Team-BHP - Mumbai - Kamshet - Andhra Lake

The weekend started early…..what defines a weekend is actually the availability of the children. Friday, 31st July the elder one had a break from college and the younger one had a half day upto 1100 hrs – again as plans go this one was thought up the night before! Last year I had been on an abortive search for the YMCA Campsite at Andhra Lake, off Kamshet. I had heard of the boating kayaking and thought they might even do some scuba. The other point of interest was the hang gliding they do around those parts – but like I said, it was totally abortive and all I found was a small dam with a guest house belonging to some company – probably Tata Power, since they appear to have a monopoly over most hydroelectric projects in this area. Anyway this time round I thought it prudent to do some more home work – I went over the area on Google Earth and picked out all the coordinates of road junctions as seen and fed them into the Garmin GPS. (My wife is totally anti-GPS/hi tech and has nick named it ‘Grameen’.)

The branch-off road to the YMCA seemed to start from beyond the Kamshet Jn off the NH 4 and thereafter leads all the way to the YMCA Campsite on the western edge of Andhra Lake. Beyond that, the road turned private (Tata Power) and led up the hill range upto a point. After this, Google Earth showed what appeared to be a road/track in a straight line that ended at a village and beyond this a road that eventually went all the way to Karjat. That was the plan, a round trip – I hate backtracking on the same route. Well, I did find the YMCA – but discovered that you need prior appointment fixed up with HQs at Mumbai, for any activity/stay. Seemed to be a nice place however – cabins, tented accommodation etc. Anyway, pressed on further, beyond the YMCA camp and up the private road to what I discovered was the end of the road. Tata has a power project up there which seems to be a hundred years old! What I had thought was a track/road on Google Earth turned out to be a funicular track transporting Tata workers up/down the hill. It had a power turbine at that level and the water after one cycle was transported in huge pipes down hill along the funicular track to be reused through another turbine downhill before being released downstream. So there I was – no vehicular exits. Trekkers may be interested because there was a well made concrete foot path all the way down. The view on the drive up to the power house is breath taking. A little rain, the low clouds/misty conditions made it even better. At one particular stop-over you could drive up to the edge of the cliff – really great view. On the way down, along Andhra Lake (which reminds me of an octopus, incidentally), there are lots of paths down to the lakeside, if you care to cool off!
Here are some pics:

Quote:

Originally Posted by kpbhatt (Post 1431698)

Jimmy -- can you trace it from the Kamshet exit to the Andhra lake on google maps or your Grameen gps?

Here are two pictures from Google Earth:

Place marked 'petrol pump Kamshet exit' has the coordinates:
18° 45.422'N 73° 35.633'E
Place marked 'YMCA' has the coordinates:
18° 55.249'N 73° 30.286'E
Place marked 17g is at 18° 56.201'N 73° 27.937'E and is the gate of the power station or thereabouts. No road beyond that.
The better view points are between points 21g to 17g. The route to follow would be from 'petrol pump Kamshet exit' to 'jn3 app' and then the red route 11 onwards to '27'. from '27' either go toward YMCA or follow the green route in a reducing marking i.e '26g' to '17g'
Ignore the other points like 5b to 13b - they were for another planned excursion. Hope it helps.