Ankai

ankai means 'quilla' a fort

Time on 17th Feb 2000, I took a sudden decision to go to a place called "Ankai" near Manmad. (A station after Nasik, If we are going from Mumbai)."Ankai" means “Quilla” which in English means a “Fort.”

On Saturday, 17th evening, myself Harry and his wife Lysa took a bus for Nasik from Chembur. We got the tickets easily; only they didn’t allow me to sit beside the ladies seat, so Lysa had to sit there, strange people. The journey uptil Nasik was fine, with a Mithun masala movie and some awful music. It was a great feeling - to sleep during the movie.We reached Nasik once again at around 3:00 am, got down at a place called “Dwarka" and lodged in a hotel.

I woke everyone up with a help of a 6:00 am alarm at 7:00 am.Freshened ourselves up and then had a hearty breakfast. From C.B.S we caught a S.T. Bus to Manmad. We basically slept throughout the journey. It took around 2 1/2 hours to reach Manmad. From there we filled our resources and took an auto rickshaw for "Ankai" village. The best part was noone knew where and what this village was. It was tough bargaining with the autowalas.

The rick guy dropped us at some abandoned place where we couldn’t see anyone, no hotels, not even a pan beedi shop, no Pepsi- coke hoardings, no STD/ ISD/ LOCAL phone booths, no zerox shops, no human excreta, only few goats and cows grazing and some village houses at a distant. It was scenic and very beautiful though. After conversing with a shy lone farmer, we realised we are at "Ankai" village and the mountain at a distance was where the "Ankai" fort was. It looked like a huge giant who was sleeping with a blanket on.

The farmer showed us the way to climb and then after thanking her we moved ahead. It was not a very tough climb but there were no man made paths, only goat made paths. There were some times when we had to crawl under some rough and mean bushes, but we finally made it to the top where the main gate was present. It was a very beautiful view from the top. Now the goats below looked liked ants from the top. It was like a dream, I fell in love.It took us around 2 hours to climb. It was very nice to see Lysa’s efforts to climb.

On top there stood a huge fort widespread on the mountain. It was amazing to see the architecture of the fort and the carvings. But very sad to see some human graffiti and their expressions of love for each other on the walls of the fort... e.g. Rajiv loves Anita, Anita loves Rajiv again. I sometimes wonder, these guys are so stupid at least they should put their surnames along with it or some email id so that not all rajivs and anita’s parents may think about their daughter/son love affair. And to mention their bad grammar, and spellings. it stinks yecchh !!!

We climbed higher and saw a lot of interesting places and rooms inside the fort.There was a temple, after some distance we climbed , with a sadhu inside it. After reaching the temple we had some snacks and then removed our shoes and went inside the temple. We meditated for some time - mind you it was a very refreshing experience.

We did talk to the sadhu there, who informed us that the fort was around 500 years old, but he didn’t know whom did the fort belong to.. a mystery perhaps.I fed the cows with some leaves and then the cow fed itself up with my green cap.There was an army of squirrels and few orangish pigeons.It was very calm and quiet up there, I fell in love once again.

Then we walked the whole fort and checked out all different points, and can never forget the amazing views we got. There was a small lake also up there.We have them captured in our minds and our cameras too.

At around 4:30 pm we started our way back down. It was beautiful to see the sun coming down and the village springing with some beautiful music and smell, might be noise but it was music to our ears.We got down the other way which brought us to the other side of the mountain . The climb down was easier, it took us around 1 hour to get down.

From the village we walked for around 5 kms to get to the main road ( NH3). There we started asking for a ride to get to Manmad railway station. We got a freaky ride from a sugarcane carrying truck. It was good fun sitting in a truck. Thanked the truck guy, and booked our tickets for a 7:30 train to Mumbai.After having a nice dinner, we got some grapes and munching them all the way came back to Mumbai with a lot of memories once again and some new plan for the next weekend.