Diveagar – Misty and flowery mountains of the wild west
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| Diveagar at early morning |
A lot of things changed around me and you would think why, simple; I am now married to Arya(then-girlfriend, now-wife) and well settled in Pune. Now let’s just jump into our trip. Our regular weekend was coming up and my client had some mercy to give me an extra day off for all the hard work we were doing since few months, hence they spared me a Friday to get myself refreshed. I am going to mention Arya as A in this blog to keep it handy for both of us, so A was working from home that day, means she was sort of working. We spend the whole Friday lazing around and cooking with our immature skills. Love for cooking is almost equal for both of us, but it’s more of a necessity these days ;).
As boredom started to sync in by evening while all kinds of weird ideas were coming to our head, suddenly going to the nearby beach for a night seemed so much feasible for her and to season that idea I suggested to do it as a ride, she was totally on for it. I started surfing on the net to find some nearby beaches.
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| On the way to Thamini |
Diveagar attracted me as the route is through the flowery mountains of Thamini and it covers two to three hotspots of western ghats. Pune-Mulshi-Thamini ghat-Mangaon-Diveagar was the route. In the search for data about this route I started hopping through some blogs and came to know that this route is not so humble on riders and one of my friends warned me too, about these bad roads, but in the excitement of the trip we took lightly and got ourselves equipped for the next day ride. Diveagar is not an offbeat place, people from all around Pune and Mumbai visit Diveagar most of the times for all its right reasons. It is easily reachable from Pune and Mumbai, availability of water sports and other adventure activities is tremendous. Availability of Low-cost homestays is an absolute plus.
We started off from Pune at around 11 am. Just then we came to realize that we got a flat tire, the rear one. We pulled aside to a small shop to get patched and it took around 45 min. We resumed our ride at around 12. It was already too late because the sun was already at her best. We managed to hop off the main city in half an hour from a bypass near Hinjewadi, Pune.
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| First climb and Lavasa on another side |
The first climb started on the way to Mulshi, our first checkpoint, we could see Lavasa on the other side. The route was mostly yellowish green rice fams spread out on both sides of the road. Intermittently small villages pass by. Trucks heavily loaded with raw straws and hero honda splendour with young boys with coloured goggles on was very frequent. The screeching sound of truck engines and innocent smiles of young boys were setting up the scene for us, some even were waving at us. The road was not less travelled as we noticed a lot of vehicles from Pune and Mumbai. To our disappointment, roads were very badly maintained. Our guesses are because the trucks are the majority users of villages roads, it might have distracted the road in most of the parts.
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| Rice farms of Mulshi |
We crossed the last village of Mulshi and entered the doorways of Thamini ghat. While Mulshi is dry and dusty with farms in between, Thamini ghat is misty, flowery and lush all over.
We took a small break before entering Thamini ghat and geared up to take all the beauty of the charmful Thamini. But the sun had no mercy on us. It was around 2:30 pm and the sun was flaming up the whole place. The rocky mountains of Thamini where covered in wet-green mosses when we visited. Both the sides of the road was filled with chunks of knee height bushes with yellow flowers, while mountains of western ghats were the vistas till the horizons. The route was filled with tourists and lovebirds from collages, most of them were taking halts very frequently for selfie sessions, they are not to be blamed as the beauty was such. Roads were pretty bad and the eighty percent of the ride was through the treacherous cliff.
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| Lunch at Thamini ghat |
In between, we took a stop for having lunch in a small shop, where we sat out and open under a tree. Reminding long forgotten routines in the village and “that” was a bliss. We sat on a plastic chair and a table. They served butter paneer and tandoori roti. By the smoky and tangy taste of butter paneer, we were sure that it was prepared in Chula(fireplace in villages to cook food). The taste was absolutely authentic and tongue melting, we ate like horses to kill our exhaustion. The whole route was very safe to travel, we didn’t have any bizarre experience in this route.
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| Flowers everywhere in Thamini ghat |
Thamini ghat bloom’s up in the monsoon season and will be dry in summers. If you are more into a person enjoying travel than destinations, then you should take this route on the early first half or late second half of the day. We also noticed a lot of resorts in and around Thamini ghat, two to five stars. Staying in Thamini for few days will obviously be so tranquillizing. We were not taking too many halts as we were already late and halfway through during the hottest hour of the day. We decided to keep buffer time to just visit Thamini while coming back. At around four o’clock in the evening, we entered the small town of Mangao. The town was busy and in rush.
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| Quenching besides the eve sky of Diveagar |
We reached Diveagar around five thirty in the evening drained and exhausted. Our spines were crunched down, 240 km of bad roads and Royal Enfield. Our stay was for a night and the next day we had to ride back to Pune. The stay was good and we got a homely hospitality. Our Hotel was near to the beach, we booked likewise so that we can visit the beach whenever it feels like. Since we moved to Pune, we used to visit the beaches in the west, it’s been our third beach. Whenever we visit a beach, sunset and sunrise is an inevitable part of that trip and we made sure that we are on the beach at those hours. Moreover, this visit was just for that, it’s always so refreshing and soulful to be on the beach at those twilight hours, it’s a cleansing process. After taking a good bath we went out to the beach to bid adieu to the orangy fireball over the sea.
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| Morning scenes as the beach coming live |
There were a lot of people on the beach for doing adventure sports. Since it was at night we couldn’t enjoy the view of the horizons. There is something that always amazes us during the trip, this time its the egg Burji and pav from a small stall in the beach. We stuffed our mouth with spicy egg Burji, steamy Paav and Maggi, it was satisfying as sunset happening just in front of us. We spend some time in the beach, the stalls started to wrap up for the day, the beach was slowly becoming secluded, then we too decided to retire to our hotel. We came and had a regular thali from our hotel, that was also amazing.
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| Waves shining like diamonds |
In my memory, I hardly got disappointed about the food anytime from Konkan side. Almost all my food experiences were great, long cheers to my lucky taste buds. We settled in for the day. Next day morning we jumped out of bed around six and rode on to the beach around seven in the morning. To our surprise, the beach was again crowded with adventure sports and people. Shops were open very early, completely off our expectations. We walked for some time enjoying the morning visuals and the charming horizons. Bullock carts were passing by splashing through the waves. Fishermen were heading back their home with a bunch of fish in their hand. Crows were doing their early catch. We went out to soak our feet in the waves while tiny crabs pop out of from the holes to check whose feet it was. Sun started to peek out slowly from the land opposite to the beach. While shadow from the high bushes shaded us, the sun was brightening up the sky and made the ocean shiny like diamonds. As warmness soothed our skin through the night’s chillness in the atmosphere, we decided to have a cutting(half glass, frequent usage in the west) of hot milky Adhraki chai(Ginger tea). After spending some time on the beach, we took our bike and rode back to our hotel, on the way we stopped by a temple near the beach. The architecture of the temple was something which I have rarely seen. So to kill our hunger for art, we walked around and spend some time there.
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| Temple near the beach |
We started from Diveagar to Pune around ten in the morning and as we planned we have managed to spend some in Thamini ghat. The route was the same and it took around four and a half hours to reach Pune. As we were settling in for the day and getting back to our daily routine, we sacked up all the beauty and memories in our minds to cherish.
