It’s (not) Alright

My Trip to Alibag, Murud, Janjira…

So, I am back after the Indian Roads onslaught… Actually this is related to the same trip as that of the road-state one. As I already said, I was on a trip to Murud - Janjira. We were lodging in Alibag and as said, this city is about 70Km from Murud - Janjira and the road is bad and blah blah blah… This is not about the roads but about the very very bad and an OK experience.

Alibag… An OK city but not a good one. The roads for one are too thin as usual. But the population is not so thin. So the city often feels over-crowded. I don’t know what was the initial thinking behind the town planning (I am not even sure if they ever planned the city or it just went on growing as the inhabittants felt.

The hotel we were living in… it is not exactly a hotel. It is more like a cottege guest house thing. It has about 4-5 rooms with every two rooms sharing a kitchen. The kitchen is given as per, FIFO basis (First In First Out). The room occupied first comes with the kitchen. It has very good surroundings. Many ‘beetle nut’ trees, 3-4 swings, a couple of tables. The rooms are OK if not perfect.

The seashore is about 3 minutes walk from the hotel. The beach was the best thing in the city as far as I am concerned. For one, it was almost deserted. I like that. Makes photography easy and interesting. :-D. I took many photos there. I am featuring some of the good ones here. The photos were taken by both me and my dad. But the ones I have written to be mine are definitely by me. Others, I am not sure if it was me or my dad. Just take a look.

After that, there was a water fort here also. We rode in a horse driven cart to it. It was fun. The distance was about a kilometer but it was full of water and we were too tired to walk. But the ride was fine enough. Ones on the fort, there was nothing to see. I mean, it was good for people interested in the history of the monument, but not for me. One thing though, though they were charging 5/- for every Indian and 2US$ for every foreigner, I did not see even a single board displaying the details about the historic, architectural, geographic, any kind of information at all. One thing was done by the rotary-giants group was that there were boards displaying the timings of the high tides and low tides depending on the moon cycle. Which is essential for this place.

I forgot to tell you about this, but the road to the fort is underwater when in high tide. So, you must know when to get off, else be stuck for 3 hours. The next thing I noticed was the garbage disposal. There were some dust bins on the fort, but people seemed to ignore it. I have seen it so many times, that it no longer feels shocking when I see someone throw plastic bags, empty chocolate wrappers, etc on the premises of the fort or even in the sea. And, again as usual, people had scribbled their names on the ruins of the walls. Disgusting. The interesting thing was again that I was able to take some snaps here.

And this was all we saw in this city. Or a town would be more appropriate since I call Sangli a city, which is about 5 times this place.

Next, we went to Murud - Janjira. Now, that place sucks. Literally sucks. (Again, this is what I feel). I mean, whatever I felt after going to the was not worth that hectic drive, that too much heat, that too much humidity. I thought it was utter waste of time. I mean, it felt like I was entering in a garbage disposal when we were entering the town. The corporation was taking 10/- per day for a 4 wheeled vehicle. But they did not seem to use the money to,

Improve the Roads.
Remove the Garbage.
Put some Dust-Bins.
Provide Road Signs.

but they seemed to be channeling the money somewhere else, I dunno where… There was nothing to see in that town except for an over-crowded beach. I don’t like that. I prefer the human density on the beach to be 50 not 800 like in cities…

Then there came the Janjira water fort. I was kinda hoping to see that, but as I said, I was so fucked up that I was not at all in the mood to see it. Not when there was a cue of about 50 people, with about 200 standing by and 200 already with tickets. So we decided not to go. The crowd was only one reason but there were many… There were not enough boats, people were breaking the cue… Again, we did take some pictures here as well.

So, all in all, the trip was fine… Just fine, not a word more not a word less. The highlight was this photo that I was able to take on the beach. My first shot of a beach… The first one with this camera by anyone, on a beach…

Aditya Shevade

Posted in: Article, My Life, My Take

Tags: Article, My Life, Photos, Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Article, My Life, My Take. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.