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The next morning, after a lovely breakfast of pohe, we left to go to see the famous fort of Janjira. We drove upto a small village of Dighi and took a boat to Rajpuri.
From Rajpuri we had to take a small sail boat to the fort of Janjira. There were about 30 of us in this small dingy sailboat. As we set sail, the boat swayed big time due to the huge waves. Damn, I thought it would topple any moment and history of the incident in Bhugaon would repeat itself with a more intense flavor. The boatman tried to calm us by saying that it was always rocky initially and then it calms down as we head out into the sea. As we reached the gates of this magnificent fort, a thought came across my mind. How do we get ashore? I didn’t see any ramp or pier kinda thing. As I was speculating on how to get ashore, our boatman jumped onto one of the steps with a rope and held the boat from drifting away. One of his assistants helped everyone off the boat by requesting them to jump onto one of the steps. Venumaushi nearly had
Boat Ride to Janjira Fort
This reminded me of the movie Swades to be carried off the boat.
Our boatman also turned out to be our official tour guide. Versatile professions, I must say. Based on some input from our tour guide and some history I read along the way, I shall give you readers some brief on the Janjira fort.
Janjira is derived from the Arabic word Jazeera which means Island. This amazing fort became famous due to the fact that it was impregnable. The Siddis managed to fight off the Marathas, the British and the Portuguese.
According to an encyclopedia; the term Siddi is an expression of respectful address commonly used in North Africa. The ruler of the Habshi state of Murud-Janjira was known as the Siddi. The Siddis or Sayyids refers to the descendants of Prophet Muhammed that were integrated into cushtic people and occupied in particular the Somaliland coast.
Now let us proceed to see this fantastic fort…First we were shown the ‘dargah’ of Pir Panchayatan. As we proceeded the guide told us about the carving at the entrance of the fort which was also seen on the coins during the Siddi regime. Imprinted on stone is the carving of a tiger with six elephants. After taking
some photos, I rejoined the group who were listening intently to the tour guide describing the cannons. I managed to get some more interesting shots from here. As we were walking around seeing some other rooms like the granary, ammunition room we approached the grandeur of what is Janjira. It was suppose to be a fresh water lake. But the word fresh is an understatement in today’s view. The water was green, mossy and full of empty plastic bottles. According to the guide, the government has spent about 5 lakh rupees in constructing restrooms at the Fort which uses recycled water from this lake. Whew, am I glad I didn’t use the restroom.
Overlooking the lake was the durbar hall where the Nawab is said to have had his political meetings. In the times of its era the durbar hall was a five-storey structure but now all that stood was a dilapidated three-storey exterior stone walls with creepers grown on them.
I decided to wander around and take some photographs. After taking some interesting photographs I noticed that our 'fast track' tour guide had vanished along with my fellow boat members and family. Holy crap, I panicked and darted to
the main entrance to see that nearly everyone was already aboard the small dingy boat. I let out a sigh of relief… Goodness... I definitely didn’t wanna get stranded with no food and a restroom with recycled green water.
We made a very un-interesting ride back to the Rajpuri. While waiting for the next boat to take us back to Dighi, we spotted a stall selling tender coconut water. Wow, I had not had that stuff in ages. its the best thing to have in the summers. We all had one each and just as i planned to have another, our boat to Dighi arrived. Shortly we were back at our cottages. After having some sumptuous lunch we retired to our cottages and rested.
In the afternoon while we were having coffee and snacks we heard a crashing sound in the adjoining plantations. I went to investigate and found that Umesh, the maintenance guy at the cottages had cut down a bunch of Bananas. i love bananas as much as i love the Ukadiche Modak but unfortunately since they were all raw, i could not eat any.. 😞 Ah well. I went back to eating the biscuits.
After
a while mom and Venumaushi decided to go for a stroll. Their stroll had an objective. They wanted to go and do some local shopping. The word shopping stopped me and i decided to stay back at the cottage and listen to songs of Sufjan Stevens and Yael Naim my Ipod. An hour later they returned with couple of small plastic bags containing papad and Ambe Saath (dried Mango Pulp). The could not stop talking about this place they went to. Some Bapat's house where they were drying the Papad outside and how beautiful the house looked etc etc etc. Okay, when it comes to shopping or anything related to it, I have selective hearing.
Later in the evening all of us went for a walk on the beach. It was a sight of immaculate beauty with an extensive quiet stretch of shimmering sands fringed by coconut trees. There is no other sound except for the waves crashing on the shore and a refreshing sea breeze which was constantly blowing. The tranquility of this lovely seaside made me just want to stay there for a month. But reality check………………..
Mom and Venumaushi decided to sit on the sands and
relax while I went into the waters. After taking some pictures of the sunset, all of us went back to cottages with the soft lapping of the waves on the shores still echoing in our ears, had another wholesome dinner and went to sleep. Our trip was going to come to an end as the next day we would be heading back to Pune. I was feeling a bit sad to leave this paradise unaware that mom had planned to stop at Raigard on the way back.
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