13-Aug-2012 --

This DCP was the second of the three (DCP1, DCP3) we visited in a 5 day expedition from August 11 - August 15 ,2012. The route taken was Kalyan->Nashik->Dhule->Jalgaon->Shegaon->Akola->Kalyan. This narrative is written by including only the DCP relevant stuff from my detailed expedition report.

The day was important - two DCP, separated by a distance of 150km, were to be covered and halt was to be made in Shegaon. But we still started from Jalgaon at leisure and hit NH-6 again. Soon we crossed Bhusawal and halted for breakfast. From here, the Bhusawal Thermal Power Project was visible. We then crossed Warangaon, where I saw an ordnance factory which probably wasn’t directly related to DoD<, and continued. We made a mistake - the car was left behind and we rode way ahead. Later, we got confused after seeing the compass which was pointing in the South-West direction for DCP2 and we were heading North-East. After an exercise of traversing towards Bodwad, Chalisgaon, we decided to fallback till Warangaon and begin search afresh. But well before Warangaon(around 11km), the pointer turned perpendicular to the road and we decided to stop. We parked our vehicles at a 'dhaba'.

Antik and Vishy decided to stay back while I and Golu set on the search. We were carrying jackets, camera, tracker, notepad, pen and 1litre water. Traversing fields of Paddy and Jowar and occasional wastelands, we were heading towards DCP2. Due to little or no rains the previous and that day, the soil in the fields was not sticky.The humidity must have been above 60% - we were sweating a lot. We had to cross 2 hillocks which had many shrubs and thorny trees. Again, we came across curious and surprised farmers, some thought we were students, some believed we had come for inspection for setting cell phone towers :P One thing I noticed was the language had a very little Marathi flavor and the diction was quite harsh. After walking for a distance of almost 4km (at least, we felt so), we reached the point. This was on a wasteland and not a cultivated farm. As told by a villager, the village is Hartaala(Hartaale?) and probably is under the Muktainagar police station’s jurisdiction. We quickly erected a stick on the point, took the necessary photos and headed back to the highway.

We reached the parking spot at around 1430 hours. We again set towards Shegaon, after some delay due to Vishy’s bike stalling. After we crossed Malkapur, the bike gave up again and we had to stop at a ‘dhaba’. I and Antik hurried in the car to Malkapur and brought a mechanic along who asked us to change the plug in the next town of Nandure. We obliged. DCP3 visit was pushed to the next day as it was getting dark. After passing Khamgaon, we left NH6 and reached Shegaon, got a comfortable accommodation and went for Gajanan Maharaj’s samaadhisthan visit.