Toranmal (तोरणमाल) – An unexplored but beautiful hill station

This is my first endavour to write a travelogue on Ghumakkar. I also am a travel lover like most of the other human beings. Since we were in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for more than 10 years.I had listen lots about Toranmal through the local folks, but unfortunately couldn’t got an opportunity to be there, we heard about this place in a way that i had made a mysterious and frightening image in my mind about the place.

The Beautiful Toranmaal

On this rakshabandhan when we were making plan to go to my in laws house at Khargone, my brother in law informed me on phone that he is planning to take us to a wonderful place as a rakshabandhan gift for her sister. He told us that we’ll go to toranmal – a beautyful place to enjoy a full day.

After receiving this info from him, i started searching about the place on google. I found a lot of information on google about the place, but all the information shown that Toranmal is the palce where one can reach from Maharashtra gateways, and we were planning to visit there from Khargone, a town in Madhya Pradesh.

I took the Maps of the district of Nandurbar (Maharashtra) and Barwani (MP) from google. On the  planned day my family (Myself, My wife Kavita, my daughter & my son)went to khargone to celebrate Rakshabandhan. We reached home on Saturday and Rakshabandhan was on Monday.

We had a sunday in between on which my brother in law had planned trip to Toranmal. We decided to to go there by Maruti Omni. At 3:00 Am alarm woke us up, we all got up and started preparing for the trip.  The ladies (My mother in law, brother in law’s wife and my wife) started preparing food as we heard that there is no good facility for food there. We started from khargone at 04:00 AM and reached Khetaia (The last town of MP situated on the border of Maharashtra) at 08:00 AM. We took breakfast here. Here in Khetia we experienced the real joy of state border as the town is devided in  two parts, one part i.e. Khetia in MP (Barwani District) and another part Khed Gadar in Maharashtra (Shahada District) .

The town was a perfect combination of MP & Maharashtra culture. Wel we started our journey towords Toranmal, Toranmal is about 55 km from here. The road  condition was very very bad. After an hours tiresome & tedious journey we reached to the foots of hill (Satpura range) and now we had to climb about 26 km on a spiral road up the hill.

Shri Gorakhnath Temple at Toranmaal

The last 25 kilometers stretch was a dangerous entirely ghat section. The road and ghat was so dangerous that mother in law started reciting ram nam with rudraksh mala in her hand and she continued this till we reached the hill top. Well the way was very dangerous but the the atmosphere was soooo…. pleasing. Children and all of us were enjoying the scenic beauty of satpura mountains, the ghat was including picturesque “saat paira” or the seven bends of the road. The climb was breath taking which enthralled us. As we were climbing up the atmosphere was becoming mistier. The sight of the high mountains mixed with mist allured our senses. In the mid way we saw a view point, we got off the van to have a view of beautiful mountains. We were stunned looking the enchanting beauty of satpura mountains.

Another beautiful view of Toranmaal

On the way we could see the beautiful water falls also. Childrens and we all were enjoying the never seen beauty of the mountains except mother in law who was continuing with mal in hand and taking ram naam. Finally enjoying the miraculous beauty of nature we reached to our destination. Yes this was a wonderful and unexplored, unspoilt and untouched, the second coolest hill station of Maharashtra enhancing the beauty of beautiful satpura range of mountainns. It was about 10:00 AM when we reached at Toranmal, as our van stopped at the station we could see the temples of Gorakshnath and nagarjuna alongwith the Yashwant lake, among these three we couldn’t stop our steps which were automatically proceeding towords the lake. It is a beautiful natural lake which spans about 1.59 km sq. and has a maximum depth of 27 meters. We took a bath in this lake and all our tiredness gone away.

The Beautiful Lake

After this lake we proceeded to the gorakshnath & nagarjuna temple., the temples were very beautiful. The gorakshnath temple is of religious importance and thousands of divotees of Lord Shiva visit here on Shvaratri to attend a Mela from nereby states of MP, Maharashtra & Gujarat. We stepped foreward, on the way we saw a beautiful pond called lotus pond, the beauty of thois pond is that it happens almost covered with the beautiful lotus flowers. The local tribal children were trying to sell us the lotus and we purchased few from them, our next destination was Sita Khai which is a scenic and beautiful vally. We enjoyed here a lot and it was difficult job to handle the children becase they were overwhelamed with the beautiful scenes, but still it was dangerous for the children so we decided to move from here as early as possible.

A Water fall at Toranmaal

It was around 12:00 in noon and we decided to take our lunch here, we took our lunch on the natural mat of grass, also offered some food to local tribal children who were continually following us. From here we drove to Machhindranath Gufa (Cave). Since there was no road for vehicle we decided to walk on foot for around two kilometers to see the cave, the cave was miraculous. The we drove to see other nereby places like Khadki point, Sunset Point etc. Khadkin point is the highest view point at Toranmal, This point has panaromic view of the vally. After spenting most enjoyable 5 hours there, we were very tired and planned to start return journey.

A Beautiful View

We started our return journey at 4:00 PM. Having glimpses of the beautiful but dangerous ghats in the dense satpura forests we proceeded to our return journey. But this time we decided to run 30 kms extra and to reach Shahadaand then Khetia to avoid the excessive bad road condition from khetia to Toranmal directly, and it was really a good decision as the road from Shahada was good enough and we reached Khargone and at home at 10:00 PM with unforgetable memories of the beautiful Toranmal.

 Important Informations:

Place: Toranmal

Location: Satpura Hills, Akrani Taluka, Distt. Nandurbar (Maharashtra)

Catagory: Hill Station having religious importance also.

Distance from important cities: Shahada 55 km, Nashik 360 km, Surat 250 km, Mumbai 510 km, Dhule 90 km, Indore 260 km.

Height: 1461 meters (4793 ft) above mean sea level

Nearest Airport: Aurangabad (290 km)

Nearest Railhead: Nandurbar (76 km)

Where to stay: Government rest house & Resourt is available..

How to reach: From Sendhwa (MP) on NH3 (Mumbai Side) 150 Km, move to Khetia (60 km) and from here Toranmal is approx 50 km.like all other Hill stations it has a beautiful lake (Yashwant lake) Waterfalls, a cave, various view points, and untouched beautiful mountains. . T

31 Comments

  • Mahesh Semwal says:

    Dear Mukesh,

    I never heard about TORANMAL before this. Thanks for introducing us with this unexplored place. It would be great if you could add some pictures of your trip.

    • Silas says:

      Hi,
      I have some pics form TORANMAL. Though there is not much to see it is a quite and beautiful place.
      give me ur email if you want pics…

  • Dear Mahesh,

    Thanks a lot for the first comment from you for my first travel story. As we could not take a digicam with us, it was difficult for me to add photographs, but for next next story i’ll definetely add the photos.

    Thanks.

  • Ram Dhall says:

    Welcome aboard Mukesh and thank you for sharing your experiences of visiting the lesser known, Toranmal hill station.

  • Dear Ram,
    Thank you very much for your appreciation & motivation. In this October (Next month) i have planned to go on a religious trip with my family (Bhopal-Hyderabad-Srisailam-Tirupati-Kanchipuram-Chennai-Bhopal), I’ll be thankful if you (or anybody else) provide me some guidence on these places. waiting for your reply.

    Thanks & regards.

  • Narendra says:

    Dear Mukesh
    Very interesting place they way you have described. Like Mahesh said, it would have more appealing had you put some photos. By the way, does one need to book the government rest house in advance? If so, how many days in advance? Are taxis available in Nandurbar to go to Toranmal? Looking forward to getting replies. thanks.

  • Vishal Sharma says:

    Hey Mukesh, Nice description of the Place.

    U remind me my college days. I went to this beautiful Place Toranmal from Dhule with my Roommates on our super cool bikes of that era – Rx100 & Rx135.

    We used to roam around the places during our College Tenure. Toranmal was one of them.

  • Manish Khamesra says:

    So much to see and so little time …

    Just like Mahesh, I am also surprised that there are places (read beautiful places), about which I have not even heard.

    Thanks Mukesh for the journey.

  • Dear Captain Narendra,

    Thank you very much for your liking my post. Housla afzai ka shukriya, Is naachiz ko aapne is kabil samza. Well, Taxies are avaialable from Nandurbar and Shahada also Maharashtra State Transport Special hill buses ply twice a day from shahada and Nandurbar. We had not planned to stay there so i know very little about government rest house but i can get the information for you in this regard and i ‘ll let you know very soon.

    Thanks.

  • Vishal,
    Thank you very much for your nice comments, Really college days are the days we can never forget. I also recollect during my engineering 1990-1994 (That time ragging was an integral part of professional colleges) and we used to roam nearby places mostly on sundays to get a temporary rid of senior devils.

    Tahnks.

  • Manish Khamesra Ji,
    Aap jaise diggaj ghumakkar ke comments hum jaise nausikhuon ke liya padkar man prafullit ho gaya. Yeh aapka badappan hai. Manish thank you vey much for your nice comments and appreciation. Ab bas intezar hai Nandan ji ke comments ka.

    Thanks.

  • nandanjha says:

    Welcome aboard Mukesh.

    Toranmal, the name itself sounds musical. Never heard of this place, may be a good detour from NH3 for a Delhi-Mumbai drive :-). The episode about mother-in-law was engaging. I was looking fwd to read her experience on the way down.

    Thank you for sharing this with us.

    Look fwd to reading more from you.

  • nandanjha says:

    One more thing Mukesh, you may want to get a picture of yourself alongside the title as well as in comments. For that please sign-up for a gravatar.

    Here are instructions – http://life-inspires.blogspot.com/2010/04/displaying-your-picture-along-with-your.html

  • jojo says:

    HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII TORANMAL IS VERY ATTRACTIVE PLACE

  • Dear Mukesh ,
    Now this is the post which is short and sweet. The description here is very beautiful,original and innocent……….
    Feels like going now.very beautiful place………………
    Keep going these type of places also…………………

  • Giriraj Shekhawat says:

    Mukesh Ji ……….
    I had heard of Toranmal as that part of the mighty Satpura mountains making its short stint in Maharashtra and then again playfully culminating in Barwani (Madhya Pradesh)…………………
    awesome pictures substantiating the grandeur of this panoramic splendor …. well written and nicely conceived post.
    My affinity for Satpura’s date back to my first visit to Pachmarhi . and this love will never die down !!!
    This being your first post motivated me to get a sneak peak into your domain crunching this amazing story

    Cheers and happy ghumakkari

  • Mukesh Bhalse says:

    Thanks Giriraj for your sweet words.

    Thanks.

  • SilentSoul says:

    Beautiful article about a place.. I never even heard of

    the photo of waterfall is great.

    thanks Mukeshji..

    ?? ??? ???? ??? ??? ?? ????… ?????? ?? ????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ??? ????… LOL

  • parag says:

    we are from mumbai .is it worth to visit toranmal in may . is there any secinc place near by toranmal in 100 km ? taht i can spend 5/6 days . is there any hotel/accmodation facility ?

  • jitendra says:

    tomorrow i am going to toranmal and i dont know where i will stay last week i had chat wit some body because i had plan to go to last week but now i am planing tomorrow so i need som contact………………………………………………….

  • Nidhi Pandey says:

    Hello Mukesh!
    Thankyou so much for describing in detail about this lesser known place.
    Do post about your trips to other lesser known places.
    Regards,
    Nidhi Pandey
    Diet and Nutrition Consultant (Bhopal)

  • pratiksha says:

    Its fantastic to read something on Toranmal. Thanks for sharing this information about toranmal. Toranmal hill station is located in Satpura hills in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. hill stations has beautiful lake, waterfalls, cave & various view points.

    • Mukesh Bhalse says:

      Pratiksha,
      Thanks a lot for going through the post and liking it. This place is really awesome specially in monsoon. Though a very less known place but still charming.

  • sanjay says:

    Hi Mukesh

    I read the blog and planning to visit this beatiful place which is nicely explained by you. im worried about to get any booking in govt. rest house Toranmal? please share any contact details if you have.

    Best Regards
    Sanjay

  • M I n says:

    Nice to know about Toranmal it’s been long time I am planning to go there with my family . I just want to know how safe it is to travel with family in a night or day is it safe please guide me if you have any detail.

  • M I janya says:

    I had heard about Toranmal never been there but want to go there please tell me how safe it is to travel with family

  • Pravin Shah says:

    Nice information about Toranmal. I belong to Ahmedabad. Which route would be more convinient from Ahmedabad to Toranmal?

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