Part 2 – Forts Ferries and Beaches - 2 guys ride from Anjarle to Goa
So the three less adventurous wimpy people hit the homeward
route, while the two rugged adventurous and incredibly handsome people went
ahead on the coastal road towards Vijaydurg.
Immediately after
Anjarle, we came to the next ferry – Dabhol to Anjanwel. Anjanwel is the home village of our good
friend, and co-founder of Konkan Moto tours and Ridetillidie.com - Pratish Ambekar. And while he constantly
boasts of being from here, he has been very careful not to invite any of us
over to his village. He probably doesn’t want to lower his prestige in the
village by showing what kind of people he hangs out with in the city.
Anjanwel also has a fort, which Pratish had taken us to
earlier – apparently some haraami fellow has squatted on the fort and is laying
claim to the whole fort! He claims that he has planted some crops and trees
inside the fort area, so the fort now belongs to him! The state machinery has
not got around to evicting him as yet – hope they do so soon.
Dabhol is also the venue of one of the most controversial power
projects of all time – the Enron Dabhol Power Company. It was such a sleepy little backwater before
Rebecca Mark and her chums decided on it as a venue for the power plant, and
now there is a humongous plant and machinery out there. I have no idea whether
it is on or off, after all the politicians of Maharashtra got their greedy
claws into it.
From there we went on to Guhagar, which apart from having a
reasonably nice beach, is famous for having the Shiva temple of Vyadeshwar,
which is our family deity. I think Vyadeshwar is the family deity of a lot of
Kokanastha Brahmins, and it is a very nice little temple. Like most
Maharashtrian temples, it is quiet, clean, generally not crowded and
unobtrusive. It is not full of pandas and dirt and thieves and lurid bright
paint like North Indian temples, nor is it exclusivist and ‘take your shirt
off’ kind of pointless traditionalist like South Indian temples. I walked over
the whole temple in full biker garb – Riding jacket, Riding Trousers and Camel
back – and no one gave me a second glance.
Maharashtrian temples
are the way temples should be – an oasis of quiet and devotion, where you can
commune with the almighty – without unnecessary sho-sha and breast beating.
Before I got a bike, I had been to Vyadeshwar a total of 2
times – since I got the bike, I have been there so many times, I know every
chappa chappa of the place. After all, like Shiva, I too ride a Bull now! Maybe
that’s why he likes me so much that he calls me over again and again ;).
From Guhagar, we rode on and we were riding, I saw a sign
pointing to MTDC resort Velneshwar. What is Velneshwar, I wondered. I have
heard the name, but I didn’t know that there was an MTDC resort there. I
remember it being another Shiva temple, which is world famous in Konkan – that
is to say – most KoBras know about it, but not too many other people.
Generally we were always in a hurry, and so we rode past it
– but not this time. I took a right, and the surprised Rishi was right behind
me. We saw the temple, and went on to the beach. The beach was quite nice- white sand, not
much crowd – if we were on that fantasy no-end-date tour of Konkan that I keep
on dreaming about, I might have stayed there for the night.
We met a couple of bikers there, who had come all the way from Hyderabad. They were planning to hit NH4 and stay in Karad for the night and do an all day ride to Hyd the next day; but they were also seduced by the beach and were thinking of staying there overnight.
We had a quick lunch there at a beach side hotel, and then
the Hyd boys came to me and said ‘Can we have a peg with you?’
I was quite surprised.
I had heard that gultis are fond of their liquor – but this was in the
middle of the day, that too with a complete stranger.
‘Well....it’s the middle of the day....and the ride is
on....so drinking might not be the best idea...’ I mumbled at him, and was
surprised as he stared at me quite astounded. Both of us stared at each other.
Then he repeated himself – ‘Can we have a PIC with you? A
PIC?’ and he waggled his camera at me to make his intentions clear, even to a
moron like me.
‘Oh....a photo!’ I was very relieved. ‘Sure, of course. Let’s
take a photo. As many as you like.’
From Velneshwar, we went back to the coastal route and
carried on. We passed Hedavi, which has a very famous Ganpati temple, and came
to the fourth ferry on the route – the Tavsal – Jaigad Ferry.
I had been on this ferry a few times before, but this time
since I was on a discovery mode, I wondered where exactly was Jaigad. Was there
a fort called Jaigad? Where was it? What did it look like? Was there a Gabbar
Singh there, shouting ‘Jaigad ke vaasiyon...’ ?
So when we got off the ferry, I asked the first cop for directions
and we made our way to Jaigad fort. It turned out to be a cute little sea fort
just a couple of kilometres from the ferry landing. Under the benign neglect of the ASI, all it
had was its usual threatening placard, threatening to imprison, impale, draw
and quarter anybody found desecrating the designated monument, but had no
information whatsoever about the fort itself – what was its provenance,
history, story, significance etc. So all we could see was the walls of the
fort, but got no sense of history beyond it.
The other problem was that it was dwarfed by the gigantic steel
plant of JSW steel right behind it, which apart from looking simply awful, just
ruined the look of the fort and the coastline behind it.
But it was a nice fort by itself, and I was really happy to
see it.
We carried on after Jaigad, and crossed Malgund (one thing
that fascinated me was seeing the villages which I knew only as names –
Malgundkar from Malgund, Parandekar from Parande, Malvankar from Malvan etc)
where the sea face was so beautiful, that we stopped to appreciate the beauty
for a few minutes, commune with nature and take a few photos.
The next point was Ganpatipule – another famous beach
destination. The Ganpatipule temple is quite famous – and the beach is also quite nice; and the government has also developed it as
a tourist destination with MTDC and adventure activities etc. The net result is
that the place has become a huge mess, and all I wanted to do was to avoid it
and get out of there as soon as possible. It was quite late already, and we
would have to hustle to hit Vijaydurg before dark.
Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn after Ganpatipule and
ended up on the inland road instead of the coastal road, and we lost about 45
minutes in that, as we had to retrace our route back to the coast. To add to
the confusion, people kept confusing Vijaydurg with Sindhudurg and kept
pointing us in the wrong direction. Luckily I knew the area somewhat, and kept
rechecking with Google maps to stay on course, and not be swayed by the most
passionate of the wrong direction givers.
Rishi suggested that we stay in Ratnagiri – Bhataye beach
was a nice place that he had stayed in once. I was OK with it – going to
Ratnagiri was a good idea, as we could reload our wallets from the ATM and we
would definitely find acco in the town.
Bhataye beach turned out to be an ugly chaupatty type of an affair,
complete with bhelwalas, nariyalwalas and Chinese stalls, and the only hotels
were expensive resort type affairs. So we carried on the next town – Pawas.
Pawas has attained fame as being the home town and ashram
town of a famous godman – Swaroopanandji; but as far as I am concerned, it will
become famous as being the origin village of the most important person in the
world – myself! Pawas is the home village of the Joshis, but I don’t know
anybody there. I don’t even know the remnant of the Joshis who have remained
there and are presumably farming on the land that belongs to me. Anyway, how
does it matter ? Country roads – take me home – to the place I belong!
When we reached Pawas it was dark, and I didn’t want to
spend time and energy horsing around, so we went to the first hotel I saw – a
lodge off the main road. Luckily, it turned out to be quite a nice place, with
a nice double room for Rs 700, which due to sheer habit, I bargained down to
600.
There was a hotel right below – which was one of the reasons
of choosing the place – and we went down for a nice dinner – a surmai thali.
The proprietor turned out to be a chatty
guy, and told us about how this was a rented premise, and he was planning to
move into his own place at Poornagad.
Poornagad? Whats that? I asked. Is it actually a gadh – a
fort?
Yes, he
replied.
Yippee !
a new fort to explore tomorrow!
I made a most
unfortunate discovery that night.
Rishi snored!
He snored like bloody Krakatoa!
He would roll over to my side of the bed, put his face in my
ear and go KHAARNNMKANNN ....KHHAARRR KHAAARRRRRR....ARKHHHH and wake me up
with a start! The first time it
happened, it woke me up with a fright!
How could a gentle mild mannered person make a noise like that? It was like
Bruce Bannister turning into the incredible Hulk.
I looked at him in wonder. He didn’t smoke or drink, and he
wasn’t in the least overweight – where did all that snoring come from?
I gave up the struggle to sleep by 6 AM and went down to
look for a cup of tea, and luckily found an early riser of a hotel.
The good thing about a small group is that you can get an
early start and get more things done. We got ready and left early morning to
check out the Swaroopanand ashram. I was quite impressed by the size and scale
of the place. Much bigger than I expected.
Not exactly a tourist destination, but quite a big place.
there, we went hunting for Poornagad. We saw a sign on
the highway and turned off towards Poornagad village. Rishi was right behind me
– he was a real sport. ‘Just lead the way dude,’ he said ‘I am willing to go
wherever you want.’
The road went down to the sea level, and then went up to the
mountainside. After some time, the tar vanished, and we were on a kaccha road.
The road went on and on, and finally the road itself vanished! I looked around, puzzled. Where were we?
Where was the bally fort? There was no road – not even a dirt track.
When in doubt – Google! I took out my phone, and luckily
there was a bit of signal, and even more luckily – someone had dropped a pin on
Google maps showing the fort. Encouraged, we went on – and lo and behold –
there it was in front of us – a secret fort!
It just couldn’t be seen from the road – hell, It couldn’t
be seen a 100 feet away! If not for the
conversation with the hotel guy, we would definitely not have made it here.
Talk about Serendipity.
It was a magical little fort – high up on an escarpment,
with beautiful views of the sea. And the walls and battlements were in
surprisingly good repair, and the fort was very clean – with hardly any
garbage. And it was empty! Not a soul to be seen. There was a village close by,
but there was no one about for some reason.
I was so happy! It was like our private little fort. We
explored the whole fort and drank in the views. This would be a fantastic place
to camp overnight – and a lot of ash circles showed that various people had had the same idea before.
I just hope that the people who visit it in future show the
place the same respect that the people before had shown it, and leave the place
as clean as – or even cleaner than – the way they found it.
Three cheers for Poornagad, I said, and we carried on to
Vijaydurg.
Vijaydurg was quite close – about 70 km from there, and we
rolled into the place by noon.
What a wonderful fort! Amazing!
From the first sight itself, I was entranced. It was sea
fort, in excellent condition. The dark
black stone, the imposing design, the location right on the sea shore – the
whole package was excellent. I was so
happy that I stuck to my guns and insisted on coming here.
As they say – you will always regret the things you didn’t
do, rather than the things you did.
We parked our bikes and went up to the fort, where we met a
guide – Damaji Patil. He was an excellent guide – knowledgeable, enthusiastic,
and articulate. You could see that he really liked the job, liked the fort and
was a history and Shivaji and Maratha empire buff.
There is nothing quite like a good guide when you visit a
fort or historical site – I try and get one whenever they are available. It
supports the local people and the local economy, and also adds hugely to your
enjoyment of the place.
He started by saying ‘In order to get the full benefit of
the tour, you have to use your imagination! Think of yourself as being the
mavlas of the fort, think of this as your fort, imagine yourself being in the
fifteenth century!’
Things can only be good, when you have a start like that.
He explained the durg shastra – the science and logic of
building the fort. He started by explaining that the entrance to the fort was
Gomukhi – or cow shaped. Eh? I went – how does a cow come into this? Like a cow
with her head turned away, towards her back.
Curved. To prevent enemy forces from building up momentum, to prevent
use of battering rams or battering elephants or camels, and have a convenient
place to shoot arrows, stones and hot oil on invaders.
In that vein, he explained the various defences of the fort,
the planning that went behind it – how it was first built by King Bhoj of MP in
the middle ages, then expanded tenfold by Shivaji, who saw its potential. It
was Kanhoji Angre’s capital while he lived, and there is a temple to the great
Admiral out there.
The fort was so powerful, that the British called it the
eastern Gibraltar, after the impregnable fort of the Mediterranean. It had all
kinds of cool features – a dummy fort on the other side of the creek to draw
off invaders, an undersea wall to rip the bottom out of enemy ships which had
deeper hulls than the shallow hulled Maratha ships, a naval dock carved out of
the living rock, etc.
Unfortunately, after Shivaji and Kanhoji, the tenor of the
Maratha empire changed. The Bhonsale dynasty became sidelined, and the Peshwas
became the default rulers of the empire. Unfortunately this led to a most
regrettable ego trouble between the scions of the Angres and the Peshwas. Tulaji Angre was
capable and efficient, but also arrogant and hot headed. He refused to
acknowledge the suzerainty of the Peshwas, and maintained that they were equals
in service of the Maharaja. Even more unfortunately, Nanasaheb Peshwa was a narrow minded and
visionless fellow, and couldn’t stomach the arrogance of the Angres. So he took
the help of the only other major naval power – the English – to attack the
Angres. In a spectacular show of cutting off your nose to spite your face, the
Peshwa armies supported the English navy in destroying the forces of the
Angres, and in the process completely destroyed the Maratha navy. Shivaji was
destined to be the first and last Indian monarch to understand the power of the
sea, and develop a strong navy. Unfortunately his descendants did not have his
foresight and eventually became the slaves of the invaders who came by sea.
The guide, as I said earlier, was an enthu and articulate
guy, and so I mentioned to Rishi that he should cast him in some historical
soap of his.
Rishi thought about it and asked
‘But can he overact and roll his
eyes and shout ‘NAHIIIIIIIIIII’?’
.
So after thoroughly enjoying Vijaydurg, when we were cooling
off with a cold drink, Rishi asked me ‘Now what? Are you going back to Mumbai?
Why don’t you come with me to Goa?’
Umm. Errr. I thought
about it.
Why not? I had been trying to do the coastal route from
Mumbai to Goa for so long, and had never been able to complete it due to some
issue or the other. This was a great opportunity to finish it off. Goa was
hardly a 200 km run from here.
Let’s go for it!
‘OK man, let’s do it. Let’s go to Goa.’ I agreed and Rishi
high-fived me.
“Great! Let’s go to Tarkarli.’
‘Tarkarli! Why Tarkarli?’
‘I don’t know man – ever since I saw some photos of the
place, I have wanting to see Tarkarli. What is there to see inTarkarli?”
‘Well – there is the famous sea fort – Sindhudurg. And
Malvan city. And MTDC. And water sports. And hordes and hordes of tourists.
Tarkarli is Ok for family groups and
tourists, but not the place for you and me. But if you are so eager, we can
swing by it and you take a call.’
So we set out towards Goa, following the coast. This was all
new territory for me now, as I had always swung inwards to the highway from
Ratnagiri in the past.
We passed by towns
with fascinating names like Padel (Padel means ‘will fall’ in Marathi. Why
should a town be named that it will fall?), Jamsande (sounds like a tasty
dessert –Jam Sundae), Mithbav (another name mystery solved – have people called
Mithbavkar) and stopped at the temple of Kunkeshwar.
It’s another famous Shiva temple (world famous in Malwan),
which I don’t know much about – I first
thought the name is ‘Kan ‘– keshwar (Kan meaning grain – of sand
perhaps, so maybe it’s about god being even in a grain of sand), but then I saw
that its pronounced as ‘Koon’ keshwar –
about which I know zilch. The story on Wikipedia is quite weird
‘HISTORY OF KUNKESHWAR
The
temple of Kunkeshwar was built many years back. According to legend, a sailor travelling
in the sea for trade came near the beach of Kunkeshwar. Suddenly a havoc
appeared in sea. The sailor was a Muslim. The ship seemed to sink in the sea.
He saw a lamp on that beach. He prayed to that lamp "I don't know who you
are. But if you will help me and stop the havoc I will build a temple for
you". And his ship came to the seashore of Kunkeshwar without any problem.
He built the temple as promised. The Lingam was already there. As the Sailor was a
non-Hindu, he thought that his religion will not accept him. Therefore he
committed suicide from the top of temple.’
Talk about a downer story.
Whatever the case may be, we
had a really nice darshan there – when we to the lingagarbha, there was no one
there – it was like a private viewing. Rishi was deeply affected, he lay there
with his hand on the linga for a long time, and didn’t speak for some time
afterwards.He seemed to have had a deeply spiritual moment there. People were
looking at us curiously – 2 dudes dressed in full biker gear prostrated in
front of the lingam.
The beach was quite nice too.
After the temple, we hit the
road again and were planning to hit Tarkarli or Malwan for the night. We had
just passed Mithbav, when I saw a sign saying ‘Achare beach – 6 km’. On an
impulse I took the turn and zoomed off towards the beach, with Rishi dutifully
following behind.
The theme of this ride was to
see unexplored places, after all – I knew people called Acharekar, so I should
be able to tell them what their beach looks like.
Achare beach was AWESOME. I was
so happy at having discovered it. Lovely white sand, clear sea and not crowded
at all. It wasn’t totally deserted either – it had a few chai nashta stalls and
some lodges very near the beach.
Much elated, we got off the
bike and ordered chai pakoda – and Rishi went inside to hunt for a charging
point for his iphone (a continual labour. An iphone man travels with phone in
one hand and charger in the other. Chutia phone. Rishi’s eyes bugged out when I
just swapped the dead battery in my Samsung for another fully charged battery
and smirked at him. HAHAHA. Suck that iPhone! )
We found another fellow traveler there, whom we had been seeing on the ferries in our journey. He
turned out to be a graphic artist from Mumbai, with roots in Malwan. He was
carrying a Canon 5D, which endeared him to Rishi immediately, who had kept
moaning about the fact that he had not brought his camera for the Konkan ride
and missed so many photo opportunities. He had carried all his gear all through
his South India ride, but Sherry the serd on his Triumph Thunderbird had
hurried him so much that he hardly had time to take out his camera. Luckily he
had not carried his camera on this trip, else he would have spent so much time
on shooting that it would have driven me mad.
We had just decided that we
would stay here for the night and were congratulating ourselves on a lovely
fortuitous discovery, when there was an asthmatic wheezing sound and an ST bus
rolled up and vomited out a busload of rowdy college students. Within no time
at all, the beach was bedlam as the kids were letting out their pent up energy
by running around the beach and shouting and screaming and throwing garbage
around.
‘Oh no.’ We said. ‘Can’t stay
here – let’s find another place.’
‘Try out Devbag beach.’ Our new
friend said ‘it used to be a lovely place.’
So we hit the road again, and
within a few minutes, saw another intriguing sign saying that Vayangani beach
was a few kilometres off the road, and so off we went to investigate that. The
road went on and on, and then strangely it vanished – in the middle of a
jungle. We stood there looking at each other. I tried to check out Google maps,
but there was no reception out there.
After some time, some locals
arrived, and told us that while there was a beach there, there was no road to
the beach. We would have to park our bikes here and trek for a kilometre through
the jungle to hit the beach.
Ah well. It was dark already –
no time to be trekking through jungles. We headed back to the main road and
said – no more distractions! Focus on hitting Malwan/ Tarkarli for the night!
And sure enough the next sign
came along – ‘X’ beach. (X because it is such a nice beach that I don’t want to talk about it and
commercialise it) and all our good intentions went out of the window and we
went off to check it out.
The road was completely dark by
then, and we had no idea where we were going. We might have turned back, if we
had not met a guy in a Maruti Van, who
guided us to a hotel. ‘Sai something
hotel – lovely place – all facilities. You will love it.’
We landed up there, and the place was awesome!
Right on the beach, and seemed to be the only hotel there. It was like a little
bit of paradise. We bargained a bit for the rooms and settled there for the
night. It was yet another fantastic fortuitous discovery. Once we had freshened
up and changed and put a bit of cold beer inside me, we went for a walk on the
beach. The beach was completely deserted, and it was fantastic to walk there
between the surf and the stars.
We had a nice dinner – Surmai thali again! The konkan
coast really struggles with cuisine variety. The food is delicious, but eating
the same thing again and again for days on end would pall even nectar and
ambrosia. Basically, these guys struggle with sophistication. The same guy in
Goa or Ladakh would have done it up with much better taste and class and at
least tried to get more cuisine options. But the locals are slow to learn, and
suffer from ‘we know best’ syndrome. Chalo – at least better to have honest
local cuisine than some fraud bastardised conti stuff I suppose.
The next morning was even
better – the empty deserted coast called to us, and we went for a long long
walk – almost all the way to the Vayangani beach we were unable to reach
yesterday. After the walk and a nice breakfast, we vegetated in the lovely
hammocks and wondered whether to spend an additional day here. It was a real
wrench to get out of there.
Vishwanath Gaitonde of
Wandering Soulz called up and was burning with jealousy when Rishi told him
what a lovely beach it was, and what a fantastic ride we were having.
‘You lucky lucky bastard! You
lucky sonovabitch!’ he snarled at me.
‘Hahahahahahaha’ I assuaged his
feeling by laughing loudly at him. ‘Who told you not to come? You had called
and said that you will be coming, and then you chickened out.’
‘Everyone is not like you, you
fucker! Some of us have to work for a living!’
Finally we dragged ourselves
out of there and made tracks for Goa. What a wonderful place that was.
Just to assuage Rishi’s desire
to see Tarkarli and my curiosity about Devbag beach, we went to check out the
place. It turned out to be a fucked up place – hotels everywhere, and too much
development. What a good thing that we didn’t try to come there last night. Also,
the CM was supposed to visit the area to inaugurate some awful tourist trap, so
the whole place was crawling with cops. We had lunch there (Surmai thali
again!!!!) and made tracks for Goa.
We crossed more fun sounding
towns – Wak (Wak means bend in Marathi, so the village that bends over?), Chipi
(fuck knows what that means, but sounds weird) and then Parule (Hey, I know a
lot of Parulekars as well). The next big town was Vengurle and Shiroda and
suddenly we were in Tiracol!
Which meant that were in
GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
After checking out the Tiracol
fort, we caught the Tiracol ferry and took the bikes across.
I WAS SO HAPPY!! I HAD FINALLY
DONE IT! The complete Bombay to Goa coastal route and had done ALL SIX FERRIES!
The elusive Tiracol ferry had also been conquered!
YIPPEEEEEE!!
We made our way to Arambol
beach and checked into a shack on the beach, which Rishi’s friend had already
booked for us.
Rishi took off his gear, and threw
his bike key away!
‘I am done with riding now. I have arrived and here is where I will stay for the next fifteen days!’
‘I am done with riding now. I have arrived and here is where I will stay for the next fifteen days!’
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For part 1 of the travelogue click here
for part 3 - click here
For my first bike travelogue click here
For part 1 of the travelogue click here
for part 3 - click here
For my first bike travelogue click here
Awesome trip and great writing too!
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