Gorakhgad, Ten Monsoons Later
With friends in 2016, and alone in the heaviest rain of the 2026 monsoon. What the later climb taught me about luck, and about tea.
In July 2016 I climbed Gorakhgad with my favourite people. It was a good day, the kind you do not think about much afterwards.
I went back in 2018 too. But the climb I want to tell about is the one in July 2026, ten years after the first: alone, on my bike, on one of the heaviest rain days of the monsoon.
I missed a right turn and ended up in Tulai, a village I did not know. A shopkeeper looked at me, soaked and lost, and offered me tea and biscuits. When I reached for my wallet he would not take the money. “You are a friend,” he said. “You, and people like you, come so far to trek and explore.”
I reached the base village and started up. Gorakhgad stands near Murbad, in Thane district, and most people start from the village of Dehri. It has a reputation as one of the harder treks near Mumbai, and the rain makes it worse. I expected to meet people on the way. I met nobody.
There is a cave on the route. Up to there everything feels good and safe, though it is not really safe. After it comes the last stretch to the summit: a straight climb at 75 to 80 degrees. I took it with no rope and no safety, and with no other person on the whole mountain. What if I slip? What if this happens, what if that? I kept going. I reached the top, and I came back down alive.
It was the riskier choice, and it felt so good. Both are true.
It was not the first time the rain had pushed me close to the edge. In July 2022 I climbed Siddhagad with my best friend. The monsoon had made every step slippery, with the valley falling away right beside the path. At one point I felt real danger. We finished the trek together and came back safely. I wrote about that one too.
I have a lot of stories like these. I will keep telling them here, one at a time.