Just reminiscing about my
whimsical attitude during the college days has evoked the idea to write a post
on Ratnagiri, beautiful and very peaceful city located on the Konkan coast.
I am here referring to our
final year as well as final month in the college in Mumbai when we 3 people
planned to go Goa. This was a very secret trip because we don’t want to involve
too many people in our tour. It is because last time, we, group of 8 people
plan to visit Ajanta and Ellora. It was an amazing trip for us for making us
realize the few important points while travelling. It always happens that we
have less time and the places of interest are more and so there is always
conflict of opinions about which place to visit and more the people, more will
be the opinions and also lot of time is wasted in follow ups and calling and
asking people, hey, where are you and so on. Also there are different expectations of
everyone: some are looking for a peaceful trip to beat the stress and relax
away from the monotonous life of Metropolitans and prefer offbeat destinations
nearby while some prefers to visit the temples in the city, some travels just
to click the pictures to update in their social media account, some just drinks
and sleep, may be this is their idea of beating the stress.
Thus, this time, we, 3 people,
secretly planned to visit Goa. As a result, we left the college individually
and met at the Railway station, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Mumbai at 2pm. As it
was a last moment plan, so we were not having reservations, we just brought a
general class ticket and thought will settle the rest with the train TT. We
boarded a train, MATSYAGANDHA EX, which
originates from this station only and scheduled to reach Goa at around 1:30am.
It was not very long journey just 10 hours long. However, in the evening, when
we were interacting with the local people, we decided to break our journey at
Ratnagiri for one day for 2 reasons. We had planned ample of time at Goa, so
there was no problem to stay one day at Ratnagiri and also we thought there
will be nothing much to do in Goa by reaching at one in the night and even the
Hotel will charge extra to rent a room at such an odd hour. (However, 1:00 a.m.
is not the odd time in Goa which I realized later)Also, we got very good
reviews about the place. At around 9.30, the train was about to reach Ratnagiri
when we were still contemplating our decision whether to stop here as we have
already brought the tickets. College days were used to be the days when hobbies
and passions are so many and the money is so little. Finally, we drop off at
Ratnagiri. Railway station was really beautiful and different. Here, we take so
many stairs up to exit; it was situated at a lower altitude than the height of
Ratnagiri. Also, one monument was also build in memory of the people who have
lost their lives while building the one of the longest tunnel in Asia, 6.5km
long located just before the 5 km from Ratnagiri from Mumbai route.
We took the local bus and reach
at around 10:30pm in a city. What shocked us was that most of the restaurants
were closed or on the verge of closing. Initially, we planned first to book the
hotel and then we will go for a dinner but this doesn’t seem to be feasible.
Very confused and time was passing very fast, we only saw 1 small Chinese
restaurant open and decided to fill our stomach there. Highly unsatisfied with
the food, we booked a hotel at around 1:00 a.m. and decided to start early next
day for visiting local places as our train to Goa was at 3:00pm. Next day, we
visited only 3 most prominent places of Ratnagiri due to time
restriction.
I will continue about the 3 posts in my next post which will be more of a pictorial prose.
