Road Trip!

On Thursday I went to Dapoli (Depoli?) on a road trip on my trusted Caliber 115 (Hoodibaba!) with friends Siddharth, Salil and Kunal. Had an amazing holiday, spending two whole days riding our bikes, hanging out at the beach, eating Malvani food (not such a great treat if you're a Goan, but good stuff anyway) and generally longing around. We stayed at Murud (small village 9 kms from Dapoli, not to be confused with Murud Janjira, which is quite a bit further to the north) at a resort called Dreamland, which happened to be right on the beach (yippee!). Saw the main attraction of that area, which mainly consisted of a resort called Sagar Sawali which is about 20 kms from Murud at a place called Burondi (not to be confused with the Tin Pot Little African Country three inches from the Mediterranen) which was a ripoff, the harbour of the nearby fishing village of Harne (3 kms from Murud) and the Ganpati Temple at Anjarle (12 kms from Murud). In touring the Konkan countryside we also thoroughly enjoyed its rustic beauty, its sylvan splendour and its mindboggling profusion of ghats (and I thought Konkan was just low lying coastal plains!). Our journey to Dapoli was via Mulshi and the Tamhini Ghat, thence to Mangaon and then Mahad by National Highway 17, after which we got lost and saw more Konkan countryside before reaching our destination. Our return journey was via Khed (not to be confused with the taluka in Pune dist., the village in Satara dist., etc, etc), where we took yet another wrong turn and saw even more Konkan countryside. We then took the NH17 to Poladpur, where after some excellent misal pav, we took the Fitzgerald ghat to Mahabaleshwar. After luncheoning on butter chicken, we left for Pune (but not before a 45min "rest cure") and reached our glorious metropolis at 7:45 in the evening, putting an end to our most enjoyable vacation.

(PS: Expect more posts on the same here, here and here.)
(PPS: Due to reasons beyond my control, no photographs are available.)