Random Thoughts of a Radical ‘Rational Mind’ on a Suicide Mission on Roads Less Traveled
At three in the night, comfortably cuddled up in the bed under a thick blanket, I wake up to the familiar chime of the alarm. Waking up early is never a problem with me but one look at the darkness outside, through the slit in the curtains raised some questions. Is this madness? Should I be doing this alone? I brushed aside all such doubts telling myself that the night is still not old enough to curtail the dream. If there ever is an opportunity to live a dream, this is it and I jumped off the bed. The early morning chores have been done with, at the usual pace and almost involuntarily, reminding me of the virtues of ‘practice’. The mind doesn’t need to be present while one goes through these tasks, enabling a healthy one to grab that extra half hour of sleep and stay healthy. In my case however, the mind play truant in a different way. It normally suffers from insomnia and works overtime. Hitchhiking on my experiences, it journeys into many imaginary worlds. Early morning is the time when I usually feel it trudging reluctantly back to reality, back to where it should belong. Today though is a different day, this is no vicarious experience, this is the real thing, a drive of my dreams.
A short message to sis at three-thirty that I am leaving on a long drive alone so that somebody stays informed of what I set about doing, if not my whereabouts. There is no destination for this drive, only an objective of driving as close to the coast as possible. I believe I have a passion to explore and that’s my ammunition besides Bucephalus, the Wagon R, my most reliable and trustworthy partner in all my crimes. Teddy, the other old-timer has opted out but is replaced very ably by Hobbes, the lion and Pooh, the bitch. Hobbes has a favorite hang-out place, to catch my attention often enough, just below the rear-view mirror. Hobbes is ever energetic and easily outlasts me on any of my trips. He is a great mind reader too and offers an opinion on all of my thoughts, usually nodding in agreement and occasionally shaking in disapproval. No wonder, Hobbes has been there with me the longest. Pooh is the more knowledgeable one or at least carries herself with such a façade. The only reactions that I ever manage to elicit from her are either a snobbish I-know-it-all raise of an eyebrow or an occasional roll over on her back indicating complete boredom. Pooh perches her head lazily on the edge of the utility tray. Her gaze though has such a calming influence over me that she has quickly become a regular in the car.
I stuffed the car with lots of fruits, chocolates, juices and chips to last me through the trip and also carried the bottle of French wine that Pam presented me, to celebrate the New Year. A road atlas of Maharashtra is the other essential. The district roadmaps of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg helped me identify the route for the drive. Even a faint line on the map along the coast indicated that I could drive through. That was all the planning that I had done for this trip.
The initial few hundred kilometers from Mumbai – Pen – Alibaug – Revdanda – Kashid – Murud – Janjira is a familiar territory as I have driven through this section a number of times. Experience though is like a knife. For most people, it probably brings in a certain degree of comfort and makes them sharper. To me, it is just a source of boredom and blunts me unless I find new avenues to amuse myself. This time it’s the moonlit sea between Revdanda and Kashid and the smell of the moisture laden winder woods that keep me going, apart from the sight of a few inspirational morning joggers who seem to be training for the marathon. Sunrise is still half an hour away when I reached Janjira despite losing my way once at Murud. At the base of the hill, some firshermen are already busy preparing for their sortie into the sea and one of them offered me a trip to the fort. But beyond Janjira is when my actual adventure starts and I am too excited to stop now for a boat ride to the fort.
The next major coastal town along the Konkan coastline is Harihareshwar. The sea cuts into the land between Murud and Harihareshwar and the road map indicates no link between the two. I had to turn eastwards towards Roha to rejoin the national highway at Kolad. The contour of the coastline between Murud and Roha is so curved that one gets an occasional view of the sunrise over the sea, a rare sight on the West coast. It is said that a traveler, to enjoy the full diversity of a particular geography, should trace its longitude since the climate and therefore the colors of nature change over longitudes. This is perhaps applicable only over really long distances since I noticed the greatest diversity while moving eastwards on the latitude from the coast to the interiors, probably because of the sudden change in the altitude. The way to Roha covers quite a distance along the coast and then suddenly the altitude increases. The forest cover is thick and if one is lucky like I am, an occasional Sambar crossing the road or camouflaged in the vegetation can be sighted. There is also an unusual junction on this stretch with two roads both leading to Roha, one that says 10km to Roha and the other 5km. I obviously took the shorter one and that turned out to be the most arduous stretch to drive through due to extremely poor road conditions. Roha is a nondescript town and so is the drive from there to Kolad after which I reluctantly cut into the national highway. Driving on the highways is so unexciting compared to the interiors and true to my words, I could sense the first signs of tiredness and sleepiness on my way to Mahad forcing a 15 minute stopover to steal a catnap.
After a rather listless drive through the stretch of Kolad – Mangaon – Goregaon – Mahad – Poladpur – Khed covering about 150km, I finally get an opportunity to drive back into the interiors towards Dapoli with the eventual target of reaching the beaches of Harnai, Murud (different from the one near Janjira) and Anjarle. Khed to Dapoli is another forgettable stretch of bad roads and over-population. After Dapoli however, as one goes interior, the roads improve significantly and so does the drive quality. Anjarle is a fishing village with a small temple by the beach and two groups of kids playing cricket on the sands. Even though cricket is considered omnipresent in India, having just suffered from its overdose, I yearned to find places that are free of it and I quickly diverted towards Harnai, which turned out to be a secluded home for seagulls with intermittent interjections by an odd villager on a bullock cart or budding young fishermen trying their best to beat the low tide and take their boats into the sea.
The next destination is Guhagar and the map shows the river Vashishti between Dhabol and Guhagar with a faint line connecting it. The afternoon drive from Dapoli to Dhabol is again a dream drive through the ghats with virtually no traces of human life reminding me of my childhood travels across India in trains when I always used to wonder if there still existed pockets in India without human habitation or should I say exploitation. The ghats are also home to a variety of wild flora, some of which I could neither identify nor remember seeing before. The final approach road to Dhabol offers a spectacular long distance view of the backwaters of Guhagar against the backdrop of the infamous Enron in the horizon. I realized after reaching Dabhol that the faint line in the map is an indication for a ferry ride across Vashishti. Guhagar in itself seems to be more famous for its backwaters than its beachfront as evident from a number of posters advertising the backwater festival of Guhagar. Having already seen the backwaters during the ferry ride across Vashishti, I quickly proceeded towards Velneshwar, the next beach on the Konkan.
Velneshwar is a quiet beach town with a calm sea, clean sands fringed with coconut trees and is free even of fishermen and fishing boats. It is certainly the best beach I have seen till now, on this trip. The town is very sparsely populated and has a colorfully painted and seemingly popular Shiva temple on the beach. It is rumored that MTDC is planning to build a tourist resort on the hill adjoining the sea. Till then, this is an ideal destination for people who love quiet, secluded beaches. It is at Velneshwar that I began questioning my free spirit for the first time. On enquiring about the route to Jaigad through which I plan to drive to Ganapatiphule, the rickshaw drivers at the temple advised me to go back to Chiplun and reconnect to the national highway. Most of them even seem to be unaware of the existence of a place called Jaigad, leave alone knowing the route. Either there is something wrong with the way I pronounce names or my understanding of Marathi is poorer that what I thought earlier, I am making very little progress here. There is a downside to using route maps for directions, because, as illustrated above, there could potentially be different places which are better known to the local community than those prominently displayed in the maps. In such situations, one is at best delayed and at worst, lost completely. I certainly do not wish to go back to the highway but I have less than an hour and a half before it gets dark and more importantly, less than 100km to go at best before my car needs a re-fill. One major pitfall of driving in the interiors of the country is that the opportunities for pit-stops for fuel are few and very very far in between. My last memory of a petrol station is more than 100km old near Dapoli, when Bucephalus and I acted tough and said re-fills were for the weak. The trip-meter then read only 320km. Bucephalus, when let free, can run for more than 500km before it gets thirsty. Nonetheless, I have decided to take the road less traveled and explore further to try and find an alternative route to Ganapatiphule. My rational mind tells me that if there are the occasional rickshaws visible throughout the drive, there must be petrol available too in some nook or corner and luckily for me, I did find a small motor mechanic shop on my way up the ghat who sells petrol in cans at obviously a premium of Rs. 5 per litre. Economics of demand-supply at work.
That drive towards Ganapatiphule is one of my best ever, through thick forests in the ghats and pleasant winter evening conditions. The best sight during this drive is that of a family of yellow-crested hornbills which made me screech to a halt to capture the image. Wildlife photography is certainly not easy. I realized the importance and the difficulty of making oneself invisible to be able to capture the right picture. This is really a chance of a lifetime, with two huge hornbills, their yellow crests and beaks emphasized further by the golden hue of the sunset. But as soon as the birds sighted me, they took off to a distant tree. I missed the shot but the sight of the two hornbills flying with a wingspan of more than a meter and half is good enough compensation. There is potentially a reward for every risk that one takes and had I gone on to drive through Chiplun highway, I would’ve missed so many simple pleasures in life.
National highways are for people who drive to reach destinations. Since I like to drive and listen to the birds, the insects, the occasional monkey or the fox, the distant sounds of the sea or even the faint wind in the forest, I try and cut off from the highway as soon as I can. The smell of the moisture-laden woods at dawn or dusk is an experience worth a million. Adding to the pleasure is the fact that I am mostly the only one on the road, driving at my own pace under a green canopy that seems to sway to the pervasive symphony of nature, orchestrated by the unknown. Sometimes, it is so enchanting that the slowest Bucephalus can take me is still fast enough to outpace the beat of nature and I feel compelled to halt my drive, get down and stroll up and down to soak in as much as I can with the hope that I resonate with nature. And while doing so, I suddenly discover that in such a strange envelope of a pleasant silence interspersed with a soft wind and the sounds of nature, its is easy to find rhythm in every sound that I hear and I waltz my way up and down to the beats of my own footsteps, which seem to suddenly acquire the grace of a danseuse. The sound of my steps seems to become the lyric to add to the backdrop of nature’s orchestra. And life then is a long song.
Mind you, the song can come to an abrupt end if one, even intermittently lose the pulse. In an instant, one gets reminded that one is an outsider and is welcome only as long as one behaves. A chance sight of a long tailed langur excited me to capture it on my Nikon and I missed my step to move closer for the shot. The orchestra suddenly stopped and the only sounds I heard are the chirping langurs, invisible to me until then, gathering around the branches above and displaying their dark red gums. I realized then that it doesn’t take much to understand the intent behind any communication, except when it is between two human beings. The langurs are clearly exhibiting aggression, and while it is relatively easy to understand their gestures and language, I am, obviously, at a loss for words. I had no means to convey that I mean no harm except to tip toe to my car and find my way down the hill through the winding roads. Outsider that I am to them, I can easily visualize the langurs seeing me escape as quickly as I could with my tail strictly between my legs. They must’ve had a good laugh at the incident. If only I was able to tell them that there is a monkey in my mind, I would’ve probably been successful in gaining their acceptance.
I had a good laugh to oat the incident and for very different reasons. The incident reminded me of the difference between animals and humans, between instinct and rationality. It is a comforting thought – That every human being is rational, that I am rational and therefore I co-exist harmoniously with my fellow human beings. I believe I was born with this rational mind which told me that the rest of the human world acts according to a logic that is not only understood by but is also common to everyone else. But then I was the frog prince living in a tiny little well with high walls around and the only people I met were the ones I was growing up with and so everyone else was not more than a handful. And prince that I was, I failed to realize that in my small little world, what I presumed to be the logic of the world was actually my imposed logic. Any intrusions into this world of mine required the intruder to either follow the logic or be left out. And as every prince perhaps thought of his world, I believed it was a harmonious world, harmony as reflected in my happiness and in the happiness of the people who were part of my world. There was lots of fun and glory, music and banter, there was spring in the air and spring in our feet. To be rational mind that I was born with, life was a fresh and fragrant spring flower and every moment that I lived could’ve been captured as a picture perfect postcard. Based entirely on this supposition, I continued to live like a proud rational human being.
Instinct on the other hand is animal. It is just how those langurs behaved and communicated. On instinct, when they sensed a danger. And surprisingly to my rational mind, it seemed logical from their point of view! However, I also discovered how rationality makes me wear a mask of logic, a mask of being right but constrains me at the same time in being able to successfully communicate how I feel. Rationality taught me to communicate in words and words are an inappropriate means of communication to life that is guided by instinct. Instinct makes a living being wear its heart out and there could therefore be no two interpretations of such a being’s action or gesture, irrespective of whether the receiver’s guiding force is rationality or instinct. Such is the irony of rationality that it encourages you to be logical but that logic is not universal! Am I still the proud rational human being or do I rather wear my heart out on my sleeve and be understood universally and perhaps risk being called an animal? Which one is better and whose loss is it? And who decides?
The drive through the hairpin bends down the hill seemed as if I was unwinding my own story and every time I take a turn, my story meets with a new twist. And just as I have the luxury of looking back at each phase of my life, a look in the rear-view mirror provides me an image of the course I charted. But either the memory of my rare view mirror is short or the path that I took is like the proverbial dog’s tail. No matter how much I unwind it as I cruise forward, the path recoils just a quickly as I move ahead and most of it fades away leaving behind a few faint traces of what had once been big highs or deep scars. May be that’s how the twists in anyone’s tale are, that they make you look at your past warped by your current sense of reality. But who knows whether is the now or the before that is warped.
A lorry honking right in front obstructed both my drive as well as my thought. The roads in the ghat are so narrow that one of the two needs to backtrack till the nearest corner to let the other pass. And all through my drive this happened without much conflict as one of the drivers usually volunteers to let the other pass. This time, it is my turn to back track. This certainly is unlike life, there’s no backtracking there.
After my experience with the langur family and with God choosing the darker shares of grey to paint the sky at this hour, I can sense a distant feeling of fear lurking at the back of mind waiting for just another trigger to envelope me completely and I raised the car windows to feel more secure. The lorry experience is the first human contact after what seems a lifetime, the sight of the same race that I seem to be escaping from is strangely a solace!
Long distance driving, especially when done alone, is akin to long distance running. One has to win a series of battles with the mind and the body, allying with one while fighting the other. It is only before the start that one needs to fight the two together and the two together is a lethal combination called lethargy. I often try and use a simple technique of consciously feeling the energy within to fight the lethargy that keeps reminding me of the comforts of life. As I near the completion of the first 20-25 minutes of running, my body starts revolting with aches and pains making me wonder where all the energy has disappeared. But by this time though, the mind is usually tamed. When the mind is one’s ally and is focused, it is a strangely ecstatic feeling and nothing seems insurmountable. One discovers unknown reserves of energy within. This is a phase where I believe one realizes one’s true potential, which as one discovers, is always greater than what is otherwise believed to be achievable. My true potential though is unfortunately not infinite and soon enough, the energy is sapped and I enter a zone of numbness. The mind is drop dead blank and strangely the body comes to the rescue here again and I prod forward on nothing but the inertia of motion. This is a state of trance when I feel like I’m swaying to the beats at low frequencies not audible to normal human ears, beats that can get quicker, making me go faster till my eventual collapse. I’m a winner if the miles thus clocked are enough to reach the destination. I’m still a winner if I collapse even before the destination is reached as there is immense pleasure in the process. Driving is no different or so I realized as I near the end of my first day’s journey at Ganapatiphule almost 16 hours on the road, and collapsed to sleep by 9pm on the eve of the New Years, ignoring the beseeching bottle of French wine that I planned to uncork at the strike of twelve. The place is teeming with tourists and not surprisingly, every decent lodge I go to is proudly decorated with a no vacancy board. To my surprise, I realized later that Ganapatiphule is a good place to sleep in a car! Just as one prepares to drive down the ghat into the town, there is a large plateau with a couple of lodges by the road. But as one goes into the by-lane on the plateau, it is completely plain with hardly any disturbance, human or otherwise. The sea breeze provides an ideal draft that can be controlled by operating the four windows of the car and in such ideal conditions, I lied down to relax with Hobbes still bountifully energetic, keeping his watchful eye over me. As per my original plan, the destination at the end of day one is Tarkarli and I am far away from it but still so content that, for a change, both my mind and my body rested for 10 hours on a makeshift bed inside the car, undisturbed even by the occasional New Year messages that I received on my mobile. That marks the end of the first day.
New Years could not have started better than the first sight of the day when I woke up to evade the first brush of sun rays on my eyes. My bedroom, the re-arranged interior of the car, actually turned out to be a room with a beautiful view of the Arabian Sea. I decided to start the year and the day with a visit to the Ganapati temple on the beach and spent nearly an hour in the temple and by 8:30 am, I am ready for another day of adventure. For the records, Dapoli which is almost 220km in the past is still my last memory of a petrol station. Ratnagiri, the next stop, is sure to have some, being a district headquarters. The stretch between Ganapatiphule and Ratnagiri illustrates best what lifelessness means. One can see vast stretches of barren land peppered here and there with golden brown dry grass that resembles the two day old stubble of a red headed Dutch tourist who just landed in India. Occasionally though, the grass is long enough to resemble the scraggy unkempt beard of the same red headed Dutch tourist who possibly met an Indian sadhu on his long tour and thought that the road to karma lies in just aping that sadhu’s appearance. No wonder, one rarely encounters life here with the exception of a few lonely trees and a couple of crows in the sky. What’s even more surprising is the fact that the mobile signal is the best in this region as compared to any other in my long drive till now and I took this opportunity to wish mom and dad a happy new year. The town of Ratnagiri is a shade of dark green painted with the orchards of Alphonso. The mango orchards too seem shorn of life an din hibernation, nonchalantly waiting for their season to bloom and dazzle. Though I know that there is a season when I too will bloom, the longing for it seems eternal. How I envy these orchards that can relax and wait with such confidence for their time to come, while I am so restless that I probably wither away even before I bloom.
Ratnagiri is the first big town in my journey till now and the concrete jungle, not unsurprisingly, seems very unwelcome. It is however a good opportunity to re-fill Bucephalus and pep up its tired legs with some air. Ratnagiri – Hatkhamba, where I rejoin the national highway again and this time with even more reluctance, is a drool and so is the drive after it between the long stretch of Hatkhamba – Pali – Rajapur – Talera – Kusal, covering a distance of more than 135km. The occasional animals and birds I encountered till now have been replaced by the more frequent returning ‘car’avans from Goa on their way to Mumbai after their drunken revelry. I hated the drive. The only consolation though is that the drive has been pretty smooth and quick. Kusal is the junction where I turn towards the interiors again, this time towards the Malvan region in Sindhudurg district, which seems in contrast to the dry lands of Ratnagiri. The region has dense vegetation but is sparsely populated around the roads that I have driven through. A typical Malvani village in the ghats is an interesting camouflage into the vegetation alongs the slopes of the ghats. The roads and the region seem very interior and I often wondered if I was in the right direction, but over the two days, I developed a simple technique to re-confirm that I am in the right direction. I just watch the reactions of the people. There is a caveat to this, mind you. I remember an instance where I realized that the villagers were more amused by the way I looked in my dark t-shirt and a Ferrari red cap, pulled low over my brow. I had probably humored them for the day. From then onwards, if ever I wanted to test my directions, I would always remove my cap as I approached a village and then observe the reactions. The general rule is like this – if their reactions say that a car passing through is a normal event in their daily life, then I am in the right direction, otherwise I normally experience looks of amusement. I’d then be circumspect and ask for directions at the next available opportunity. However, if I find, in my rear view mirror, that people actually turn back to look at me/my car, I’d screech to a halt, reverse as quickly as I can and ask for directions. This rule worked brilliantly for me over the two days and its success continued this time too. The villagers did not pay heed to my arrival and departure and very soon I did find a milestone with Malvan written on it.
Malvan region has the potential to be a major tourist attraction. It has a number of historical sea forts, clean beaches, backwaters as well as a number of unique local recipes, particularly of sea food. I am thankful that it has not yet become one though. After crossing the backwaters over a bridge, I first enter the small town of Malvan by noon, which is more famous for the Sindhudurg Citadel. It is a majestic sea fort, arguably the largest in the Konkan region, among the many sea forts built by Shivaji in the Seventeenth century. The beach otherwise is very unattractive and is infested by fishing boats and tourists, waiting for the boats to visit the fort. A local fisherman advised me to come back at three in the afternoon for a better view of the fort. I therefore proceeded towards Tarkarli, the place I had originally set about traveling to. I break into a smile as I remember that the reason for this drive is actually an overheard conversation between two colleagues at office who were discussing beaches. Tarkarli is just 7km from Malvan town and there’s very little in Tarkarli other than an MTDC resort. I quickly reached the resort, roamed about in the beach and loved the place so much that I decided to not explore any further and enjoy the remaining day and night there. With dreams of finally uncorking the French wine on the soft sands of the moonlit beach in Tarkarli, I approach the reception of the resort for a room. The man there violently shakes his head even before I ventured a question. No vacancy continues to haunt me everywhere I go. Nonetheless I decided to make the most of my time there and ordered for a fish plate lunch at the small Malvani restaurant on the beach, next to the resort. Tarkarli is certainly the best beach I’ve seen on the Western coast till now. The sand is almost perfectly white and feels as soft as talcum. The beach also offers a spectacular view of the Sindhudurg fort from a distance. The waters though are rough making swimming difficult and dangerous.
In the meanwhile, my lunch has been served, under a shade, on the beach. As I relish the fried black pomfret, I am faced by that dreaded question again – what next? And I did not have an answer. I just did not want to go back to Mumbai, Goa seems too crowded to my liking and I felt a sudden vacuum inside. Everything I escaped from over the past two days, seemed to rush in with renewed vigor with the sole objective of destroying my mood. After sucking out every catalyst of my mood swings through tremendous effort, making the mind airtight and then suddenly and accidentally, a hole gets knocked in. I can almost visualize all those dark forces rushing in, the images of people, recollections of incidents and images of my own dark self, while viewing the pictures I clicked through the drive on the laptop. It is depressing but fortunately I have the aid of some very effective anti-depressants like the brilliant sea and the delicious pomfret. I quickly took out the guide map to find one last Konkan beach on the Maharashtra coastline, Vengurla.
Tarkarli – Vengurla again has multiple route options and I, as usual, take the road less traveled. The road runs alongside the Karli river for many kilometers before crossing a bridge that take one to the last ghat before Vengurla. As with every other major beach town, the final stretch approaching the town down the ghat usually offers spectacular views of the distant sea. Vengurla is different only to the extent that the view is the best of the lot. And as with every other time when I pushed myself beyond my initial target, I have been rewarded wonderfully even this time. Vengurla is a dream. It reminded me of a small Italian town on the Mediterranean Sea. Blue, placid waters and so crystal clear that one can view the bottom of the sea, even 20ft deep. I spent the first few minutes sitting by the side of the road absorbing the beauty of the view, after which I began my climb up the Vengurla rocks to go near the light house that is supposed to be the guiding tower for the Dutch and the Portuguese seamen many centuries ago. I then proceeded to Sagareshwar beach to spend the rest of my evening in peace. The beach sands are not as white and talc like as Tarkarli but its size and seclusion, the sea gulls and the overall view around the beach makes it just as good, if not better. For almost an hour, I just sat on the beach, watching the sun set and paint multiple hues of red and golden yellow on the sky and the clouds. It is particularly interesting to watch the same cloud change from first white to yellow to golden red and then to violet before finally turning grey.
The sun finally set on the Vengurla beach and on my adventure as well.
With the diminishing twilight and the disappearing horizon, as darkness envelops Vengurla, my world seems to have suddenly shrunk around me. Nowhere else to go, I strain to catch the last glimpse of the same sea that made me feel, over the last two days, that I am so full of life and potential. There is an inexplicable feeling of loss as I make my way back to Bucephalus and I find myself turning back over and over again till I finally lost sight of the Arabian. There have been many adventures in the past but none as impulsive and irrational as this one. There have been many adventures in the past but none gave me as much pleasure as this one. There have been many adventures in the past and there will be many more in the future. The next one actually begins immediately since I’ve decided to drive back to Mumbai overnight with the haunting no vacancy board showing itself even in Vengurla. No vacancy is perhaps the most appropriate metaphor for this trip. While the big wide rational world has closed it doors on me, a whole new world of mother nature has embraced me with open arms and I resonated by being the lyric to her orchestra to complete my life’s long song. And somewhere along the way back to Mumbai, this time driving strictly on the national highway, my rational mind died a silent death.
For the moment though, I am back to being Clarke Kent answering the roll call at Daily Bugle….desperately longing for the next call of the wild.
A short message to sis at three-thirty that I am leaving on a long drive alone so that somebody stays informed of what I set about doing, if not my whereabouts. There is no destination for this drive, only an objective of driving as close to the coast as possible. I believe I have a passion to explore and that’s my ammunition besides Bucephalus, the Wagon R, my most reliable and trustworthy partner in all my crimes. Teddy, the other old-timer has opted out but is replaced very ably by Hobbes, the lion and Pooh, the bitch. Hobbes has a favorite hang-out place, to catch my attention often enough, just below the rear-view mirror. Hobbes is ever energetic and easily outlasts me on any of my trips. He is a great mind reader too and offers an opinion on all of my thoughts, usually nodding in agreement and occasionally shaking in disapproval. No wonder, Hobbes has been there with me the longest. Pooh is the more knowledgeable one or at least carries herself with such a façade. The only reactions that I ever manage to elicit from her are either a snobbish I-know-it-all raise of an eyebrow or an occasional roll over on her back indicating complete boredom. Pooh perches her head lazily on the edge of the utility tray. Her gaze though has such a calming influence over me that she has quickly become a regular in the car.
I stuffed the car with lots of fruits, chocolates, juices and chips to last me through the trip and also carried the bottle of French wine that Pam presented me, to celebrate the New Year. A road atlas of Maharashtra is the other essential. The district roadmaps of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg helped me identify the route for the drive. Even a faint line on the map along the coast indicated that I could drive through. That was all the planning that I had done for this trip.
The initial few hundred kilometers from Mumbai – Pen – Alibaug – Revdanda – Kashid – Murud – Janjira is a familiar territory as I have driven through this section a number of times. Experience though is like a knife. For most people, it probably brings in a certain degree of comfort and makes them sharper. To me, it is just a source of boredom and blunts me unless I find new avenues to amuse myself. This time it’s the moonlit sea between Revdanda and Kashid and the smell of the moisture laden winder woods that keep me going, apart from the sight of a few inspirational morning joggers who seem to be training for the marathon. Sunrise is still half an hour away when I reached Janjira despite losing my way once at Murud. At the base of the hill, some firshermen are already busy preparing for their sortie into the sea and one of them offered me a trip to the fort. But beyond Janjira is when my actual adventure starts and I am too excited to stop now for a boat ride to the fort.
The next major coastal town along the Konkan coastline is Harihareshwar. The sea cuts into the land between Murud and Harihareshwar and the road map indicates no link between the two. I had to turn eastwards towards Roha to rejoin the national highway at Kolad. The contour of the coastline between Murud and Roha is so curved that one gets an occasional view of the sunrise over the sea, a rare sight on the West coast. It is said that a traveler, to enjoy the full diversity of a particular geography, should trace its longitude since the climate and therefore the colors of nature change over longitudes. This is perhaps applicable only over really long distances since I noticed the greatest diversity while moving eastwards on the latitude from the coast to the interiors, probably because of the sudden change in the altitude. The way to Roha covers quite a distance along the coast and then suddenly the altitude increases. The forest cover is thick and if one is lucky like I am, an occasional Sambar crossing the road or camouflaged in the vegetation can be sighted. There is also an unusual junction on this stretch with two roads both leading to Roha, one that says 10km to Roha and the other 5km. I obviously took the shorter one and that turned out to be the most arduous stretch to drive through due to extremely poor road conditions. Roha is a nondescript town and so is the drive from there to Kolad after which I reluctantly cut into the national highway. Driving on the highways is so unexciting compared to the interiors and true to my words, I could sense the first signs of tiredness and sleepiness on my way to Mahad forcing a 15 minute stopover to steal a catnap.
After a rather listless drive through the stretch of Kolad – Mangaon – Goregaon – Mahad – Poladpur – Khed covering about 150km, I finally get an opportunity to drive back into the interiors towards Dapoli with the eventual target of reaching the beaches of Harnai, Murud (different from the one near Janjira) and Anjarle. Khed to Dapoli is another forgettable stretch of bad roads and over-population. After Dapoli however, as one goes interior, the roads improve significantly and so does the drive quality. Anjarle is a fishing village with a small temple by the beach and two groups of kids playing cricket on the sands. Even though cricket is considered omnipresent in India, having just suffered from its overdose, I yearned to find places that are free of it and I quickly diverted towards Harnai, which turned out to be a secluded home for seagulls with intermittent interjections by an odd villager on a bullock cart or budding young fishermen trying their best to beat the low tide and take their boats into the sea.
The next destination is Guhagar and the map shows the river Vashishti between Dhabol and Guhagar with a faint line connecting it. The afternoon drive from Dapoli to Dhabol is again a dream drive through the ghats with virtually no traces of human life reminding me of my childhood travels across India in trains when I always used to wonder if there still existed pockets in India without human habitation or should I say exploitation. The ghats are also home to a variety of wild flora, some of which I could neither identify nor remember seeing before. The final approach road to Dhabol offers a spectacular long distance view of the backwaters of Guhagar against the backdrop of the infamous Enron in the horizon. I realized after reaching Dabhol that the faint line in the map is an indication for a ferry ride across Vashishti. Guhagar in itself seems to be more famous for its backwaters than its beachfront as evident from a number of posters advertising the backwater festival of Guhagar. Having already seen the backwaters during the ferry ride across Vashishti, I quickly proceeded towards Velneshwar, the next beach on the Konkan.
Velneshwar is a quiet beach town with a calm sea, clean sands fringed with coconut trees and is free even of fishermen and fishing boats. It is certainly the best beach I have seen till now, on this trip. The town is very sparsely populated and has a colorfully painted and seemingly popular Shiva temple on the beach. It is rumored that MTDC is planning to build a tourist resort on the hill adjoining the sea. Till then, this is an ideal destination for people who love quiet, secluded beaches. It is at Velneshwar that I began questioning my free spirit for the first time. On enquiring about the route to Jaigad through which I plan to drive to Ganapatiphule, the rickshaw drivers at the temple advised me to go back to Chiplun and reconnect to the national highway. Most of them even seem to be unaware of the existence of a place called Jaigad, leave alone knowing the route. Either there is something wrong with the way I pronounce names or my understanding of Marathi is poorer that what I thought earlier, I am making very little progress here. There is a downside to using route maps for directions, because, as illustrated above, there could potentially be different places which are better known to the local community than those prominently displayed in the maps. In such situations, one is at best delayed and at worst, lost completely. I certainly do not wish to go back to the highway but I have less than an hour and a half before it gets dark and more importantly, less than 100km to go at best before my car needs a re-fill. One major pitfall of driving in the interiors of the country is that the opportunities for pit-stops for fuel are few and very very far in between. My last memory of a petrol station is more than 100km old near Dapoli, when Bucephalus and I acted tough and said re-fills were for the weak. The trip-meter then read only 320km. Bucephalus, when let free, can run for more than 500km before it gets thirsty. Nonetheless, I have decided to take the road less traveled and explore further to try and find an alternative route to Ganapatiphule. My rational mind tells me that if there are the occasional rickshaws visible throughout the drive, there must be petrol available too in some nook or corner and luckily for me, I did find a small motor mechanic shop on my way up the ghat who sells petrol in cans at obviously a premium of Rs. 5 per litre. Economics of demand-supply at work.
That drive towards Ganapatiphule is one of my best ever, through thick forests in the ghats and pleasant winter evening conditions. The best sight during this drive is that of a family of yellow-crested hornbills which made me screech to a halt to capture the image. Wildlife photography is certainly not easy. I realized the importance and the difficulty of making oneself invisible to be able to capture the right picture. This is really a chance of a lifetime, with two huge hornbills, their yellow crests and beaks emphasized further by the golden hue of the sunset. But as soon as the birds sighted me, they took off to a distant tree. I missed the shot but the sight of the two hornbills flying with a wingspan of more than a meter and half is good enough compensation. There is potentially a reward for every risk that one takes and had I gone on to drive through Chiplun highway, I would’ve missed so many simple pleasures in life.
National highways are for people who drive to reach destinations. Since I like to drive and listen to the birds, the insects, the occasional monkey or the fox, the distant sounds of the sea or even the faint wind in the forest, I try and cut off from the highway as soon as I can. The smell of the moisture-laden woods at dawn or dusk is an experience worth a million. Adding to the pleasure is the fact that I am mostly the only one on the road, driving at my own pace under a green canopy that seems to sway to the pervasive symphony of nature, orchestrated by the unknown. Sometimes, it is so enchanting that the slowest Bucephalus can take me is still fast enough to outpace the beat of nature and I feel compelled to halt my drive, get down and stroll up and down to soak in as much as I can with the hope that I resonate with nature. And while doing so, I suddenly discover that in such a strange envelope of a pleasant silence interspersed with a soft wind and the sounds of nature, its is easy to find rhythm in every sound that I hear and I waltz my way up and down to the beats of my own footsteps, which seem to suddenly acquire the grace of a danseuse. The sound of my steps seems to become the lyric to add to the backdrop of nature’s orchestra. And life then is a long song.
Mind you, the song can come to an abrupt end if one, even intermittently lose the pulse. In an instant, one gets reminded that one is an outsider and is welcome only as long as one behaves. A chance sight of a long tailed langur excited me to capture it on my Nikon and I missed my step to move closer for the shot. The orchestra suddenly stopped and the only sounds I heard are the chirping langurs, invisible to me until then, gathering around the branches above and displaying their dark red gums. I realized then that it doesn’t take much to understand the intent behind any communication, except when it is between two human beings. The langurs are clearly exhibiting aggression, and while it is relatively easy to understand their gestures and language, I am, obviously, at a loss for words. I had no means to convey that I mean no harm except to tip toe to my car and find my way down the hill through the winding roads. Outsider that I am to them, I can easily visualize the langurs seeing me escape as quickly as I could with my tail strictly between my legs. They must’ve had a good laugh at the incident. If only I was able to tell them that there is a monkey in my mind, I would’ve probably been successful in gaining their acceptance.
I had a good laugh to oat the incident and for very different reasons. The incident reminded me of the difference between animals and humans, between instinct and rationality. It is a comforting thought – That every human being is rational, that I am rational and therefore I co-exist harmoniously with my fellow human beings. I believe I was born with this rational mind which told me that the rest of the human world acts according to a logic that is not only understood by but is also common to everyone else. But then I was the frog prince living in a tiny little well with high walls around and the only people I met were the ones I was growing up with and so everyone else was not more than a handful. And prince that I was, I failed to realize that in my small little world, what I presumed to be the logic of the world was actually my imposed logic. Any intrusions into this world of mine required the intruder to either follow the logic or be left out. And as every prince perhaps thought of his world, I believed it was a harmonious world, harmony as reflected in my happiness and in the happiness of the people who were part of my world. There was lots of fun and glory, music and banter, there was spring in the air and spring in our feet. To be rational mind that I was born with, life was a fresh and fragrant spring flower and every moment that I lived could’ve been captured as a picture perfect postcard. Based entirely on this supposition, I continued to live like a proud rational human being.
Instinct on the other hand is animal. It is just how those langurs behaved and communicated. On instinct, when they sensed a danger. And surprisingly to my rational mind, it seemed logical from their point of view! However, I also discovered how rationality makes me wear a mask of logic, a mask of being right but constrains me at the same time in being able to successfully communicate how I feel. Rationality taught me to communicate in words and words are an inappropriate means of communication to life that is guided by instinct. Instinct makes a living being wear its heart out and there could therefore be no two interpretations of such a being’s action or gesture, irrespective of whether the receiver’s guiding force is rationality or instinct. Such is the irony of rationality that it encourages you to be logical but that logic is not universal! Am I still the proud rational human being or do I rather wear my heart out on my sleeve and be understood universally and perhaps risk being called an animal? Which one is better and whose loss is it? And who decides?
The drive through the hairpin bends down the hill seemed as if I was unwinding my own story and every time I take a turn, my story meets with a new twist. And just as I have the luxury of looking back at each phase of my life, a look in the rear-view mirror provides me an image of the course I charted. But either the memory of my rare view mirror is short or the path that I took is like the proverbial dog’s tail. No matter how much I unwind it as I cruise forward, the path recoils just a quickly as I move ahead and most of it fades away leaving behind a few faint traces of what had once been big highs or deep scars. May be that’s how the twists in anyone’s tale are, that they make you look at your past warped by your current sense of reality. But who knows whether is the now or the before that is warped.
A lorry honking right in front obstructed both my drive as well as my thought. The roads in the ghat are so narrow that one of the two needs to backtrack till the nearest corner to let the other pass. And all through my drive this happened without much conflict as one of the drivers usually volunteers to let the other pass. This time, it is my turn to back track. This certainly is unlike life, there’s no backtracking there.
After my experience with the langur family and with God choosing the darker shares of grey to paint the sky at this hour, I can sense a distant feeling of fear lurking at the back of mind waiting for just another trigger to envelope me completely and I raised the car windows to feel more secure. The lorry experience is the first human contact after what seems a lifetime, the sight of the same race that I seem to be escaping from is strangely a solace!
Long distance driving, especially when done alone, is akin to long distance running. One has to win a series of battles with the mind and the body, allying with one while fighting the other. It is only before the start that one needs to fight the two together and the two together is a lethal combination called lethargy. I often try and use a simple technique of consciously feeling the energy within to fight the lethargy that keeps reminding me of the comforts of life. As I near the completion of the first 20-25 minutes of running, my body starts revolting with aches and pains making me wonder where all the energy has disappeared. But by this time though, the mind is usually tamed. When the mind is one’s ally and is focused, it is a strangely ecstatic feeling and nothing seems insurmountable. One discovers unknown reserves of energy within. This is a phase where I believe one realizes one’s true potential, which as one discovers, is always greater than what is otherwise believed to be achievable. My true potential though is unfortunately not infinite and soon enough, the energy is sapped and I enter a zone of numbness. The mind is drop dead blank and strangely the body comes to the rescue here again and I prod forward on nothing but the inertia of motion. This is a state of trance when I feel like I’m swaying to the beats at low frequencies not audible to normal human ears, beats that can get quicker, making me go faster till my eventual collapse. I’m a winner if the miles thus clocked are enough to reach the destination. I’m still a winner if I collapse even before the destination is reached as there is immense pleasure in the process. Driving is no different or so I realized as I near the end of my first day’s journey at Ganapatiphule almost 16 hours on the road, and collapsed to sleep by 9pm on the eve of the New Years, ignoring the beseeching bottle of French wine that I planned to uncork at the strike of twelve. The place is teeming with tourists and not surprisingly, every decent lodge I go to is proudly decorated with a no vacancy board. To my surprise, I realized later that Ganapatiphule is a good place to sleep in a car! Just as one prepares to drive down the ghat into the town, there is a large plateau with a couple of lodges by the road. But as one goes into the by-lane on the plateau, it is completely plain with hardly any disturbance, human or otherwise. The sea breeze provides an ideal draft that can be controlled by operating the four windows of the car and in such ideal conditions, I lied down to relax with Hobbes still bountifully energetic, keeping his watchful eye over me. As per my original plan, the destination at the end of day one is Tarkarli and I am far away from it but still so content that, for a change, both my mind and my body rested for 10 hours on a makeshift bed inside the car, undisturbed even by the occasional New Year messages that I received on my mobile. That marks the end of the first day.
New Years could not have started better than the first sight of the day when I woke up to evade the first brush of sun rays on my eyes. My bedroom, the re-arranged interior of the car, actually turned out to be a room with a beautiful view of the Arabian Sea. I decided to start the year and the day with a visit to the Ganapati temple on the beach and spent nearly an hour in the temple and by 8:30 am, I am ready for another day of adventure. For the records, Dapoli which is almost 220km in the past is still my last memory of a petrol station. Ratnagiri, the next stop, is sure to have some, being a district headquarters. The stretch between Ganapatiphule and Ratnagiri illustrates best what lifelessness means. One can see vast stretches of barren land peppered here and there with golden brown dry grass that resembles the two day old stubble of a red headed Dutch tourist who just landed in India. Occasionally though, the grass is long enough to resemble the scraggy unkempt beard of the same red headed Dutch tourist who possibly met an Indian sadhu on his long tour and thought that the road to karma lies in just aping that sadhu’s appearance. No wonder, one rarely encounters life here with the exception of a few lonely trees and a couple of crows in the sky. What’s even more surprising is the fact that the mobile signal is the best in this region as compared to any other in my long drive till now and I took this opportunity to wish mom and dad a happy new year. The town of Ratnagiri is a shade of dark green painted with the orchards of Alphonso. The mango orchards too seem shorn of life an din hibernation, nonchalantly waiting for their season to bloom and dazzle. Though I know that there is a season when I too will bloom, the longing for it seems eternal. How I envy these orchards that can relax and wait with such confidence for their time to come, while I am so restless that I probably wither away even before I bloom.
Ratnagiri is the first big town in my journey till now and the concrete jungle, not unsurprisingly, seems very unwelcome. It is however a good opportunity to re-fill Bucephalus and pep up its tired legs with some air. Ratnagiri – Hatkhamba, where I rejoin the national highway again and this time with even more reluctance, is a drool and so is the drive after it between the long stretch of Hatkhamba – Pali – Rajapur – Talera – Kusal, covering a distance of more than 135km. The occasional animals and birds I encountered till now have been replaced by the more frequent returning ‘car’avans from Goa on their way to Mumbai after their drunken revelry. I hated the drive. The only consolation though is that the drive has been pretty smooth and quick. Kusal is the junction where I turn towards the interiors again, this time towards the Malvan region in Sindhudurg district, which seems in contrast to the dry lands of Ratnagiri. The region has dense vegetation but is sparsely populated around the roads that I have driven through. A typical Malvani village in the ghats is an interesting camouflage into the vegetation alongs the slopes of the ghats. The roads and the region seem very interior and I often wondered if I was in the right direction, but over the two days, I developed a simple technique to re-confirm that I am in the right direction. I just watch the reactions of the people. There is a caveat to this, mind you. I remember an instance where I realized that the villagers were more amused by the way I looked in my dark t-shirt and a Ferrari red cap, pulled low over my brow. I had probably humored them for the day. From then onwards, if ever I wanted to test my directions, I would always remove my cap as I approached a village and then observe the reactions. The general rule is like this – if their reactions say that a car passing through is a normal event in their daily life, then I am in the right direction, otherwise I normally experience looks of amusement. I’d then be circumspect and ask for directions at the next available opportunity. However, if I find, in my rear view mirror, that people actually turn back to look at me/my car, I’d screech to a halt, reverse as quickly as I can and ask for directions. This rule worked brilliantly for me over the two days and its success continued this time too. The villagers did not pay heed to my arrival and departure and very soon I did find a milestone with Malvan written on it.
Malvan region has the potential to be a major tourist attraction. It has a number of historical sea forts, clean beaches, backwaters as well as a number of unique local recipes, particularly of sea food. I am thankful that it has not yet become one though. After crossing the backwaters over a bridge, I first enter the small town of Malvan by noon, which is more famous for the Sindhudurg Citadel. It is a majestic sea fort, arguably the largest in the Konkan region, among the many sea forts built by Shivaji in the Seventeenth century. The beach otherwise is very unattractive and is infested by fishing boats and tourists, waiting for the boats to visit the fort. A local fisherman advised me to come back at three in the afternoon for a better view of the fort. I therefore proceeded towards Tarkarli, the place I had originally set about traveling to. I break into a smile as I remember that the reason for this drive is actually an overheard conversation between two colleagues at office who were discussing beaches. Tarkarli is just 7km from Malvan town and there’s very little in Tarkarli other than an MTDC resort. I quickly reached the resort, roamed about in the beach and loved the place so much that I decided to not explore any further and enjoy the remaining day and night there. With dreams of finally uncorking the French wine on the soft sands of the moonlit beach in Tarkarli, I approach the reception of the resort for a room. The man there violently shakes his head even before I ventured a question. No vacancy continues to haunt me everywhere I go. Nonetheless I decided to make the most of my time there and ordered for a fish plate lunch at the small Malvani restaurant on the beach, next to the resort. Tarkarli is certainly the best beach I’ve seen on the Western coast till now. The sand is almost perfectly white and feels as soft as talcum. The beach also offers a spectacular view of the Sindhudurg fort from a distance. The waters though are rough making swimming difficult and dangerous.
In the meanwhile, my lunch has been served, under a shade, on the beach. As I relish the fried black pomfret, I am faced by that dreaded question again – what next? And I did not have an answer. I just did not want to go back to Mumbai, Goa seems too crowded to my liking and I felt a sudden vacuum inside. Everything I escaped from over the past two days, seemed to rush in with renewed vigor with the sole objective of destroying my mood. After sucking out every catalyst of my mood swings through tremendous effort, making the mind airtight and then suddenly and accidentally, a hole gets knocked in. I can almost visualize all those dark forces rushing in, the images of people, recollections of incidents and images of my own dark self, while viewing the pictures I clicked through the drive on the laptop. It is depressing but fortunately I have the aid of some very effective anti-depressants like the brilliant sea and the delicious pomfret. I quickly took out the guide map to find one last Konkan beach on the Maharashtra coastline, Vengurla.
Tarkarli – Vengurla again has multiple route options and I, as usual, take the road less traveled. The road runs alongside the Karli river for many kilometers before crossing a bridge that take one to the last ghat before Vengurla. As with every other major beach town, the final stretch approaching the town down the ghat usually offers spectacular views of the distant sea. Vengurla is different only to the extent that the view is the best of the lot. And as with every other time when I pushed myself beyond my initial target, I have been rewarded wonderfully even this time. Vengurla is a dream. It reminded me of a small Italian town on the Mediterranean Sea. Blue, placid waters and so crystal clear that one can view the bottom of the sea, even 20ft deep. I spent the first few minutes sitting by the side of the road absorbing the beauty of the view, after which I began my climb up the Vengurla rocks to go near the light house that is supposed to be the guiding tower for the Dutch and the Portuguese seamen many centuries ago. I then proceeded to Sagareshwar beach to spend the rest of my evening in peace. The beach sands are not as white and talc like as Tarkarli but its size and seclusion, the sea gulls and the overall view around the beach makes it just as good, if not better. For almost an hour, I just sat on the beach, watching the sun set and paint multiple hues of red and golden yellow on the sky and the clouds. It is particularly interesting to watch the same cloud change from first white to yellow to golden red and then to violet before finally turning grey.
The sun finally set on the Vengurla beach and on my adventure as well.
With the diminishing twilight and the disappearing horizon, as darkness envelops Vengurla, my world seems to have suddenly shrunk around me. Nowhere else to go, I strain to catch the last glimpse of the same sea that made me feel, over the last two days, that I am so full of life and potential. There is an inexplicable feeling of loss as I make my way back to Bucephalus and I find myself turning back over and over again till I finally lost sight of the Arabian. There have been many adventures in the past but none as impulsive and irrational as this one. There have been many adventures in the past but none gave me as much pleasure as this one. There have been many adventures in the past and there will be many more in the future. The next one actually begins immediately since I’ve decided to drive back to Mumbai overnight with the haunting no vacancy board showing itself even in Vengurla. No vacancy is perhaps the most appropriate metaphor for this trip. While the big wide rational world has closed it doors on me, a whole new world of mother nature has embraced me with open arms and I resonated by being the lyric to her orchestra to complete my life’s long song. And somewhere along the way back to Mumbai, this time driving strictly on the national highway, my rational mind died a silent death.
For the moment though, I am back to being Clarke Kent answering the roll call at Daily Bugle….desperately longing for the next call of the wild.
Written on New Year's Day - 2005
posted by Ulysses at 3:50 PM
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