Come home to Sindhudurg

My piece on the Culture Aangan homestays in Sindhudurg appeared in yesterday’s Mid day – here it is…
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‘Safety on the roads is safe tea at home’, proclaims the sign on the Mumbai – Goa highway, just one of the numerous well-meaning signboards that make this route so enchanting. We have been on the road [...]

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Vengurla: footprints on the sand

Early morning at Vengurla jetty…

And then a beach to ourselves at Sagareshwar. Only crows and a few fishermen for company.

Information: this was last December, over the Christmas break – we were based at Nandan Farms in Sawantwadi, just over an hour’s drive away.
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Cross-posted on the Culture Aangan blog…

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Chilling in the heat in Sindhudurg

Here is a plug for what I think is a worthy cause – Culture Aangan is a Bombay-based NGO that works in the Sindhudurg region – they have homestays and several women’s self help groups. I recently spent a few days at the homestay place in Shirgaon near Devgadh… I am helping them set up [...]

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Moored in Murud-Janjira

Driving to Murud on Sunday morning from Kashid, I had the sense that I was traveling back in time. Small sleepy hamlets all along the way, not fully awake but for the early morning fisher folk on the roads and children learning to ride the bicycle, swinging dangerously in the middle of the lane, cattle [...]

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Weekend bliss in Kashid

A good holiday is one that is spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours – J. B. Priestley. I smiled as I read this and cltr-c-ctrl-v’d it on the side-bar of my travel blog. This weekend at Kashid was just one such holiday.

Kashid – three hours from where we live, [...]

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Fort of the lion

Memories from a rainy morning drive up to Sinhagad fort from Pune…
Stopping at this curve on the road when the clouds looked threatening and the roads dangerously slippery…

Near the top, stopping for chai and garam pakoras, and to take in the fog rolling all the way towards Pune many kilometers away…

Climbing the steps to get [...]

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Different viewpoint, same view…

Matheran is said to have a purported thirty eight view points – all duly identified and named. When we reach there on a rainy Saturday expecting it to be empty (why did we think no one else was foolish enough to brave it all the way up in the heavy rain?), the place is jumping [...]

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Saturday afternoon blues..

and browns… The hills so green and alive for most of the year, brown and parched, just like the trees dotting their backs. An hour on the super smooth expressway and then a left just after Lonavala. Happy and bright sunflower beds on one side of the narrow road, sugarcane fields on the other. The [...]

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In search of the elusive flamingo

Spotted at Kalyan on the way to Malshej Ghat : Siva Shakti English Covent School
And for famished reptile lovers, on the menu at Sushant Hotel in Malshej Ghat – Veg Snakes
Not spotted : the flamingos we went in search of, all the way to Malshej Ghat, braving the potholes and the heavy rains.
The road was [...]

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Just a few hours way – Pawna Lake

The swivel chair at home has now a new use. Since I have been off the internet and blogging, the computer chair lay unused for the last few days. Till my husband in a flash of brilliance converted it into my personal wheel chair. I came back from hospital with both feet bandaged – I [...]

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