Asawagad Trek

Fort: Asawa
Base Village: Varangade
Height : 1587 feet above MSL
Grade: Easy

Route: Thane->Ahmedabad Highway->Tarapur phata->Chillar->Varangade (75km)


We had gone on a mega trek of 14 forts in 3 days during last weekend of August. The first of them was Asawa fort. We started from Pune on Thursday night and had the plan to reach Varangade the base village of Asawa in the morning by 4am and rest and then on daybreak trek up the fort and come down. However due to the monsoon activity coming up in September , we encountered heavy rains on the way and the rains wont relent at all. We saw huge traffic jams on the NH4 and prayed that NH8 (Ahmedabad highway) shouldn't be like that.

We reached Thane at around 1am and continued ahead. It was raining very heavily , we connected to the Ahmedabad highway and continued. In between after Ghodbunder we had some snacks of Vadapav and Tea to refresh ourselves and continued. The highway roads were bad at some places due to the rain and hence our driver had to continuously check out the roads and keep speeding at bay. Adding to that the rain was relentless and didnt stop at all. We reached Chillar phata from where we take a turn to Varangade the base of Asawa. We turned and asked and found that Varangade is around 10km from here.

We reached Varangade at 4am and stopped. Due to the rain there wasnt an inch of dry land here and also there was no school in here to sleep so we had a problem. There was a factory here (Viraj) and we asked the guard about any place to sleep and he said there isn't any place. So we all slept in the sumo and it was uncomfortable to sleep but we did. Around 6.30 I woke up to find the rain still pouring on but the sun had risen. We looked towards the left side and checked out if we could see Asawa and we could see a hill from here and it resembled Asawa as seen in the photo.

Asawa fort from base village Varangade

We went towards the village and asked a person who told us that there is a temple on top of the hill and he knew that but he didnt know of any fort. Usually people in the village associate a hill to the temple and usually if you ask fort they dont know. So we went inside the village the road to which goes after the company ends to the left. We asked someone for the Mahadev temple and they told us that hill which we saw in the morning which confirmed that it was indeed Asawa. So we asked one villager for the route and by now the rain had stopped. So it was good. We trudged on the path ahead which the villager pointed out and continued. To reach Asawa we had to climb one hill before it and continue to the fort ahead.

We started our trek at 8.15am in the morning and continued. The climb was not hectic so we made good time and continued ahead.We reached the top almost by 9am and I didnt go on top but I could see the bastion of the fort. My legs got some cramps and I stayed some distance below. On top one can see bastion, water tanks and the temple. Nothing much on top.

Others came back in about 15 mins from top and we continued back down. We reached the base village in about 45 mins and by 10 we were near our vehicle. We started for the second fort of the day Kaldurg which was about 15 km from here.