In continuation to Day 2...
I remember being inebriated with the Ganpatipule memories on our way
back and good that I could pen the first two days the immediate next day when
the hangover was still on and so was the sun tan...Like radioactivity, memories
are also said to have half lives, I have heard of 8 hours..and I can already
feel them discrete and broken. Trying my best to put down both activities and
the thoughts on the third day..
To avoid the heavy rush post morning, we decided we would rush to the
beach as early as possible. I think we were on the beach by 8 am and we were
greeted by atleast a hundred more similar thinkers there. So our early wasn’t
so early after all. While I was so ready to plunge into the water, mom and dad
were more worried about a safe place for the footwear. Finally finding one, we
embraced the water and were lost in it for the next 3 hours or so. At his age,
it was a treat to see dad excited about each coming wave (and mind you..there
were many mighty ones...). So I had a good companion who could share the excitement. Mom
retired to the shallow waters in no time. Talking about the waves, there was a
great variety- from the soft ones that just pop you half a metre up and down to
the strong ones that hit on your back to the mighty ones that engulf you and
throw you nearer to the sands. Those mighty ones, they surely “swept me off my
feet” literally... :) :) ...When you try to
get back on your feet in the shallow waters with a disoriented view, the sand
bruises your knees badly and the more time you spend in it, the more the
caustic effect of the salt water. As time passed we could sense the increased
force of the water pulling us back in as also the water advancing more and more
on the beach. In some time, there was a police team on the beach asking everyone to
get back out of the water saying “samudra khawalla aahe ( the sea is getting
rough)” We were almost done and left without regret. I could see few picking up
fights with the police (some ppl just can’t wait to start a fight)...on a
trivial issue.. i am sure. With water still blocking my ears and my head feeling
like a water balloon, we had breakfast at the “Annapoorna hotel”. Apparently,
Annapoorna has a good breakfast service with quick vada, dosa, pohe etc. Being
in Konkan and not trying sea food would have angered the sea food gods (whoever
they are)....so we tried sea food at Hotel Samir, which is right opposite to
our first lodge Morya.
Then we were off to more spots, first being Kavi
Keshavsut memorial. This is a place dedicated to the memory of eminent Marathi
poet Krishnaji Keshav Damle popularly known as Kavi Keshavsut. The place
is actually the birthplace of Keshavsut so one gets to see his ancestral home
filled with antique utensils, tools and instruments. In the vicinity of the
house are a lot of plaques that have his poetry printed on them. Mom and dad,
having read his compositions in their school time textbooks could connect with
the place easily. I could understand only one or two compositions fully, thanks
to the uncolloquial language, the elevated thinking of the poet and the figures
of speech for poetic effect. There is another room where compositions of all
great poets of the era have been put. Luckily, I could identify some of them
and finally felt a little bit at home- Kusumagraj, Ga di Madgulkar,
Swatantryaveer Savarkar, Shantabai Shelke to name a few. The place is indeed a
treat for poetry loving folks. Next, we headed to an aquarium, which though I
had no hopes from, was pushed for by mom and dad. A small hall, it did have
some common and few exotic fish variety but nothing much impressive, and not worth visiting (so no pics), especially since it did not focus on the regional fish population.
And above all, pathetic English translation for describing each variety. So
please skip it, unless you have some troublesome kid who gets entertained and
calmed down by seeing fish move in a small tank... :| ..
The next and the main attraction for the day was the Jaygad Killa (Jaygad
fort), close to 40 km from Ganpatipule. Built during Shivaji’s reign, it is a
fort built by the sea. I could gather only some logical importance from the
fort, understanding its structure, but nothing of the history of the place,
thanks to absence of guides and no history spewing posters. But we were there
for quite some time, enjoying the scenery of the place. In the images
alongside, you can see the moat around the fort, the observation posts and the
windows for positioning canyons.
Next stop was the Jaygad Bandar (Jaygad port). There was a ferry service
available that takes you from Jaygad to a place called Tavsaal. While it
ferries vehicles too, we planned otherwise since the queue for vehicles was
huge so is the extra effort it takes to get a vehicle on and off the ferry.
Getting off at Tavsaal, we wandered around the place for some time, having tea
at a small local shop.. :) , pretty happy with our decision of not bringing the car
along seeing the long queue on this side too. A good capture here was that of a
huge mango tree fully laden with fruit. It was an amazing thing to see. From
far, you could only make out white dots on a green tree. Only after a second do
you realise, it’s a mango tree. Getting back to the port, we had to wait for
atleast an hour for the ferry to return. As night falls, the water filled with lights of goods
carrier ferries, small boats, construction cranes, one keeps guessing which one
is the right ferry, always hopeful. Finally, it arrived, starting the journey
after hell lot of chaos fitting vehicles onto it. It is like a mathematical
problem. Fit smaller rectangles each of various sizes into a big rectangle in
an optimum manner. These people do it every hour of the day on each side. Don't know if they think of mathematics though...
We reached back to the lodge after a pretty confusing drive, going in the
wrong direction for almost 2-3 km before returning to the right one. The thing
about night driving is, what seems pretty obvious and easy during the day seems
to confuse routes at night, especially in a place where there are no street
lights and no homes in sight. A light veg dinner ended the day. Next morning,
we paid another visit to the Ganpatipule temple, helluva rush being a Sunday.
11 am, we were on our way back to Mumbai. I had known all along that it would
be a difficult drive, being a continuous 10 hour journey, unlike our arriving
trip where we took a night stop at Mangaon. The fatigue was tremendous. I was
wrestling in my seat, my knee hurting from pressing the clutch over and over
again thanks to the villages that keep coming on the highway and then the city
traffic. A cramp in the neck since the day before, made things even worse,
making it difficult to check vehicles zooming past. I heaved a sigh of relief
as we reached home and I landed on my bed...dreaming about Ganpatipule and the
unexplained.
Let me put together the acknowledgements and few lessons that I gathered:
- I am thankful to mom and dad that they could
accompany me and I thank god for having such sporty parents (at their age)
who gave in to my wishes. The friend drain (and brain drain) to US has
made holidays and weekends torturous for the last three years. Hopefully,
I should get drained too in some time..though not sure about the brain
part.. :P
- Ganpatipule, for an amateur driver of 6 years, is a 9-10
hour journey, if you want to reach there and safely.. :). So if you plan
to reach the same day, the best time to leave would be very early mornings
(3-4 am). That way, you escape the city traffic, you get to experience
lesser heat, you can safely take breaks in between without worrying about
the time and most importantly you can enjoy the journey.
- You need to be extremely careful about the
driving. Please excuse me, pro drivers. Sometimes driving on a highway,
especially at night, becomes mechanical and the flashing headlights tend
to hypnotise. NH-17 is a monster with a single lane for each direction.
Hopefully, the road-widening work on NH-17 should complete quickly and
make driving safer.
- You definitely need to slow down in villages. But
additionally, elsewhere, you should also be on the lookout for animals - cattle,
monkeys, dogs and unintelligent humans crossing the road out of nowhere. A single
sudden brake on NH-17 can turn into an exciting contraption for Yamdev!!
- Please ensure that in no way are you
disturbing the sanctity of a holy place by any means. One may be a
non-believer or a forward thinking person, but it is equally un-forward to
mock other’s beliefs.
- A final plea for all people who love
Ganpatipule, Konkan or for that matter any tourist place. These places are meant
for everyone, for generations to come. If you are done seeing them, you
should make sure that you maintain these places clean for other people to
come, by not littering the place, using the garbage cans, disciplining your
kids, if any, to do the same. Do not think, “It’s just a small wrapper...”.
A small wrapper can be a trigger for many others to make a dump out of a
clean place.
I think, that’s enough... Do visit Konkan, keep
posting and I would love feedback, if you have read this monster of a post....
PS: Please ignore the timestamps on the photos. They are off by an hour or more. I have set it right now, on the camera.
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