Murud Janjira Trip

My mood was upbeat about the planned trip to murud beach and janjira fort. as despite 4 and a half years of living in bombay, i have never had a proper hangout at a beach (short trips to - marine drive and juhu chaupati.. which are more about food then water do not count ).. So it was on the top of list of things "To Do - Before graduation from IIT-Bombay".

Anyway being the eternal optimist i am, i slept at 3:30am hoping to get up by a 5:30am alarm to meet with rest of the gang at 5:45am. After stretching the snooze function on my cell phone to its maximum (which i must confess, i almost always do), i finally got up at 6:10 ! and hurried to hostel-8 the pre-deicded rendezvous. We started at 8:30 finally, after a much exasperating waiting for the sumo driver to show up (with pawan reiterating atleast a dozen of times - that he will beat the shit of the travel agent).

The next 4 hours was a front seat drive + iPod music + constant supply of food from the gang behind. I was delighted with the some of the scenes i got to see - women carrying firewood, children coming back from school and a rather unusual villager donning shades sitting “thakur” style on the “belgari”, as if posing for the passer byes.

We reached at the at Jajnira around noon, passing murud and kashid beaches in between.

Here is some historical background about the Janjira Fort - Murud-Janjira is the name of an insular fort and a former principality situated on the coast of the Konkan. The site is presently included in the district of Raigad in Maharashtra, India. The fort was first built by Habshis, African Muslim slaves from Somalia and held it ever since. The fort in it’s presently from is 350 years old, which the guide wrongly informs to be built in 11^th century. This is the only fort in 700+ km coastline of Maharashtra which remained unconquored. With a height of over 90ft above sea and 20 ft strong foundation, it took 22 years to build the fort. Attacked by the Portuguese, the British, Shivaji, Knhoji Angre and Sambhaji, the fort remained unconquored. Sambhaji went ahead and constructed a fort in a nearby island (Padamdurg Fort, now known as Kasa). Janjira is an Arabic word meaning an inland. To reach the fort once has the option to taking a sail boat ride which BTW is awesome.
More information about Janjira can be found at :

1. http://www.murudjanjira.com/

2. History about Murud Janjira - WikiPedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murud-Janjira

3. Murud Janjira Satellite image in Google Maps.

Returning back from the Janjira fort we headed for lunch at a restaurant located at the Murud seaside and took a short sojourn before hitting the beach. Time flied as I had golly of a time battling the seawaves, playing all kind of stupid games from 2 player football, to footer-golf. Soon it was twilight, and it was a spectacular view seeing the sun sinking down into the ocean. We had sumptuous diet at BTC – Vashi on the trip back.

All in all a very successful trip!