The journey to Janjira was an exciting one . Janjira is the local name for a fort situated at the coastal village of Murud, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra. We started of early in the morning from dadar reached panvel. From Panvel we had to catch a Konkan railways train to Roha. From Roha there are plenty of buses that take you to Janjira. Its around 50Km , though the distance is less it takes almost 2 hrs to reach Janjira as the road to janjira is not a flat one. Its goes through a thick jungle and many small hills. And the buses are really old kind of village buses. The traffic in this route is very less. However, the journey was wonderful. After 2 long hrs we reached Murud. Actually we were supposed to get down a few stops before. Now we had to take an auto from Murud to Janjira around 4Km. then finally we reached Janjira. Now to get to the fort we had to sail in a tiny sail boat. It was awesome, the traditional sail boat.
Janjira fort is one of a kind ... Never ever been a fort built in between the ocean. It seems that the fort was never conquered by anybody. It is famous for being the only fort along India's western coast that remained undefeated despite Maratha, Dutch and English East India Company attacks.
The word Janjira is not native to India, and may have originated after the Arabic word Jazeera, which means an island. Murud was once known in Marathi as Habsan ("of Habshi" or Abyssinian). Some of the people also split the name as "Jal Jeera" meaning fort in the water.
The name of the fort is a concatenation of the Konkani and Arabic words for Island, "morod" and "jazeera". The word "morod" is peculiar to Konkani and is absent in Marathi. Thus, during the rains, the fields get flooded, but the morods never flood. The State of Murud-Janjira was known to the Maratha Empire as Habsan, the land of the Habshis.
The fort also boasts of a sweet water lake inside it. It is considered to be a miracle that the Fort surrounded by the salty water of the sea has a lake full of sweet water.
We had a lot of fun in the fort exploring the different parts and the ruins. All the people who came with us followed the guide who charged them in vain. Because you can get all the information from the Wikipedia. We dint want to do the same. So we went the other way around. It was fun as no one was there it was only us in that part of the fort. We clicked a few pics then.
Akshay was not ready move he was juss there admiring the beauty if the fort clicking here and there.Akshay the guy in center above.
There was something we discovered there the fort had some of the biggest cannon's in the world.
These are really huge.
Imagine the amount of chaos they might have made.
Now we realized why this fort was never been able to be conquered. These cannon's were present all around the fort. The above were the biggest among all of them probably biggest in the world.
The fort turned out to be a little smaller than we expected. The fort tour was over in couple of hours. We were back to the shore and wondering where to go. The night before the day of the trip one of my colleague at work told me that there was a wonderful beach nearby called Kashid. So it was decided that we would head there next. But when we were on the way to murud to catch the bus to Kashid. The autowala told us its a very dangerous beach the depths are unpredictable and also said that every year lot of people specially youth get lost here. He literally scared the hell out of us. We actually planned to get into the water at Kashid after hearing all this we dint have the dare to get in the water there. The rickshawala told us that the murud beach was a good one to spend time. We decided to check it out. It turned out to be excellent.
The beach turned out to be marvelous the water was shallow. We had to go into the water for almost a mile for the water to reach our necks.. But then we noticed something unusual a sports jeep got into the beach. We thought it was some freak who wanted to brag about his sports jeep. I was surprised when I saw one of the guys who got out of the jeep with a huge bag we were all very curious. Then suddenly I realized it was a parachute, the moment saw the parachute I knew it was for Para gliding. I was very excited and wanted to do it for sure. We approached the guy and all of us could do it at a very reasonable price. It was a great feeling doing it , felt like flying... awesome experience...
The moment we were done with Para gliding we were into the water. It was so relaxing after a hot sunny afternoon. There were nobody else in the water. It was only us in the entire beach we enjoyed playing in the water we fooled through the entire beach. The entire beach stretched around a mile probably.The sunset was the best part out of all. Viewing the sunset sitting in the cold water by the oceans waves was a great feeling. It was a dream come through like feeling :)
We were really exhausted so we decided to stay there for the night at Murud. We managed a reasonable room for all of us to stay. The best part is it was next to the beach.
We had our dinner at a small restaurant nearby then spent sometime at the beach in the cool breeze on th nets tied to the coconut trees near the shore. A nice place to spend time with friends. Finally we dozed of late in the night.
Then woke up around eight next day with bright sunshine. I could hear the sound of the waves and smell the sea. Was a little hungry so had some sandwich and tea. Two of my friends were still asleep so we decided another round into the water. The sea water was so clear and tempting , more than yesterday. Could't wait me ran into the water. After a couple of hours in the water and a brief sunbath. We were back to the room had a quick bath and were ready to head to our next destination. But wait we had a small photo session here.....
There was a wonderful castle at one end of the beach. It was built by some prince and it is still held by someone from the royal family. Its a private castle.
From left to right Brindavan Akshay Vishwajit Me Santhosh.
The top room is the place where we stayed.
Our next destination was Alibag . Its another tourist spot on the coast. By the time we started it was almost lunch. So we decided to have our lunch and then leave. We were on our way to Alibag but then almost after an hour we passed by a wonderful beach there were lots of people there and looked like a perfect place. We were almost gonna miss it then we realized it was Kashid beach the one my colleague was saying about. I dint have a second thought. We all decided we were gonna get down. We asked the conductor to stop he said it was not alibag, poor fellow dint understand us. We had to walk a little to get back to the beach. The beach was a perfect place. The was a small hill on the other side of the beach surrounded by huge trees which made a perfect scenario for a picnic. There were lot off people there. Some had lit fire to cook some were resting under the tree shade. All of us decided to rest for a while. Then o into the beach.
The finally we hit the beach and were amazed to see the crowd. There were so many people . There were some beautiful girls here . We even managed to find some people who played cricket with us. We had a great time playing cricket in the sunset. Then finally we thought its time for us to leave as everyone had to get back to their offices by next day.
After Kashi we headed to Alibag from there we reached Panvel then back to our rooms.
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| Trying to lift the Sun.. |
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| He thinks he can eat the sun..! |
