Weekend in Murud

For all of you who missed me and were trying to trace me this weekend( i.e. Satya, from whom I had borrowed 500 bucks and promised to return it in the weekend, the telemarketing guys from Hutch-Orange), I had been to Murud-Janjira for a weekend trip.

Well, it was loads of fun. We were around 20 of us on bikes. Yes, bikes!!!...all the way from mumbai. We all met at 5:00 on saturday morning near matunga. I was riding my Yamaha 800cc imported japanese bike...(haha..kidding..I don't have a bike.)..I was riding pillion with Sanjoy who must have been a tortoise in his 'pichla Janam'.'Slow and steady wins the race' is his motto. Well, slow and steady we definitely were, but, we never won the race. Actually, when we started riding, and the milkman on his bicycle zipped past us, the thought that we might reach our destination when the rest of the gang is ready to return back crossed my mind. Well, you can't blame Sanjoy, he was a tortoise in his last life, u know.

Well, anyways, we were on our way, and until Sanjoy didn't confuse an oncoming truck with a petrol pump and drive straight into it, I was fine. Well, that's what I thought, until sanjoy, at an intersection took the wrong road and drove right onto the pune expressway. For the dummies, The expressway is only for cars and has a minimum speed limit of 60 kmph. As we rode on, we started feeling that something's wrong when cars started zipping past us and people in the cars pointing and laughing at us. We stopped and called Martin .
Now let me tell you something about Martin. Martin is a bike freak who thinks driving below 60 kmph is sin. He fills 'Speed' fuel in his bike and drives like he has to justify it. He knows all the roads that leads to anywhere, and thinks that anyone who doesn't know his roads well is an f****** idiot.

And that's excatly what he told us when we called him. Now we had to go back down the expressway and on the wrong side of the road!!!. I was praying all the time that we aren't hit by a sleepy driver who seeing us, would have thought that it was a halucination that he was seeing a bike on the expressway comming towards him, and tried to drive right through the alucination to prove to himself that it was a halucination.

Well, nothing like that happened, and we were back on the correct road. I was feeling very positive and happy riding on towards the sunrise and wanted to shout "yoooohooooo" at the top of my voice, but considering the speed at which Sanjoy was riding (12.5 kmph) it didn't seem appropriate. Villagers overtaking us on their bullock - carts would have though I was crazy.
(I am hoping Sanjoy doesn't read my blog).

Well, anyways, we reached Murud at noon after a couple of stops in between. The 25-30 kms of road from Alibaug to Murud was breathtaking. We were on a mountanious road, where we could see the sea and white sandy beaches below us. Believe me, I could drive all the way back to that road (even with Sanjoy) just for that single view. We finally reached our hotel dumped our bags, had a quick shower and went out to lunch.

After lunch, we rode another 1.5 kms to a jetty point where a boat would take us to the Janjira fort. Sanjoy(being the lazy tortoise that he is) and Aatsi preferred to stay back in the hotel. Janjira is an old fort in the middle of the sea which can be accessed only during a low tide. A guide took us around the fort showing us points like... where the King used to hold his court, the storage area where weapons and ammunition were stocked, the watchpoints where soldiers used to keep watch over the sea for enemy ships. We also came across a 'surang' which goes right under the ocean into a shoreside village..Wow!! We also saw cannons which had firing ranges of 2.5 to 4 kms. 4 kms!!!! can you believe that??? Our hotel in Murud even wasn't that
far!!. Just a fleeting though crossed my mind that if these cannons were working, I could have fired it and surprised Sanjoy sleeping in the hotel room. But I quickly erased these thoughts from my mind before anybody caught a glimpse of the wicked smile on my face.
According to the guide, around 500 families lived in that fort which was around 20 hectares in area. There was a small school, a mosque, 1 sweet water lake, 2 wells in that fort. Imagine all this in the middle of the ocean!!!.
I came back thinking how damn smart those guys must have been.

Evening came and we headed for the beach. We took along with us a football, a cricket bat, cricket ball and stumps to the beach, all borrowed from the hotel. At this point we would never have known that we would forget the football back on the beach and have to pay 400 bucks for it....if only we could see into the future. Me, Ivan and Nishant kicked the football around for some time and then got bored and headed for the water (actually our feet were all red from kicking the football and it was hurting like hell...but nobody was ready to accept it).

Swimming in the sea waves at sunset with the orange sun about to dive into the ocean is something that I cannot explain. You gotta do it and see it to know it. The sight of the sun setting was so beautiful and overpowering that I forgot about swimming for a while and just stared until a wave came and took me under and I came up with a mouthful of sea water and my eyes as red as the setting sun.... A thought crossed my mind that I should come down and settle here in Murud (a couple of beers I had had during lunch was also helping me with this thought process). By this time, I had half swimmed-half waded into the sea where the water was reaching till my chin and I could hear my friends back at the shore shouting and waving at me.

Having seen similar sequences on AXN shows, I thought those guys were warning me about a shark until I realised that I wasn't a hot looking guy on an AXN show(who generally get attacked by sharks) and there aren't any sharks in this part of the ocean (Damn those beers and damn those shows on AXN).

Back at the beach, we used the cricket stumps to write our names on the wet sand. We also wrote some pretty nasty stuff about people we don't like (beer helping here again).

It was dark when we reached our hotel rooms and had a shower again. The bathroom floor after the shower looked like we brought half the sand from the beach with us. Went out for dinner (i.e lots of vodka and some chicken starters to go with the drink) and went back to the beach again for a walk. Was feeling really 'nice' now. Realised everybody was feeling the same when my friend sunny came to me and said 'I love kingfisher strong'.
Came back to the hotel, where some of the guys had already crashed, and some of us(me, Nitin, Aatsi and Sanjoy) went to the hotel terrace and sat there talking and watching through the tress the white waves hit the beach. Aatsi kept checking whether the guys walking on the road below had shadows or not, as she believes that ghosts dont have shadows.

This trip was getting to be really good. Was enjoying every moment of it. And to think that I had actually refused to go when the idea had initially come up.

Finally crashed at 2:00 and woke up at 9:00 around the next morning. Breakfast at 10:00 and ready for our ride back at 11:00. Stopped at another beach on the way back and spent some time there. Somebody came up with the idea that we should take our bikes onto the beach. Ashish was the first and his bike got stuck in the sand. Had to be pulled out by 5 of us.

We decided that on the way back, we wouldn't ride all the way back but take a ferry ride back to Mumbai. So we rode fast and furious(except sanjoy) to the jetty point which was 1.5 hours away. Our bikes were hauled onto the ferry and we were on our way back to mumbai. Sea-gulls (around 50 of them) follwed ourferry and as people threw biscuits and stuff at them, caught

them in mid-air. Quite a sight. Reached Bombay by 5:00 in the evening. We all said our goodbyes and as Sanjoy had promised to drop me at Kurla Stn, we headed towards kurla. Felt fuckall when we hit the streets of mumbai and we were hit by all the traffic, smoke and noise, not to mention the traffic signals stopping us every 2 mins. Reached kurla and caught a train to ambernath.

It was great fun while it lasted and I am looking forward to doing it more often.
Well..All I can say is.....What a 'trip'!!!