Songiri Fort a.k.a Palasdari Fort (किल्ले सोनगिरी उर्फ पळसदरीचा किल्ला)

The monsoon have already started and in full flow. So, obviously me and Laxmikant have decided to go for Songiri fort also known as Palasdari fort. This fort situated near Palasdari village. Palasdari is a small village and having small railway station which is just before Karjat Railway station. There is no direct train from Mumbai / Pune to Palasdari. To reach Paladari station, One needs to get down to Karjat and then move with "Karjat-Khopoli" local which stops at Palasdari Railway station.

Palasdari fort is standing just in front of station.

To begin climbing, one needs to go towards Palasdari tunnel. There is one lineman cabin near tunnel. Behind the cabin, there is way which go towards top of fort.

We started ascending the fort and soon we realised that, this climb will become challenging as the forest on the way becoming very dense and we are struggling to locate the proper route. Look at the dense forest in below snaps.

Fortunately for us, we are on the right path till now and after climbing for an hour, we encountered one rockpatch which is not that difficult but bit challenging.

Entire Bor ghat region looking spectacular after climbing the rock patch and we reached on one huge plain plateau.

Still, we had covered only half distance. Songiri fort is like kept on this huge plateau.

We decided to have some light breakfast now

Now, to go further, one has to search for "Forest department compund" and with that compound one has to climb up to go on top of the fort. These compounds leads you to the another plateau on top in jungle and then you can use you judgement to climb last 15-20 minutes of way.

Soon, we reached near bastion of the fort.

View of surrounding area from top of the fort is spectacular. We rested here for 10-15 minutes looking at beauty of the nature.

One can also see one water cistern on the fort. This water is not much portable but in case if you are running out of water on top of the fort, you can use that.

We took then some lovely snaps of greenary and surroundings. Here are few of them.

We then decided to descend the fort as we need to catch the local to karjat. Descending was quite risky.

While descending, we saw small water flow flowing. so we filled our water bottles there.

Soon, we completed our descending of songiri fort and reached near tunnel. It was indeed quite memorable experience.

Note:
1) Jungle is quite dense on the way. we saw "wild boar" and also heard the roar of "leopard". So, please be extra careful. One thing is very imporatnt "Be in the group and Be with the group".
2) Remember last local from Palasdari to Karjat is 6:30. Schedule your time accordingly as it may take 3 hours to go on top and 2 hours for descending.

You can find entire photo gallery of this trek at https://picasaweb.google.com/110853779229661321949/SongiriFortAKAPalasdariFort#

Enjoy!!!!!