Its amazing to plan a trip to a place that promises to be serene. Our pick was a small hidden beach village nestled in the palm clad shore down the konkan belt. The Konkan region has a norm to name the location by the temples that exist there. One such quiet & serene place is Velneshwar. As the name suggests, this place is named after the century old Velneshwar temple. Unexposed, unexplored & away from the tantrums of the busy city life.
Our preparations didn't last long and the route to pick was a no brainer. This made the trip all the more interesting to us. Quite frankly our intention was to go big on the food & the local tastes. Having said that, we were all the more pumped up with the local food options & the chai stops we made en route.
Without further ado, lets kick start our journey to the Konkan!
Humble beginnings
We started out from Panvel, Palaspha naka. A place well known to the biking fraternity especially the Dutta snacks corner. Starting our journey with food was on top of our minds. A coffee, poha, kokam juice, misal pav and a couple of water bottles later, Tushar & me finally got started with the ride that was to be a soulful experience.
Leg 1 - Bumpy ride towards Vadthal Naka & Roha
If you are planning to visit Konkan, the first thing to seriously take a note of is avoid the Mumbai - Goa route via Vadthal naka. The roads are super bad and it will suck out your energies and excitement to reach your destination. A better alternative would be to take the old Mumbai-Pune road and use the Khopoli exit to Mumbai-Goa road. This will be a few Kms more, but its totally worth the effort. The route we took upto Vadthal was patchy, a few good turns, a few extra strides do get you started, but the sudden potholes and lots of divided roads make your life a living hell. If you hope life will be better once you cross Vadthal, get ready for another roller coaster ride. For the next 90 odd kms, you would experience Imagica right on your ride! Yes its that bad.
Tushar & me put on our headphones on, just to make ourselves feel better. (The placebo effect, as they say ;) )
Leg 2 - The good part. after Roha
This is where the beauty starts. The serene mountains, the tar of flattened roads and the immaculately laid out white strips sink in while you cruise on one of the best designed bikes. We rode in peace while the winds blew past us as we maneuvered through the curves and slopes of the valley. Impressive views kept us engaged throughout the journey there on.
The first ghat that you ride on is the Kashedi Ghat. You might want to be a bit cautious here as its not a great idea to overtake MSRTC local busses that are driving through the ghats simultaneously. Its a wonderful experience on the outset though. The roads are great, the signboards are clear, and on a good weather day you might just want to stop at a few spots to take pictures (Just the way we did)
Once you get past the ghats, you would be treated with many small villages which will finally leads to Khed ghat a small but a significant ghat. This is probably a gateway to the Konkan belt and also home to one of the best waterfalls you would have the good fortunes to see. Im talking about the Sawatsada waterfall. This place is sure to capture your attention and make you go WOW! The very sight would keep you wanting for more. We did capture a glimpse though its not that great.
We spent some time here and let the beauty of this place sink in. Overjoyed by what we had seen so far topped with our satisfaction that we were well before time as per our planned schedule allowed us to seize the moment.
Well, thats just half the story. What we were to see ahead of us made us dance. (Literally) We came across a junction, just a little before Chiplun, which was leading us to a shorter route Velneshwar (14 kms). A BIG MISTAKE. Why? you will see that later in this post.
Leg 3 - Journey towards Velneshwar
We took that bypass, and continued on a road which took our breath away...
Cmon, who wouldn't stop here? Especially when you estimate Velneshwar to be just 4 kms away, and you are well ahead of your schedule. This got us motivated to spend some time here. We took the proverb "Dance like no one is watching you" quite seriously. Don't believe us? Check it out for yourselves...
Thats Tushar, doing the O Oh jaane jaana
Thats me doing a random step...
After a lot of fooling around we realised it was too late and it was time for us to leave. Konkan is beautiful during the day, and scary as it gets darker. We started riding at our usual speed.
Now its time for our BIG MISTAKE. We missed a small diversion which was meant to take us to Velneshwar. We kept riding thinking we were on the right way. By the time we reached the next junction where we could see some people, we were already lost. That set us back by 40kms. To top it off, there were no signboards which could give us the exact directions to Velneshwar. Due to this and the speed we lost sight of each other's bike. Before we realised, we were lost and separated in a remote, village without lights, cell phone network (forget navigation) and sometimes even proper roads.
We reached our destination at 9.15 in the night! Lot of things happened between dealing with unsure local people, bad roads, pitch dark conditions and finally finding our way to Velneshwar MTDC resort, but thats a story for some other day. We were just glad to see each other at MTDC Velneshwar.
The destination by now had got the better of us, and we were starving. Thats when we were greeted with the most common word the locals say there (especially during Ganpati celebrations) the golden words are "Nahi milega" (Not available). We asked the resort to set us up for some dinner, and they said the golden words (that was at 10 pm) We had to finally sweet talk ourselves to the lady at the kitchen who managed to whip us a last minute Pomfret Thali, which was very disappointing. Imagine something like this happening to people who love food more than their better halves!
Our motivation levels were depleting and our hopes were brim. We were shown our villas and our only hope was a great view. Unfortunately we had to wait till the morning to see what we got as our view.
This is also the story of our day 2. Hope you guys enjoyed reading this blog as much as we enjoyed riding & eventually writing about it. Its amazing how words have the power to reflect the best in you.
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Keep Wandering!
Wanderer on Wheels
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