Naneghat - The Return Journey

I was in a bad shape. A very severe bout of cramps had me. One group member had her shoes torn and I had offered her my shoe. Which meant that I had no footwear. We were 3 of us. A couple of my group mates offered to give me company by road so that I need not travel along to Junnar.

From the top of Naneghat there is a road that takes us to Junnar in around an hours time. But getting a transport to Junnar was a huge ask. The nearest village was at a distance of around 5 km from where one could get a bus to go to Junnar. But with my torn shoes and cramps it was next to impossible to walk those 5 km. There were a few vehicles that were waiting near the cave.

My friend Anurag is a go getter. He has been one right from our college days when I started knowing him. He sought out the owner of one of the cars waiting there. We requested him to drop us to the nearest village from where we could take a transport to Junnar. The person was so nice that he infact offered to drop us to Junnar where he was headed. This was a great relief to us.

We waited for an hour or so for his family to enjoy the scenic beauty of the place, before we could start moving. It turned out that this gentleman was quite an influential person in that area. He ran a few schools and showed us at least 2 of them as we travelled towards Junnar.

They made us feel comfortable in their vehicle as we drove towards Junnar. It was so relieving. We told them about V Hikerz and they were quite impressed with what we are doing.

Finally at Junnar we got dropped off. When we were about to get off the gentleman inquired about our professions and our names.

We bought a pair of floaters at Junnar and had a snack. We started looking for transportation to take us to Murbad where one of the vehicles that we had got from Mumbai was to wait for us.

Buses were not available at that time. Finally near the bus stand, we saw a hoarding that displayed a phone number. We made a deal with the taxi guy and went with him.

It was a ride of more than an hour. Almost 2 hours actually.

I started wondering. The trek to Naneghat was around 3-4 hours duration. The drive from Naneghat to very near to the base point was again around 3-4 hours distance.

The trekking route was actually an ancient trade route. This trek to Naneghat was the route taken by traders to go to the deccan from the konkan. The same distance was covered by car in a comparative period of time.

Just left me wondering though. What with our claims of being scientific, about using transportation models, about using modern techniques

Have we really progressed ?