Chambhar Lene

I spent a month in Nashik which is in Maharastra state in India. I wanted to be with my ailing father and continue maintaining an active routine with daily exercise while there.

Nashik has many holy temples in its vicinity and has Panchvati- the place where king Rama, from the epic Ramayana, spent his time in exile. The river Godavari also has its origin from a nearby place Trimbakeshwar near Nashik. There are Pandava caves and Chambhar caves situated on freestanding mountains. Chambhar Lene are about 7km from my place and I decided to go hike there daily.

As seen from about a half mile distance in the picture above, you can see the temples at about 75% height of the mountain. The first day I hiked it, I was stuck by how steep it was in a short span of distance. I was also amazed that the roundtrip was only one mile. I decided to hike it back-to-back the following day.

The height of the temples is approximately 2,600 feet and the start of the climb is at about 2,100 feet. The view from the top shows the city of Nashik and its plentiful buildings at a distance. This is a small city of 2.3 million people, which grew from a population of about half a million nearly two decades.

The stairs leading to the temples are steep and also have uneven heights. There are a couple of covered rest areas built along the way.

When one reaches the top, they can see the Jain temples. People wearing shorts cannot enter the temple and can take a picture just from the outside.

I had a regimen of going at about 6:15 am each morning, so I got to see sunrises almost daily, except when it was a very foggy morning.

There is a lot of greenery as well as many cactii visible from the top.

The early morning start also had an advantage. The weather is really nice at that time with temperatures ranging between 60-65F, and a nice breeze which makes the strenous climb not only bearable but also pleasant.

I decided to take sunrise pictures each day to see how they vary from day to day. Also, I implemented the climb up, descend, repeat. The two back-to-back climbs resulted in a 1,000 feet daily climb and the walk could be completed in 53 minutes daily.

I started seeing the same sets of people daily and could see a flicker of recognition in their eyes as we walked past each other.

During each walk, I was either listening to some book on audible or listening to a podcast.

The couple of books I completed listening to and really enjoyed were, Michael Easter's the Scarcity Brain which I expected to enjoy, and did enjoy in reality. Previous to that, I had enjoyed the same author's The Comfort Crisis which prompted me to embark on his second one. Both these books extol the virtues of being active, being uncomfortable, striving to do new things and learning from them. This walk indeed, was in the same vein. The Scarcity Brain also inspired me to someday go and spend time in the 'Our lady of Guadalupe' monastery in New Mexico.

I started reading another book by Wharton Professor Adam Grant, who has many successful books under his belt, and this one is named Hidden Potential.

On many other days, I listened to a podcast by Ravi Ranganathan, which explains the meaning of the epic Mahabharata's Bhagwat Gita. He has done a great job, explaining it in the context of current times, flawlessly transitioning from Sanskrit to English.

It does need listening, and re-listening because it is quite easy to miss out on the deep meanings of this sacred text.

Since the hike I did ended up in a temple, which is a very ancient one, and many pilgrims visited it daily, the podcast was quite apropos.

Below, you can see some Jain religion pilgrims which are wearing the traditional garb, which includes a fan to scatter ants and other bugs that are in their way, preventing the insects from being crushed under the feet of these pilgrims.

Although I aimed to walk this trail each day, there were at least seven days of the month that I couldn't walk this trail. Of these, two days were because of severe sharp pain in my hip, which I experienced suddenly, which made each walking step unbearably painful.

Thankfully, this pain subsided in two days without needing a trip to a doctor or a chiropractor.

The other days I missed this hike was when I went to nearby longer and interesting hikes like Ramshej, Dhodap, Mohandari, Mangi Tungi and Harihargad. These longer hikes needed 6 to 8 hours of time and were mostly done on weekends.

The stairs were quite steep and very uneven but had a unique feature. There was a small step of 1' x 1' dimension on the left side of the uneven steps and it was half the height. So if someone wanted, they could get some respite from the lunges.

Many men, women, children did the climb each morning, some with good footwear, some without, some with slippers, some with traditional colorful garbs, some with a walking stick, some running up the stairs, some walking really really slow, some chanting mantras, some listening to popular music, some doing push-ups across the stairs, some doing exercises on the side in groups, some drinking healthy soups which were being sold in a kiosk at these early hours of the morning. It was delightful to see so many people each day trying to be healthy.

At the summit level, there were many Buddha statues carved out of marble in multiple temples.

The biggest carving was the one below, and it was at least 15 feet tall.

Some temples had one statue, and some had multiple. You could see pilgrims praying in front of them each morning.

Besides getting exercise, I felt that each day doing this 3.5 km hike raised my spirits, gave an energetic start to the day, and put me in a positive mood to tackle the challenges for the day.