A trip down to Dapoli (Ratnagiri, Maharashtra) !

While some of you might be thinking what is this post doing in a food blog, let me tell you a little more of myself. I love travelling. I love exploring new places. And beaches make me calm and bring out the child in me. But my partner in crime, the better half (now the little one too) likes "the travelling" part more, you see like riding the car or sitting in a bus and enjoying the fact that it is moving. 

I know many of you out there are the same. But we somehow have struck a balance and explore some places as much as we can with our little one. So I wanted to write out my experience on our short, long weekend trip to Dapoli in Maharashtra during this Easter. I had been planning to post this for long and somehow it is happening today. Better late than never, right !

The hubby is an expert in google search and finding really good looking places to stay when we embark on any trip (I should give the credit right :)). So a week before our trip he had found this amazing looking home stay (Bangli) in Ladghar, Dapoli. I had not seen the pictures of the homestay. He told me it is walk-able distance from the beach and I was more excited about the beach.

So we started our car ride from Pune on a Saturday morning around 10 - 10.30. And we reached Dapoli around 4 - 4.30 in the evening. We were greeted by our pleasant host Ameya and soon he had his helpers bring us some fresh tender coconut water. Then we checked in the room which was on the first floor of the home stay. It was elegant and very good looking with nice simple interiors and furniture. The wooden finish gave the place a very traditional look as well :) The helpers around there were cleaning the courtyard and smearing cow dung on the courtyard floor. I have heard of this practise before but never seen it. It wards away the mosquitoes and keeps the floor cool.

You can see the cow dung smeared floor here right :)

Ameya and his family grow mangoes and coconuts and many other spices. So the home stay is located in the middle of their very large plot and adjacent to their house. All around you can see coconut trees and spices like all spice, nutmeg, pepper and so on.. And the best part is standing there near the home stay you will never feel that just a 500 metre walk will get you to the Ladghar beach :) Just the roaring sound of the waves may hint at it though ;)

And the impatient me was very much itching to go to the beach and so went straight to the beach after dropping our luggage inside. The most beautiful part of the beach is that there is practically no crowd and I literally mean it. There were a few people and in no way you can call that a crowd and those few people were from the nearby resorts and home stays. And you get that awesome feeling of being in a private beach. Cool na ;)

A walk to the gates of the home stay gives you this view! 

The best part - Almost private beach kinda feel :) :D

So we spent the evening in the beach to my heart's content :) Then we came back and had dinner and signed off for the day.. One thing about this place is that it has very little (for Vodafone) or no (for Airtel) mobile network coverage. So it is that perfect vacation spot which takes you away from the hustles of the city and lets you pamper yourselves without any intervention from the outside world. Your boss can't reach you? Blame it on the network ;)

Sea gulls in action..

And so the next day, we had breakfast and set about to roam the quaint little place. There are beaches, beaches and more beaches for all those interested :) We went to Karde beach which was also very quiet and almost like a private beach and it was around 6 kms from our home stay. We spent some time wading our feet in the waters there. We wanted to cover Murud beach as well and almost went till there. But we had some difficulty in parking the car and also the little one was getting impatient as he hadn't taken the whole beach thing too well. His feet were getting dirty in the sand and he didn't seem to like it much ;)  So we returned back to our resort for lunch.

While we were in Dapoli we had all our meals at our home stay itself. One thing is there were more of resorts only nearby and no hotels as such. But the primary reason was that the food at Bangli was awesome. Tasty Konkan cuisine and that too homemade. So it was very light on our tummy and lip smacking good.. We had the Konkan style prawn gravy, semolina crusted Bangda (mackerel) fish fry, aloo methi and fresh curd (from their farm). Even the breakfast with poha and thalipeeth and the fresh fruits from their farm was so simple and extremely delicious. While we were about to leave from there, then only I realised I had not clicked any pics of the food that we had. Since there was no network connection I had not bothered to take the phone with me always ;)

A Sunday afternoon siesta after that yummy meal is mandatory, right. So we took a nap and then in the evening had some fresh Aam ka panna and Aamras. All made from the mangoes in their farm. And then Ameya took us for a small tour of their farm showing us the mango orchard, sapota trees, all the spices and such. And he also told that there were some temples nearby (Keshavraj & Kadyvarcha Ganapati temple) that we could visit if interested.

Then we again paid a visit to the Ladghar beach. Not everyday you get a beach to your own right. So we made full use of it :D There were parasailing and horse and camel riding and all that happening in the beach. But we just took a ride in the ATV (all terrain vehicle) alone :) And we saw a car riding through the beach in all that filmy style ;) See the perks of a crowd free beach :D

These beaches are also home to Olive ridley turtles but we were not that lucky to see them nor they hatching the eggs. Our host told that it was that season but we didn't get that lucky. But what we did see were some dolphins in the Ladghar beach. Yes, the next day morning around 8 'o clock, we went on a Dolphin safari (costs 200 bucks per person). We saw quite a number of dolphins during our safari which was close to 30 minutes. But they did not porpoise ;) And that was ok, coz I saw quite a number of them and was contented with that :D

Once the safari was over, we went back and had breakfast. Then we packed our bags and said goodbye to our dear host Ameya and started back to our nest :) We visited around the end of March and the mango season was just starting. If we had gone during the peak season we would have go t 2 kgs of those Alphonso mangoes from their farm as complementary :) But we did bring some farm fresh pepper and spices back with us :)

And so, that was one quiet and tranquil vacation that I had been to in quite a while. There are many more beaches and some temples and caves to visit there in Dapoli. But we were not on a checklist and were quite relaxed with our stay at the home stay. So if you stay in Pune or around and are looking for such a vacation then do include Dapoli in your list coz you will not be disappointed :) Hope you enjoyed reading my experience. Until I come back with another vacation or outing details!

Cheers,
Chitz