Saturday, July 27, 2013

How Ratnagiri at Konkan coast Happened? -Part 1



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. 

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