2 day trip to Ratnagiri, Ganpatipule from Pune - November 2010

As it was November time, we planned to go for beach this time. We had chosen Ganpatipule for the following reasons

• Good information was available on internet and one of my friend has visited few weeks earlier.
• I had already visited Divegar, Harihareshwar, Murud, Kashid and so I planned for something new.
• Google Map Zindabad

So we (me, my wife and 2 kids) planned a short trip to Ganpatipule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganpatipule) on Saturday and come back to Pune (probably have dinner) on Sunday night. I wanted to have my cousin too along but he was not in Pune in this week.

Friday (19 Nov 2010)

I took some printout of maps and the various locations that could be visited in Ratnagiri and

Ganpatipule. Particularly the map and website http://sites.google.com/site/weekendtravelplans/ganapatipule was very helpful. I also saw that it would be around "full moon" and so tides would definitely be good during our visit to Arabian sea.

As it was just a day to leave, my wife did the preparation

• Home made cake
• Chips/Groundnut
• lots of cucumber
• 7-8 litres of water (with 1 kg chilled water early morning)
• Home made food vegetable
• Some toffees/chocolates
• Juices

We all slept by 10:00 pm in order to be awake by 4:30 am (alarm). We had planned to leave our home by around 5:30 am - 6:00 am in order to get very less traffic on highway

Saturday

Morning

My wife woke up early at 4:00 am and started preparing puris. I gave her minor help though :)

After getting fresh and cup of tea, we woke up our kids at around 5:30 - 5:45 am.

We left our home exactly at 6:00 am. We were on time.

We knew the route and decided to have the next stop (with petrol filling) nearby Satara.

So after around 2 hours of journey, after Satara, we took a (petrol)break and had tea. My kids were enjoying with various food items my wife had brought in the way itself. :)

By around 8:30 am (145 kms), we were at Umbraj. From Umbraj, we took a right turn to move towards the link road to Chiplun (on Mumbai-Goa Highway). Chipun is 90 kms from Umbraj. The link road is good enough just to have the speed of 40 kmph with few bad patches where we could not drive the vehicle even at 15 kmph. Anyways, I like enjoying driving and then, after crossing Patan, after a junction (45 kms from Umbraj), we turned left towards Chipun.

There are Kumbarli ghats and I decided my speed not to cross 40 kmph in turns. I myself violated it multiple times :). We saw monkeys on the ghat roads and my younger kid was seeing monkeys for the first time.

Around 10:30 am, we were at Chiplun. We took a short break of tea and puris (15-20 min). We bought a ball to play with on beach. After Chipul, we turned left towards Sagameshwar on Mumbai-Goa Highway and continued our journey.

Afternoon

By around 12:30 pm, we were just entering Ratnagiri. I stopped a person who helped me in identifying the proper route to various places. First we reached Thiba palace, a place where Burma king stayed for long time. It was not a big palace, but we still enjoyed the various sculptures of God and other things. We relaxed there a bit too. Next we planned to visit birthplace of Tilak (Tilakali). Birthplace of LokManya Gangadhar Tilak is a nice place. The person/guide showed us the various places. We had some snaps (as usual). I was feeling bit tired and also we didn't book any room before our departure. So then we decided to

proceed to Ganpatipule (around 30-45 min journey from Tilakali). We searched for a decent room and we got it in Ganpatipule inspite of heavy rush. We reached room at around 3:45 pm.

Evening

We all relaxed in the room getting some energy for beach in the evening. After having tea/snacks, we all proceeded to the sea-beach and reached there by around 4:45 pm. I thought that we were reaching bit early, but already there were hundreds of people on the beach !!

My kids enjoyed playing in the beach for long and they didn't want to come up. Forcefully, we had to pull our kids with promise of re-visiting the beach early in the morning. We thought that as the sun is set, it would be around 7. But amazingly we found that it was just 6:15 pm. We went back to our room and had bath and changed our clothes. At around 7:15 pm, we went to have our dinner at "Pure Vegetarian Restaurant" and we found a good place for dinner. We purchased few things like Ambapoli, which I saw on many websites and few other things. We all were very tired and by 9:30 pm, we all were asleep.

Sunday (21/Nov/2010)

Morning

We all were ready by 6:30 am to move to the sea once again. We washed our faces, because we wanted to visit the Ganpati temple first. We first visited the temple and then moved to sea. As I got little cold, I didn't venture much inside the sea. At 8:30 am, we took some snacks (poha/shira/misal pav/ vada pav/idli) at the hotel at sea-beach itself. Then we were back to our room in the lodge. We took bath and of course some rest. My kids were seeing the buffalo near to our room:). There were lots of papaya/banana/coconut trees. After again having a cup of tea, we checked out from the lodge at around 10:30 am and proceeded towards "Prachin Konkan". We cancelled our boating plan, as we do it regularly in Mahabaleshwar and Panshet (Pune).

We reached Prachin Konkan by around 11:00 am. We had already seen few pictures of Prachin Konkan and we knew that it was worth visiting once. They also allowed camera, which was great. Prachin Konkan is a good place where they have the models showing kinds of people during 5-6th century. More interesting were birds and masks in Prachin Konkan. We bought few wooden items for kids.

Afternoon and back to Pune

We had a good look At around 12:30 pm, we decided to move back to Pune. We first reached Niveli phata and then towards Chiplun.

Just before Chipul, at around 2:30 pm, we stopped at one good looking hotel to have some lunch and break. We for the first time, ordered "Maharastrian Thali". It was good one. We all enjoyed it (3:00 pm) and then we continued our journey towards Umbraj. We reached Umbraj at about 5:00 pm. We re-filled our car with petrol and then decided NOT to take official break, so that maximum driving is done in "God's" light. The speed was good (around 80-100 kmph). There were 2 toll nakas which took around 30 min :(

By around 8:00 pm, we were back to Pune. My wife prepared quick dinner and we all were sleeping at 10:00 pm.

It was good journey and the following things are important, if kids are along :)

1. Some regular refreshments.

2. Some favourite songs.

3. Things to play with.

etc.

Hope wishing you too a happy journey, if you plan :)