Torna, also known as Prachandagad is located in Pune district.
This fort has historical significance as it is the first fort captured by Shivaji maharaj at the age of 15 in 1646. The name derives from Prachanda means huge or massive in marathi and gad means fort. Torna fort is a very large fort which is around 80 kms away from Pune.
Trek has moderate difficulty level.
I got a chance to visit this mighty fort on June 29, 2019 with my colleagues and friends. We started from office and it was raining quite heavily that morning. I reached late, in fact at the end. We hired a Tempo traveller and were almost 12 people. 7 people boarded from office and later we picked 3 more on the way and the journey began with a heavy shower.
Journey was of almost 3 hours with a halt for breakfast. We had famous marathi breakfast items : Poha and Misal Pav. After having breakfast, we reached the foot hill in another 45 minutes.
We started the trek at around 10 am and was one of the amazing treks I had till now. I have posted a few pics just to show the beauty of the shayadris. It is a difficult trek if you compare it with Sinhgad or Lohgad.
We reached the fort after a tough trek of almost 2 hours as we had some senior citizens in the group
(Harsh and Neha). If you guys are reading this don’t feel bad, age is just a number. Every monsoon a huge number of travel enthusiasts visit Torna fort and the same was the case when we visited: A huge crowd. People were scattered in the whole fort. It again started raining when we reached the fort.
There were clouds everywhere. Sometimes so dense that you couldn’t see whats in front of you.
Everybody was exhausted after reaching the fort and it was the time for snacks now.
A good thing about Maharashtra is you can always get something to eat like bhajji(Pakoda), Tea, Maggi, etc even at the wildest places you could ever imagine. We had Maggi, Poha, and Tea as Lunch. After lunch, I along with Shenaz, Shubhangi, Pooja, Nikhil, and Saif went to explore the fort leaving senior citizens at the Lunch hall.
I was not able to go to one of the corners of the fort as it was paining in the knee but Pooja and Nikhil made it through the steep slope and with no help. We enjoyed at the point where the steep slope starts and enjoyed the rain. I had an apple there as I was feeling hungry. Soon Pooja and Nikhil returned and all of us headed to the lunch hall to meet our senior citizens.
Soon we reunited with the whole group and after waiting for sometime we started our return journey to the base. we reached at the base but as you guys know Shubhangi, She kept the tradition and twisted her foot. This time Neha accompanied Shubhangi in the tradition and got sprain in the left hand.
We boarded the Traveller again and started the journey for home. On the way, we halted for dinner at a restaurant which I didn’t like. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant. We reached Pune at 9 Pm and the journey terminated where it was started.
Thoroughly enjoyed this.