Doing the Flying-Fox at Vihi-Kasara

I came to know there was a water rappelling event organized by VRangers this weekend via the Mumbai Hikers blog. We booked it and only realized later that it was 220+ km away and we’ll have to be there by 10am. Ouch. We inquired for stays in Igatpuri so that we can reach there on Saturday afternoon and head back on Sunday afternoon. No luck – every single hotel we could reach out to was fully booked. Yikes, what is so special about this place Igatpuri that the whole area is full? We were going to find out later since we decided to head out anyway, and started driving at 5:30am on a Sunday morning.

We headed out on the Maharashtra State Highway 50 which is a 2-lane no-divider highway which made it difficult and slow to drive because of the slow heavy trucks. An hour later, we stopped at this beautiful spot to have packed healthy sandwiches for breakfast:

Less than an hour later, Google Maps showed a possible route other than going through Nashik and we wanted to avoid going to Nashik. So even though the locals also discouraged us, we decided to take the shorter SH51 route that Google Maps showed us, and boy are we glad that we did!

After feasting our eyes on lush green hills, beautiful waterfalls far and near (by the road side) and green fields with grazing animals, we reached our final destination – Vihi gaon, near Manas Resort, Igatpuri, after 5.5 hours of driving through countless bends and turns.

We were both excited to do waterfall rappelling but when we reached, they said that due to heavy rainfall and strong water flowing, the number of safe spots that rappelling can be done from is only one and another group had already taken it up, so we were going to do another activity. We were disappointed at first but safety concerns are important, so we were happy there was another activity – the flying fox  (also called a zip-line).

Although there were too many people in queue (nearly a hundred!), the organizers VRangers handled things very well and ensured everyone’s safety as well as fun.

A video of the view from the start of the flying fox rope : this is my wife who is going down the rope, it hard to get a good shot because, due to safety reasons, the waiting folks were at a distance from the crew and the cliff:

A view from the other side, the end of the flying fox rope : this is a random person coming down the rope:

Experiencing the water splashes:

We enjoyed being at the waterfalls for quite some time, then went to a nearby Greelands hotel, changed to dry clothes in the surprisingly clean bathrooms, had lunch and finally headed back to Pune around 4:30pm in the same route.

The highlight on the way back was a beautiful rainbow:

We had dinner around 8 at Chaitrali restaurant – their Veg. Kasuri is a must-try. Then headed out again doing the sometimes-scary highway overtaking and the even-more-scary overtaking from left because of slow-moving moron drivers who insists on being on the right side of the lane. We finally reached home at 10:30pm, I washed up and crashed for the night with a smile on my face and aches everywhere.