Travel to discover: Hathni Waterfalls

"Hathni waterfall" is a strange name for ears at first. "Hathni" means a female elephant in Hindi & Gujarati Language.

Situated far in forest area of Jambughoda Sanctuary, green & fresh, Surrounded by hills; you will find least pollution here in this area, as there the place is visited by only local people.

Deciding the place..

It was only by chance that we went to visit the place. One evening after our College we friends sat down to plan for a weekend outing.

The first place that came to mind was Pavagarh, but as many of us had already visited the place we decided to Google & get back with homework on the places that we could visit.

The next day we all gathered & started to list the places. Jand Hanuman was the place that major of people wanted to visit. But I insisted for visiting Jambughoda Sanctuary which was at once accepted. At this point we had no idea of some place call Hathni waterfall exists here.

The plan was to gather at 06:00 am near "Golden Chowkdi" a Toll Gate at highway exit near Harni Airport. But my sporty & enthusiastic friends came there at 08:00, which was too early for bird watching as it was going to take at least 2-3hrs of travelling to reach the destination. Still we decided to move on & reach the place. The main aim was not to spoil the day & enjoy whatever we could get out of the trip.

The environment was superb; cool & cloudy, the sky had poured lots of rain the other day to make the ambience best for Roadies like us to hangout. Everyone was excited.

Mugdha (my wife) & I were the Photographers; breaking the journey wherever we felt like clicking a snap. Among other roadies; the riders were busy keeping eye on the road but still demanding for taking their pic, while the ones on the pillion enjoyed giving different poses for us to snap them.

From left to right: Vaibhav, mugdha; Shamil, Bhumi; Raushan, Dilip; Yogesh, Kinjal (both in insat).

Shamil; the serious yet jolly guy, accompanied by Bhumi, our Lecturer for German language who is the youngest among us all,

Raushan; the Brute among us, he is the one who was the worst risk-taker amongst us as you read further you will realize why it was so. Raushan was accompanied by Dilip. Dilip is at 1st look rough & tough; one can't expect him to be sober to talk on first look but when you know him, he totally proves you wrong.

The third biker pair was of Yogesh aka Yogi and Kinjal. Kinjal is the person who is ever ready to get snapped. Wherever there is a camera there is Kinjal giving out pose and wanting to get snapped & so is yogi, every time you take out your camera, he does all his flexes & biceps and if someone passes comment on him he tries to cover it by saying that it was a co-incidence and he didn't mean to give a muscular pose.

The trip was getting interesting now. Bikes were on high torque. RPM's where as high as they could get. Bhumi then realized that Yogesh & Kinjal were missing from the crew. Raushan & Dilip were almost out of our sight as they had their 220cc Bike racing at the top speed. But that was not the case with the other missing two; they were far behind us from long time.

We decided to take a stop & wait for them. Shamil tried to give them a call but place was out of the service network. 15mins passed & there was no sign of the either of them on different sides. Then Shamil decided to drive back & asked us to wait on road for looking if Raushan & Dilip came back.

We were definitely tensed, trying to keep bad thoughts out of our mind by clicking snaps & cracking bad jokes. Then ringed the phone after 10mins it was Shamil. Our heartbeat rose, this time it was even more than our bike could give torques when Shamil said that they met with an accident. But then it calmed when he confirmed that they had minor scratches and nothing else.

We all decided to go back on the location where all this occurred. On reaching there we saw furious Shamil & Kinjal laughing to cover what all had happened. We then learned from Yogesh, that while giving poses, Kinjal's scarf had tangled in the wheel while sitting on the rare end.

However may be the circumstances, we decided to move on & stick with our plans. On the way at a tea break on a road side Dhaba (a road side restaurant in a village, almost like a hut)

While getting a local antiseptic ointment from a local storekeeper, we learned that it was too late to visit a sanctuary and we could hardly get a glimpse of small bird of few antelopes and nothing else. He added that he could suggest a place worth visiting. "Hathni waterfalls" was the name that came from him. After a bit of discussions we decided to trust the fellow & move ahead.

"Patal" meaning Hell & "Talao" meaning Pond in gujarati language, when Googled came to know that it is also known as "Courtesan's Tank". It is a beautiful place at the back side of Pavagarh hill. Next to "Shakar Khan na Rauza". Rauza meaning Tomb or Cenotaph in Urdu/ Arabic not sure about it. Not much people are interested to stop on this site.

Walking further inside to take snaps in the green woods, we came across signboards of Tiger & Panthers. While some were looking at the sign board & others busy in photography we heard noise among the bushes, came a forest ranger. He started screaming & scolding us. He advised us not to get in that area as it could get fatal.

This flower attracted my Cam's Macro Lens the most.. as this was as tiny as Peanut yet so beautiful....

As soon as we reached at the base of the hill we came to know that due to heavy rain few days back the crossing at the point where we had to start to trek had washed out due to a heavy land sliding.

We had to make a human chain & cross the river. We had seen people trek like that on discovery channel but here we were actually experiencing it. It was real thrill.

The Hathni waterfall was much more exciting & beautiful that we had expected it to be. We all agreed that the saying "Jo hota hai, ache ke liye hota hai" (everything that occurs; occurs for goodness.)

Raushan the brute explorer jumped off down the trek at the side of the cliff, and he located a small fall at the side, where no visitor could think to go as it was hidden and could not be located any way. It was like bonus for us, as the main water fall is too crowded to be enjoyed.

After showers, we decided to trek further to reach at the top of the hill where the temple is located.

There was a cave at the edge of the waterfall that had a temple in it. It was a hanuman temple. He priest said that the main temple was at the base of the waterfall.

Time was running out of our hand, but the fun & excitement was at its peak. But we had to leave as we were much far in forest area & there were sign boards saying that one has to leave the forest area before the sun sets, also there were no signs of civilization in some area, so if there was a breakdown in our bikes there was no way out. So we decided to control out emotions & promised to plan such trip which will have more thrill, excitement, fun, adventure, forests, water, & obviously we all roadies, soon...