for the four of us.

People enjoying the place and their time

After lunch, we didn't have to wait much for our turn. I was the last one to go among the four of us. One of the guys who finished his rappel passed his gloves, helmet and harness to me. I put them on with the help of one of the volunteers and then was ready to go!

My first few steps

When the rope was free, I was called. Few instructions were given, the knot was tied and in a couple of minutes, I was walking backwards along the waterfall. 

In size, the descend was only a third of the Naneghat rappel I had done earlier. But the force of the waterfall and the slippery rocks made it equally if not more difficult and challenging. My footwear only added to the problems. I was wearing my shoes earlier, but for the rappelling I decided to change to my sandals thinking I it would give me the same grip and I that I could prevent my shoe from getting soaked! I didn't sleep properly the previous night, I had a fever and still went ahead with the trip but changing the footwear was the stupidest of them! I slipped once after covering almost the quarter of the height. After that I kept feeding the rope faster so that I stood perpendicular to the rocks and managed to complete it fine. It was a really thrilling and enjoyable experience. 

I believe the pics speak for themselves

 By the time I finished, it had started to drizzle. I was feeling really cold so I changed to a dry shirt and wore my wind cheater. But before others finished and we reached the bus the only dry shirt I had was wet too. We had tea in the evening and then left for Pune around 630; we should have started 2 hours earlier to reach on time. Now we knew we were going to reach back home pretty late in the night, but what we didn't know was about the accident on the highway ahead which caused a huge traffic block and delayed us further by more than an hour. The fever and cold was getting worse. We now had to stop at a restaurant for dinner which again consumed some time. But with the help of the good roads (we came back via the mumbai pune national highway) and the driver's heavy right foot, we managed to reach Pune around 3.40AM. I then took a rick from shivaji nagar to my home and reached there at 4am! I have slept past 4 in the morning a lot of times before, but never after waking up at 230am the previous day!

As Jack Bauer says, "...this is the longest day of my life".


Similar posts:
-Naneghat rappelling
-Duke's nose Valley Crossing