The elusive "Road by the Sea" -- Murud Drive

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Writeup courtesy Dharam. For all your bouquets/bricks & publishing deals, please email dharam@whatever.com ;-)

P.S. - I've added a few "words" in green to mention the names of a few places/people I know.
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Me (Dharam) and my friends (Me) had only heard about the Road by the Sea on the Konkan coast and were very excited to make that discovery ourselves…
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Our first attempt was in Jan’07 when we went on bikes from Pune on a 3 day long weekend trip. Our target was to go to Goa through the Road by the Sea coastal route but we only had vague information on this route. Because of this and also because of some bike problems, we ended up in Malwan, which is the southern most tip of Konkan in Maharashtra. Malwan has a beautiful beach, which is not yet commercialized and the Malwani seafood is fantastic…
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This time around it was also to experience the early monsoons in the Konkan before it became worse. We had maps of detailed Raigad and Ratnagiri districts which gave a good idea of the road by the sea and not to mention the exact place having been divulged by Ashvin, a fellow biker who's pics inspired us to go and find this road.

Onward
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Pune- Paud (25) – Mulshi – Junction near Vile (87) – Goa Highway,NH17 (108) – Left turn at Kolad (109) – Roha (122) – Vikram Ispat, Salav (156) – Revadanda Bridge Post (157)

Stopovers
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Korlem (lighthouse)
---------------> The road lies here <------------------
Kashid (beach)
Murud (fort & ugly beach)

Return
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Murud – RajPuri – Bhalgaon – Roha – Kolad – Mahad – Bhor (via the awsome Varanda ghat)– NH4 to Pune
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We started from Pune around 10 am and it almost took an hour to get out the city onto the Paud Road. From there on it is one straight long drive through Mulshi to Kolad through the Tahmini Ghats. You will see the Mulshi lake for a long time as you drive along. It was almost empty this time around in early June but will be full after the monsoons... Some stretches of this leg the trip have bad and uneven roads and there are a few sharp curves on the Tahmini Ghats… There are no gas stations or even eating places… Other than that nothing to worry about…There’s a T-junction that you get after the ghats towards Kolad and other towards Mangaon. We took the Kolad route. The last few kilometers to Kolad have very good roads.
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From Kolad you have to go to Roha, which is only 20 kms away and then on to Revadanda, which is 20 kms away from Alibaugh. Though we were told that the road by the sea starts from Revadanda, that is not exactly true. It is immediately after Revadanda and after crossing the bridge…. (We took the bridge to get into Revdanda remember. We need to skip the bridge and continue towards murud)

Luckily for us, our other desire of firsthand experiencing the first monsoon showers in the Konkan also came true as it started raining in Revadanda.
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Our first stop on this road by the sea was in Korlem. Nothing great about this village as such but it has a lighthouse and again nothing great about this lighthouse but there is a narrow mud road to drive up to the lighthouse. It is an adventurous drive for 2-3 kms as it is so damn close to the sea and it is so narrow. We were wondering whether we will be able to turn back the car and also what if there was another car on this road… but alas it was not to be !
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Back from Korlem village, we hit back the road by the sea. Our next stop was at Kashid. The sea is just a few meters away from the road.. Kashid is turning out to be a popular spot as seen from the number of people who were there… Good timepass with lots of hammocks and hot snacks to gobble up… and of course the beach…

From Kashid, we continued on the road by the sea and were on our way to Murud. On the way we stopped to look at a old palace/fort. Murud is a tourist place and has many options for accommodation, but booking in advance is good.
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We found an accommodation which was on top of a small hill and the view from here of the sea below was magnificent.

We started in the morning and it was raining heavily. We had freshly made tea at a tapri in the rain. We wanted to visit the Murud Fort, but due to the rain, the jetties were not operational. We only had to do with viewing it from the road in the rain and it was all cloudy…
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From Murud, we continued on the road by the sea through the towns of Rajpuri and Bhalgaon to hit Roha. That was the end of the “Road by the Sea” for this trip atleast.

From Roha, we came back to Kolad. Since we wanted to take a different route for the return, we headed towards Mahad. From there we took the Shaniwadi ??? and Bhor route.

Driving in the Bhor (Varanda) ghat was exciting as it had many hair pin curves and it was such a longggg drive. The ghats never seemed to end… nevertheless our hearts were pounding faster when whenever we saw a truck or bus (which looked like speck from such a distance) very high in the ghats above and we realizing that even we have to climb to such heights…
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The ghats take you to Bhor town at the NH4 junction and from there on to Pune.

So this was just the start of our discovery of the “Road by the Sea” on the Konkan coast. As a bonus we also did this in the rains, which made the trip more exciting and memorable. We have only covered north Konkan. But there’s more “Road by the Sea” in central Konkan and south Konkan through Shivardhan, Harihareshwar, Guhagar, Hedevi, Ganapatipule and all the way down to Malwan. That’s for another adventure…
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