Showing posts with label wedding anniversary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedding anniversary. Show all posts

Thursday, August 09, 2012

First Wedding Anniversary in Nivati-Bhogve, Tarkarli, Malwan, continued...

This is a continuation of a previous article. I saw that I haven’t finished writing the complete account of my First wedding anniversary trip. Click here to read the first article.

Our first day was spent visiting Tarkarli, Malwan and Sindhudurg fort. Here's the next day.

26th Dec, Early Morning:

Devbagh-Nivati-Bhogve visit: The next day we woke up and decided to visit the Devbagh beach.

We took directions from our home stay owner ‘Namita’. (We were staying at the 'Namita beach resort', a home-stay facility facing the Tarkarli beach.) From our home stay, the walk to the tourist boats was just 1.5 km and a pleasant one. There were lots of boats around offering to ferry to the divine destinations Devbagh-Nivati-Bhogve beaches.

We booked one such boat. The ferry started and we saw a beautiful sight of seagulls. They flew up as a flock, the moment our boat passed them. There were so many! I had only seen such a scene in movies.

The cruise booking agents do tell us that we can see Dolphins here, but we weren't so lucky. Actually, I think this is just a gimmick.

We took around 40 minutes of the lovely boat journey to reach a small cliff. I was confused when our boat slowed down. In a moment I saw another movie scene - a beach, totally secluded from the world by rocky cliffs on 3 sides! It was the Nivati-Bhogve beach.

The waters were clear as glass and you could walk for about 60 meters into the sea and yet the water level stayed just at your waist. The sand was white and the waters blue. Boats were anchored in middle of the sea. There was a small crowd of people having fun. The beach is extremely clean and spotless. There are no vendors selling food, water and drinks (So you have to get those with you).

Me and Yogesh tried everything - diving, swimming and floating in the waters, even though we didn't know how. It was amazing. Yogesh kept teaching me how to dive and I kept drowning in the waist deep water.

We climbed on one of the cliffs and saw the sight around. It was breathtaking. I didn’t want to leave this place at all!

Next we stopped at the Devbagh beach. It is a small beach with no vendors around - a gift for the eyes.

We also stopped by to have the famous Malvani Ghavan. A villager would get few ghavan's (It is just like dosa but very very soft), and tea from his hut nearby and sell them on this temporary island. It was our bad luck that Ghavan's got over before we reached him. I could guess how tasty they were though, looking at people smacking their lips. We had a few cold drinks and left. Our boat brought us back to Tarkarli.

From here, we went back to our homestay and packed for our journey back to Malvan at 12.00pm. We had reservations for Pune on the evening bus that left at around 6.00pm.

We thanked the owner of Namita beach resort’ for the tasty food and hospitality.

26th Dec, Afternoon: When we reached Malwan, we had lot of time on hands. So we booked an auto to show us some good sights nearby. He took us to…

The Ganpati temple: This was built by 'Salgaonkars' the owners of 'Kalaniryana' calendar. It is a relatively new temple, and a peaceful and beautiful one. There are 2 beautiful baby elephants at the entrance that I liked the most. There are carvings on the pillars and roof.

The Rock Garden: This is a small garden adjoining the cliffs at the sea. It takes about 15 minutes to reach here from Malwan bus stand. The garden is mediocre and has a red toy train (Kids would love it. I didn’t have Arya back then) The rocky cliffs are amazing to look at. The waves lash at them forming white foam all around. There are numerous crabs - small and big, scary to look at under every rock. We need to be extremely cautious while walking on these rocks. They are sharp and the waves are powerful.

Lastly, we went to a small 'Math' by a saint (like a monastery), few kilometers away from Malwan.

26th Dec, Evening: The auto dropped us back at Malwan ST stand well in time.

We did some shopping for Amba vadi, Fanis poli, Kokam syrup, Awla syrup, and waited for the bus.

When the bus came by, there gathered a huge crowd around it in an instant. People were throwing bags, clothes, caps inside to book seats before boarding the bus. Thankfully we had done a prior reservation. Most of these people had to go as standees. I had never seen so many standees in any bus before. Another new experience for me.

27th Dec, Early Morning: We reached Swargate, Pune at 5.30 am in the Morning.

The anniversary was a very memorable one. Again, no matter how many times I visit Konkan, it never fails to rejuvenate me.

Monday, February 22, 2010

First Wedding Anniversary in Tarkarli, Malwan

We had a super romantic 1st wedding anniversary celebration trip. It was on the 24th of December 2009. We had a short leave of 3 days and so planned to go to Tarkarli in Konkan. This place is near Malvan in Konkan.

We did online bookings for resorts through rtne.co.in and since it was a last minute booking we managed to get confirmation from Namita beach resort. MTDC has a cool resort there with great view though most people love to eat in the town. Namita is a doable home stay right near the beach with the sand just one step out of the rooms! It has coconut trees and a cool hammock where it is a amazing to have a cup of tree in the evening!

24th Dec, Evening: We did reservations for MSRTC semi luxury bus from Sant Tukaram bus stand Pimpri (Rs. 664 for both of us one-way). The Nigdi-Malwan bus starts in the evening at 7pm from Nigdi, Pune and reaches Swargate at 8.45pm (but was late as usual and left from Swargate, Pune at 9pm instead). We needed to book our return tickets to Pune since we cannot do it from Pune city.

25th Dec Morning: We reached at Malwan at 5.00am on 25th. Malwan to Tarkarli is just 15 mins away by auto rickshaw and they have standard rate of Rs. 60 per trip. We walked a small lovely walk amongst coconut trees and wells, and sand to our resort. On reaching there, we had a bath, some refreshing tea, pohe and left for sightseeing. We had decided to check out Malwan town first for booking and site seeing and beaches and fun for later.

25th Dec afternoon: Reached Malwan by some walk and then by auto and secured our return tickets from the ST stand! Then we began our exploring…starting from Sindhudurg in Malwan.

Sindhudurg: Sindhudurg meaning a 'Fort in the Sea' was built by Shivaji Maharaj. We need to take up a ferry from the Malwan coast to there. The fort has intact outer walls but the buildings inside have collapsed and nothing remains.

Things we saw there were -
  • Clear sea waters from the walls of the fort. You can even see corals and sea weeds from the top of the fort!
  • Entrance of the fort is well preserved. It is curved, so not visible to the enemies from afar and well protected from threats or ramming of enemy elephants.
  • Nagarkhana (on the top of the entrance)
  • Hand impression and foot impressions of Shivaji Maharaj in lime
  • Drinking water pond in the fort that was used for drinking water in the past.
  • Temple in the fort of some deity
  • Temple of Shivaji Maharaj constructed by Rajaram Maharaj, his younger son.
  • A secret underwater passageway (chor vaat) in one of the temple for escape outside the fort.
  • Rare but famous two branched coconut tree (which is dead now with only trunk remaning)
  • Snorkeling: We had already made up our minds to try snorkeling when at Sindhudurg and found some boatmen who would take us there. Charges are Rs. 250 per person for 30 mins. Yogesh had already done snorkeling at Kovalam beach, Kerala and was not as excited as me.

    Our boat sailed around to the back of the fort and was anchored. There was a ladder from the edge of the boat leading to a floating tube waiting below in the water. I descended into the ring and began floating in the sea! Wow! The boatman gave me directions to breathe using the face mask and what to do in case water fills up the mask. Yet, the moment I submerged my head using the mask... PANIC!!! I immediately wanted to get out and hold on to something stable. The life guard held the rope to my floating ring. He calmed me down and after a little reassurance I tried it again. This time it was ok. Yogesh joined me in, and we were off to see the corals.

    Corals were shiny... white, black, silver, green and blue shaded. The fish were dotted yellow and stripped and some were white... the guy gave us some bread crumbs and we fed them with our hands!!!! Wonderful experience totally. Snorkeling was an amazing adventure! This one in Sindhudurg, Malwan is very safe however types of corals and fish are limited.
  • After this we changed back to our dry clothes and left back for Malwan coast. We were terribly hungry and now wanted to eat some delicious Malwani food! And what would be better than the famous old 'Bamboo restaurant' in Malwan! We walked to this place from Malwan beach, and reached at 1 pm.

    Bamboo is a relatively small outdoor place with about 10 tables of fours. Sad part is the wait. Hungry but determined now, we waited for 1 hour before we got a table. We ordered fish curry and rice and solkadi! The food was Simply Delicious! We couldn’t lift ourselves out of our chairs when we were done! :)