19-Jan-2012
In evening, we started planning for 1 day beach trip by car, as my kids wanted to go to beach.
We finalized the map and plan. We looked at various websites to get an overview of the optimum time taken at various places. We thought of following plan
1) Leave Pune at around 6:00 am
2) Reach Murud by around 11:00 am (Google Map indicated 3.5 - 4 hours from Pune to Murud)
3) Go to Janjira and return back to Kashid at around 3:00 pm
4) Enjoy at Kashid beach and leave by around 5:30 pm and return back by 8:30 pm
20-Jan-2012 (Sunday)
Morning:
Me and my wife woke up at 5:00 am sharp as planned.
My 4 year son and 7 year old daughter also woke up "surprisingly" at 5:30 am without my efforts. Normally it takes 15-20 min for me to wake them. Probably the word "sea-beach" makes difference from "school" :)
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| Alibag beach |
After getting fresh and having cup of tea, we started our journey at around 6:05 am by car. Didn't expect that I would be at right time :)
We got on expressway soon and quickly we reached Khopoli by around 7:15 am or so and whao!! reached Pen by around 8:00 am. Then we decided to take a tea-break and had some early breakfast just after Pen. The road was good and due to slight fog, there was very less traffic.
While having breakfast, we thought that we would reach too early and beaches are too good in the morning, so we changed our plan. We decided to move to Alibag first and then stay on beach for 2 hours and then cruise to Murud.
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We started again at 8:20 am and reached Alibag at 9:00 am. Alibag is a nice place.. There are lots of zig-zags to reach beach !!. It was Anti-pulse polio day and so my kid had "2 boond zindagi ki".
After parking the car, we all ventured into the sea and played there a lot.
We got lots of garden tools, so my wife and daughter were pretty busy in making different kinds of castle :)
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| Queue at Murud for boat |
By around 11:00 am, we left for Murud. It took nearly 1.5 hours to reach there. There was huge rush and many people were in queue to sit on boat. After nearly 3 boats had passed, we were lucky to get the boat and sat inside. My daughter/kid were traveling in the boat for the first time and they were enjoying "totally surrounded by sea".
Afternoon:
Finally, we reached Janjira fort at around 1:45 pm. We had already visited this fort few years ago and so we didn't need a guide. There was a person in the boat, who said that he would charge Rs. 40 per person and guide them about the fort. But nobody was interested. Even in the last, he asked us if we are interested, but we denied.
My daughter was interested in cannon, which were just above the gate and had some snaps.
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| Jaljira fort |
I was telling her about the king/queen and the fresh pond lake. We had to catch the boat back again at 2:30 pm and after that we returned back to Murud. We had lunch "Maharastrian Thali", which was quite delicious. Then we moved to Kashid and reached there by evening 4:00 pm
Evening:
Kashid had totally changed. I last visited Kashid some 4-5 years ago and now there were many fun activities/club that had come up. There were good tides at 4:00 pm. So as expected, my daughter and son went into sea and enjoyed playing there.. My son was running behind tides and was informing him "No tide. This is not good manner. You should not touch me. You are good tide". At around 5:00 pm, we had to pull both kids out of sea, as I wanted to drive maximum in God's light. I planned to reach Pen by 6:30 pm or so.
I started from Kashid at 5:20 pm. But due to heavy traffic and narrow road, I could reach Alibagh by 6:05. Took a small tea/cold dring/petrol break and then continued towards Pen. OMG, it was highway and there were lots of cars/vans heading towards Mumbai.. It was too slow and due to few industries, trucks were also in queue. So we reached Pen by around 7:15 pm . Kids were already sleeping on the back seat of the car. From Pen we took road to ExpressWay (Khopoli) and then continued our journey to Pune. Finally we reached Pune by 9:45 pm. Took dinner and went to sleep quickly to be ready for Monday morning.
Thus we ended our 1 day trip successfully.
Few things that helped
1) GPS works. My wife's GPS phone was very helpful in deciding, if the route is correct
2) Some juices/quickly eatables stuff makes kid happy and makes journey better.
3) Google Maps :)
