LADGHAR: ROOM WITH A VIEW

December 11-13, 2015

If ever you happen to search on the internet and come across the information that a road trip from Pune to Ladghar in Konkan will take approximately four hours, take that with a pinch of salt. Better still, since you will hitting the beach at Ladghar, we would advise you to take it with a bucket of sand. Incidentally, before we get into the finer details of the trip, here’s the fine print: Ladghar was never on our horizon this year. It was Pondicherry but due to the unfortunate natural calamity that struck Chennai and its neighbouring regions, we had to per force choose another destination….and fast! And so Ladghar it was!

Let it also be put on record that it required some fancy re-juggling by our ever resourceful S Vaidyanathan (who we must now honour with the title President-Logistics) to not only cancel the flight bookings to Chennai and back (and get a full refund from Indigo) but also manage the bookings of Harsha Rao who had no option but to keep his fingers crossed and arrive at Chennai from Singapore as scheduled and then take an onward flight from Chennai to Pune, which was now our new starting point. Complicated, but done well!

So, why Ladghar? It just so happened that there was a suggestion on our Whatsapp Pilgrim Fathers’ group that Plan B would mean going to a place nearby so as to make the best of the available trimmed weekend and Konkan would be feasible. “Let’s go to Dapoli” was the chorus with the assumption that it was just a four-hour journey. That it took double the time is best verified by the frustration that was writ large on our faces when we finally reached the destination and found, to our disappointment, that hotels had been booked right through the weekend. There was nothing available in the vicinity of the beach, which is what we wanted so as to run straight from the ocean to the room in just our shorts without the world having a glimpse of our well-toned bodies, modest as we are! 

Enter Mr Resourceful Number 2: Dilip Bhandari. For two days prior to the trip he had been mentioning a comfortable resort right on the beach that we could have booked in advance. However, ever in search of perfection (and being swollen-headed too), we dug around till we could dig no more and then finally kissed the mud at Dilip’s feet to let him lead us to Ladghar. Dilip has a sixth sense of sorts. He had already called up the owner of the Sea View Resort to find out if eight bumblebees could be put up with for two nights and had a confirmation that this could be done. So, we let him be a Roman emperor that night and he led us to victory. When we took off our shoes, socks and other paraphernalia in those rooms, the smiles were brighter than the stars in the skies.

Prior to that, and on the suggestion of Omkar, the owner of the resort, we stopped en route and tucked into a good dinner at a roadside restaurant. So that took care of our hunger pangs too. All’s well that ends well, as is often said. In fact, we even stayed up late to catch up and discuss matters close to our heart while of course pulling each other’s leg as is the custom. By the way, we had wanted to welcome Harsha in Pune with a string of garlands at the airport and create such a huge fuss that it would have attracted the attention of the local media. But that was not to be since he had managed to get an early flight from Chennai, had landed in Pune about two hours earlier than scheduled, and gone home to spend some time with his mom. However, having invested our hard-earned savings in garlands, we couldn’t let the opportunity slip by and so he was bedecked with garlands just the way a politician would be after winning the local polls but at his home.

The next day at Ladghar dawned bright and early, and the Arabian Ocean beckoned us from near. We rushed to the sea like excited children (that’s stretching a point too far) and spent the next hour or so letting the waves give us a thrashing by crashing on us. Body massage, anyone? Why go to a spa? The sea is as good! The higher the waves got, the more we jumped. And if some children in the vicinity wondered why a bunch of grandfatherly types were going yippie-yippie in the water, well, we wouldn’t have been ashamed of doing a little more yippie-yippie. After all, the fun you experience riding the waves is certainly not the same as standing below a shower in the bathroom and trying to sing a song from a 1950s film.

All that energetic pounding made way for a great breakfast of poha and dosa (the local Konkani type), following which it was time to take a walk. The difference between all our earlier trips and this one was that there was no rush to go to another place and no tight itinerary to stick to. We were there for keeps till Sunday morning and could laze about all we wanted. Which is precisely what we did, having a drawn-out lunch after another round of camaraderie and humour at its best. An afternoon nap and some cups of tea followed, and then we set off for a small Dutta Mandir atop a tiny hill, approachable through steps cut into the stone. That offered us a beautiful sight of the setting sun with the orange glow enveloping the sea, the sand and the rocks. Strange is nature indeed: it can be so overpoweringly beautiful and so mercilessly violent at the same time.

Yet another excellent dinner awaited us with more of the back-slapping trade-offs covering our career, family, Indian economy, politics and a round sparked off by Harsha who wanted us to play out a reality show of highlighting the good points of the person sitting next to you. Thankfully, it wasn’t about pointing out the negative traits or else it would have held out for the whole night! Surprisingly, each one of us realised that we had our good qualities as well and we literally hit the bunks with smiles so broad that they glowed in the dark like semi-circular flashlights.

Another early morning walk the next day and then it was time to pack, have our breakfast, and leave. Back on the road, we knew now that it would be another eight hours of a tiring road journey. But what the heck, discomforts like these are quickly forgotten by Pilgrim Fathers who were already planning for next year’s trip. Pondicherry? Well, well, well….watch this space!

And now for a quick round of applause:

1.      Gajanan Radkar: For regaling us with yet another year of Santa Banta jokes.

2.      Vipul Shah: For offering well-meaning and very sincere advice to one of us in the group.

3.      Ganesh Shinde: For providing the right kind of information about many things.

4.      Rajesh Bayas: For making us roll with laughter about an account that began with A2Z and ended with the post office.

5.      Dilip Bhandari: For providing a roof above our heads.

6.      S Vaidyanathan: For making this trip possible at such short notice.

7.      Harsha Rao: For asking the right questions about everything.

8.      Huned Contractor: For writing this blog despite a nagging cold.

Travel Tip

Ladghar is a small stretch of beach to the south of a rocky hillock which seperates it from Karde. Ladghar extends onto Burundi, a small fishing hamlet to its south. There is a Dutta Mandir, the village deity, atop the hillock on the northern end of Ladghar beach. Parasailing and water sports like water scooters are available at Ladghar and quite popular with tourists. Ladghar is located about 8 km from the Dapoli bus depot.

To get to Ladghar, take the Dapoli - Anjarle road and just as you leave Dapoli town you will find the Burundi police chowkey and the Kokan Krishi Vidyapeeth ground on your left. Take a left from the chowkey and continue along the road until you reach Ladghar. You will be greeted by signboards of hotels on the Ladghar beach at a V junction where the right turn will lead you to the beach. It will approximately take 30 minutes to reach Ladghar beach from Dapoli. The Sea View is a comfortable and cosy place to stay and offers good meals. You can contact Omkar on 8411097477 or 8552020468.