Kumbhe Waterfall Blog ❤️ The secret route to the beautiful waterfall

I have always been in search of huge & offbeat waterfalls. Many many years ago I had been to Devkund & Kataldhar waterfall when they were really offbeat & barely known to some hardcore trekkers. These days they have become well known. Kumbhe waterfall is such an offbeat gem which is bound to become super famous over the coming years due to its sheer size & direct accessibility. Fun Fact: South Superstar Vijay’s 2023 movie Varisu featured this waterfall. This Kumbhe waterfall trek blog will provide you all the information necessary to plan this trip yourself without any guide. More offbeat waterfalls & treks at the end of this post.

How to reach Kumbhe Waterfall from Mumbai & Pune ?

Where is Kumbhe waterfall located ? It lies in the Mangaon Taluka of Raigad. The nearest railway station to Kumbhe waterfall is Mangaon Railway station. Taking bus or a train one can easily reach Mangaon from both Mumbai (140 kms) & pune side (110 kms).

Mangaon to Kumbhe waterfall ( 23 Kms ) using Public transport: From Mangaon one can get ST bus to Kumbhe at 9 am & 230 pm ( a local gave this info which I have not validated). Also there are sharing rickshaws available which will take Rs 50 one side. A complete taxi can be booked for about Rs 400.

From Pune side one will cross Tamhini Ghat to reach Mangaon & can get down at Nizampur ( a stop before Mangaon ) from where you can get local transport to reach Kumbhe.

Kumbhe waterfall by personal vehicle: This is my preferred mode of transport as the place is too far away from both Mumbai & Pune and cut journey by local transport would take up lot of time. By personal vehicle just put in Kumbhe waterfall on Google maps (location) & enjoy the ride.

How long is the Kumbhe waterfall trek ?

Reaching Kumbhe waterfall is time consuming as you already read at the top that its far away from both Mumbai & Pune. However once you reached the location you just walk out of the car and directly see the waterfall. Hence its 5 minutes for top of waterfall, 15 minutes to reach the Kumbhe waterfall viewpoint to look at it from the front side. So if are just here for the views you can cover Kumbeh waterfall in one Hour. If you are a experienced trekker & decided to do the the DOME it will add 90 minutes of to & fro time.

Khane me kya hai ?

There is absolutely nothing available around the waterfall. The villages near by are also quite small. Give it few years before camping trips would be organised here. Better to carry your food from Mangaon & Nizampur. During monsoon there are many natural streams where you can get refreshingly cold water.

Is Kumbhe Waterfall Difficult for beginners?

Your vehicle directly reaches on top of Kumbhe waterfall. Hence there is no trek necessary. This is more like a picnic place. From here you only see the top of waterfall . To see the entire Kumbhe waterfall one has to go to Kumbhe waterfall view point which is 1 km away ( can go by car ). As such the difficulty level for Kumbhe waterfall is very easy & straightforward for beginners & families.

Kumbhe waterfall DOME: There is another view point which is quickly gaining popularity ( after being featured in a South Indian film called Varisu starring Vijay) from where you can get a closer view of the Kumbhe waterfall . I call it ” The Dome” . To reach here you will need to descend through a route which i term difficult, risky & avoidable. There are two routes for the Dome which i have shown below both of which are extremely risky. I took the red one which has lots of loose rocks & dangerously slippery conditions ( Its more like a waterfall route) The orange one is the one which i took while coming back up is less risky , but still very slippery & difficult. They both take about 45 minutes to get down but i recommend not to go there unless you are an hardcore experienced trekker

Route to the viral dome of Kumbhe waterfall

Kumbhe Waterfall trek Blog : TheFreeBird ‘s Story

My plans for Kumbhe waterfall got cancelled many times. Finally when i thought monsoon was over & I would have to wait another year it started raining heavily all over again in 2022 which gave me a last chance to visit Kumbhe. This Kumbhe waterfall trek blog is the story about that special day when the clouds landed on the earth. Plan was to reach Kumbhe waterfall & then go to Nanemachi waterfall in a single day hence started the day early at about 0400 hrs. After about 4 hours of travel we reached the Kumbhe tunnel & were greeted in heaven by a blanket of clouds

I took many photos & shot reels for my Insta but was just no able to get enough of this place. Being the dead end of monsoon the clouds using come down before retreating, Looking at so many clouds really got me excited as I refused to move ahead. After taking photos for an hour when the clouds disbursed we moved ahead. Next up we crossed the Kumbhe tunnel to reach the top of the waterfall.

Going through the tunnel my heart was pounding with excitement to finally get a glimpse of the mighty Kumbhe waterfall. Parking the car we rushed to see the waterfall. Prima facie the waterfall is not visible, only after standing at the edge do we get to experience the cascade of the mighty waterfall

Please be very cautious while crossing the water stream to reach the edge. The stream may have strong force which can make you slip & fall in it. Also at the edge beware of the slippery rocks. We spent some time here and moved around to different spots to get better views. The water was cold & soothing. I had already made plans to bathe here before leaving.

From the edge we felt the force of water gushing out through the rocky rivulet, But since the entire view of waterfall was not visible I was not able to realise the height of this gigantic waterfall. To see the complete view of waterfall we went to the Kumbhe waterfall viewpoint which is about 1 Km from here . Parking our car at Location 1 mentioned in map at top, we moved down towards the view point plateau.

Lo & behold , the clouds from earlier had raced us to the Kumbhe waterfall.

The Kumbhe waterfall view point itself had transformed into a viewing point. Nature God seemed super happy with me today. If it was any of my other treks this itself would have been the climax of the day, but Kumbhe had some more surprises up its sleeve. We neared the view point to experience the full power of waterfall

Till this point of the trip everything seemed like a picnic and is easily doable by anyone. A blind folded handless Thakur ( from Sholay ) can do this trek easily till here. After this point I saw a dome below which i felt would give be much closer view of the Kumbhe waterfall. And from this point started a super risky & difficult descend to the ” DOME “. ( I have named it DOME, so if you use the word send me Rs 100 as copyrights 😁 )

I went to car parking and changed my sandals to my trekking shoes getting ready for the descend.

I cant even start telling you how difficult this DOME route is . There are many places where there are loose stones & tall grass hides the deep valley.

Once at the dome ridge I called my friend to follow the same route. From the ridge the waterfall was barely visible as clouds completely engulfed it . It seemed like all the trekking was in vain. We waited for 15-20 minutes when the clouds finally departed to reveal a mystic beauty. This secret dome route to see Kumbhe waterfall is also risky as the grass cover the path & on both sides is valley. So we walked cautiously to reach there.

It was a terrific experience to reach the DOME & to enjoy the view from here. As luck would have it that day a drone guy had reached the view point and he took some aerial shots , will post them once I get it from him.

Finding Route to reach the bottom of Kumbhe waterfall

From the dome itself I could feel the sheer power of Kumbhe waterfall. I wondered what it would feel like to experience this behemoth from the bottom, With that in mind I started to look for ways to get down. I could spot 2 small waterfalls from both sides of the dome which went down. Apart from these its all a rocky wall with no place to go down. The right waterfall route was clearly visible to take a steep fall in between hence it was ruled out. While the other waterfall route appeared to go down quite a bit .

I decided to take this route to go down alone and asked my friend to wait for my confirmation. This route is even more slippery with loose rocks as no one goes here. I went down for about 20 minutes till the point where there was direct drop which was impossible to traverse. Realising that its a dead end i decided to end my hunt for a way down. The ascend was again going to be a pain in the ass and hence decided on not taking the same route as earlier. We took the orange route mentioned in the Map above. I took another 30 minutes to reach the Dome & then another 20 minutes to finally reach the top.

Got in the car went to the tunnel point cleaned myself of all the mud which i had got on my track pants, had a final look at the waterfall, thanked the nature God for this beautiful morning and started on our way to Nanemachi waterfall.

Till next time.

Bye !!

That’s it for the Kumbhe waterfall trek blog.