Spoiler alert, the best day so far, as far as the ride was concerned..

Slept in till 8 today, started my morning walk.. had a good breakfast of bread and eggs with coffee and headed out. Today’s destination was a home stay at anjarle beach and I had plenty of time, being a 160km ride only.

So decided to go via aamby valley city. Once I left the city area, the mountain climb started. It was still cool out, and the bike was doing great, chugging along effortlessly. Reached lions point, a place where you can savour amazing views of the breathtaking valley below. Plus a Maggi stall, so had that, took a few pictures and headed back to the road again. Reached aamby valley city but wasn’t allowed in, being a restricted area, took some detours and again reached a dead end. So traced back my route finally and got on track.

After crossing aamby valley, the next 100 or so kms was the finest countryside I’ve ever seen. Tiny winding roads between trees and colorful grass.. ranging from green to yellow to golden to brown. Not a soul in sight for miles around, but the landscape had something warm and inviting about it. The road condition was “between poor and very poor” but I wasn’t bothered and neither was the bike. Every now and then, I was greeted by a clump of thick dense tree cover causing it to be dark on the road , and a few metres after it was wide open country grass again.

There was hardly any cellphone coverage since morning and the only anxiety was what to do if something happened to the bike and I get stranded. Thankfully nothing happened and I moved on, taking in every moment and riding slower than ever.

Finally hit the main road and I still had a long way to go.. with the tracing back from aamby valley twice, I had lost a lot of time and it was time to speed up. No network until now, even in the big towns that came along my way..

Reached bagmandale, a small town where I was to board a ferry along with my bike ! Very thrilling. Pity though, that it leaves only once every hour and I had missed the last one by ten minutes, so waited another 50 minutes to board the next one. Nothing fancy  , but it had room for 6 cars, 100 passengers and about 20 bikes.

Took all but 10 minutes to cross that lagoon, and once I reached the other side, I had another confusion to deal with.. the locals said anjarle beach was in one direction and Google maps said the other way round. Now this was an offline copy of my map, since there was no network, and I decided to go with what the locals said. Saved me 30kms of round about by doing that. Took me another hour to reach my destination, a supee small fishing village with a population of 1600 people, a total of 3 shops – fish, provisions and an std/isd phone booth.

Once I was there all I had to do was ask one of the local stores about where Mr. Prabhakar’s house was and they guided me there. Turns out he was waiting for my call and had almost given up on me coming … But well there was little I could do, with no network anywhere.
Retired gentleman from mumbai who lived in bombay for about 36 years, and now runs a gym imna town nearby. One of those ‘non-steroid’ body builders from those times. Was a winner of many competitions back in the 70’s. Pretty active chap and can still pass off as a 35 year old.

Was shown to my room where I was greeted by a kitten called kitu, 2 month old. Naughty little thing, generally excited about life.. curious about every thing, and has a thing for anything ropey.. my shoelaces, phone cables, my torch cable.. basically anything that looks like a thread and moves when you touch it. He hung from my charger cable while I was charging the phone..and weighing half of my cellphone weight, this guy was having a fun Disneyland trip on my bed, chasing the cable, trying to chew it, trying to attack it while rolling over – Rambo style, trying to approach it in stealth mode.. Going in front of the mirror every now and then .. trying to claw his own reflection, and freaking out.. but going again nevertheless.. it was all very very amusing. Finally he got bored and just ran away as if he remembered he had to go somewhere. (Sorry April, I did not really mean to say nice things about kitu… you are still the best ‘puppy-person’ in the world !!)

There was still no network and Mr. Prabhakar politely offered to take me to a place where there was coverage. After walking 2kms on the beach – the backyard of this place, I finally found some signal – enough to call family and let them know I’ve reached and will not have any network until morning.

The hosts are a very warm elderly couple and were chatting with me, telling me about the place and how they came up with the concept etc. Their place is called “todankar beach homestay, anjarle”. And I’m paying them only 500 bucks to stay here. It’s a proper village experience too.

Dinner was ready by 830, a delicious fried white pomfret along with fish flavored curry, rice and chapatis made of rice flour. Simple, elegant, amazingly tasty and very filling.

Once dinner was done, he chatted with me for some more time. I left the dinner table and literally crashed into bed at 930pm.. am falling asleep instantly. Will head to the beach the moment I wake up. It does take a few minutes to reach the water but as soon as you go out the back door of my room, you are already walking on beach sand. Like Goa, minus the hustle or the noise or the crowd plus all the cleanliness, the isolation and the serenity..

This is life!