Visapur, Where the Clouds Sat With Us

We did not set out as two. We set out as a whole caravan: college friends, and their friends, all bound for Visapur in the rain. Somewhere between the road, the fort and the way back home, the caravan thinned out until it was only Yogesh and me.

The plan was a greedy one. Three famous old places, in a single day. So we said goodbye to the others, and the two of us went on ahead, to Visapur first.

There were three ways up that we knew of, and we picked the one through Patan village. A trail through open fields and then forest, waterfalls running down like small rivers, and the clouds hanging low enough to touch the top of the fort. It felt as if heaven had slipped and landed on earth. About an hour and a quarter of climbing later, we found ourselves inside the clouds.

A wide plateau was waiting somewhere in front of us, and I could not see a single inch of it. There was only the feeling of standing in a big, quiet, white nothing, and the feeling that we were lucky to see it that way. We walked two rounds, and then remembered that we had somewhere else to be.

Past Gaimukh Khind we came to the bend where the paths to Visapur and Lohgad split off in opposite directions. Two giants, side by side, and the only way to take them in is with your eyes.

Lohgad hardly needs me to introduce it. Its walls have stood for centuries and tell their own stories. But the day was a different one from Visapur. We had left the noise of the city behind only to run into another kind: hundreds of people, maybe thousands, and a hullabaloo to match. We pushed through the crowd and reached the top in about twenty minutes, and still, with that view in front of me, my mind would not settle.

So we wandered a little, and then decided that this was not Lohgad’s day. We would come back, slowly, when it was quieter. On the way down, a crowd has no face and no rules, and Yogesh’s leg strained somewhere in the middle of it. He could hardly walk.

The station was about five and a half kilometres away. His legs had given up, vehicles were on offer, and neither of us felt like riding. So we walked. The last place on our list sat midway along the route, but up on a height, and I thought we might lose it. We did not.

The Bhaje caves. Twenty-two of them, more than two thousand years old, a small village of rock and craft. The third way up to Visapur passes through here too. We did not waste time; one by one, we walked through every cave. The sunrise from here is said to be unmatched, and the caves stay cool even in summer.

That was the day, almost complete. There were few ways to get home, which meant hurrying, which was not possible. The others had left after Visapur, some for Mumbai, some for Pune.

It was such a long day. And what did we eat? Nothing but breakfast. Honestly, we were not even hungry.