Patali Waterfalls -The Hidden Gem

Patali Waterfalls framed by the lush green diversity of the lush tropical rainforest, the trail passes in National Park through the diverse scenery and culminates at the top of an absolutely spectacular waterfall. Patali Falls is quite difficult and arduous to reach the trek involves thick jungle, stream fords and scaling nearly vertical rock faces. There is no trail and the journey despite the falls being located under a 2-3 kilometers from a road, will take most of half day.

I had been hearing from various sources that such a waterfall exists in National Park, of all the waterfalls in National Park that I've seen so far, this one is by far the most remote and hidden. One of my senior friend almost approached this place before and he is the only person had known the presence of this waterfalls. My friend Rajesh Naik and I decided to explore this unmarked region, and proposed the idea to the other four and they immediately agreed.

As though our plan we left our car at forest gate and took some useful information from the forest-officer, first 10 minutes walk is simple later we entered to the thick forest zone, a real rain forest immediately after the rainy season one that is virtually untouched. The trail vanishes exactly at this point!

We walked towards the forest through the barely visible trail suggested by the Forest-Officer and it starts descending steeply. Within 15 minutes, upper stream is visible to our sight a green reservoir surrounded by thick plant life all around.

We made the trail to ourselves in both directions; anyway the trail starts out being moderate and adventures until eventually when we reached stream bed, it became more tough and striking. We followed upper stream for another 30 minutes, within half hour, we reached the top of Paataali waterfalls.

The falls initially slide down from small jump before veiling down the largest drop to the below valley and cascading for the final step from 150 feet height. After the risky attempt I managed to reach base of the first stage and all my teammates joined me.

The view from the top of the waterfalls is absolutely beautiful. It is the perfect getaway and really is immersed in nature. The most unfortunate factor is that due to both the size and shape of the falls - as well as the thick forest in the area - the entire waterfall can not be seen from any one vista until we reach bottom.

 

We start to descend steeply into the gorge to reach the base of the waterfalls. Climbing down in perpendicular cliff with the help of root and branches those pinch your heart, as you can only try inserting that beauty in a photo, but it doesn’t reflect the complete fascination of the landscape. I managed to take couple of picks in a hanging position from right side of the cascade but I couldn’t able to reach bottom. My friend Sndesh, Sunil and I tried our best to approach the base but lack of time and some other factor we returned back, after spending an hour of time we headed back to home with some glories experience.

Really it does conjure up a picture of what stairway to heaven really would look like. Endless! But totally worth the trip! Don’t give up! A beautiful, scenic hike that's worth all the sweat! Yeah sure at one point or another you might just want to run off because of all the efforts but the view from up top of the waterfalls is absolutely perfect!