Trip to Kashid

Date: 27th and 28th January. 2007

This trip was different in many ways compared to the ones that I have mentioned in my earlier posts. I went for this trip IN a four wheeler with my friends from Thane. So the cast of this story are moi, Gujju, Sumdi and Nairsaab.

This is not the first time that I went out with these guys but this was the first time we drove ourselves since we were able to get our hands on Gujju’s Toyota Qualis. The ball started rolling when Gujju mailed us one day and mentioned that he could get his car for a couple pf days if we were in the mood for a trip. Obviously, all of us jumped onto the idea.

Let me flash back to how I know these guys. I have known Gujju since we were 2 feet tall and Sumdi and Nairsaab became good friends with me in high school. The other three managed to survive 4 years of engineering before they went on to complete the management degrees and get settled into jobs which they don’t care for (how many of us are really lucky in this matter…)

My house was empty around this time since mum was at Kerala so we decided to meet up at my place and sleep over and start on 27th at 6AM. So we had a take out dinner and got into catch-up mode before we retired for the night at 2AM.

The trip started at 6AM and we took the route to Panvel, which right now is in an absolutely horrible state due to the construction work that is going on there. It took us about an hour to reach Panvel where we had breakfast of ‘poha’. This is where I took over the driving. 7 years since I got my license I was going to drive a car for a long distance.
Yipee!!! I drove for the rest of the trip….

The drive from then on was good. It’s so different in a car, you are cooped up in a box going at 80-90 kmph and not feeling a thing. The A/c is on, the music is blasting in the speakers or ther is just simple chatter going on. It’s not like riding a bike, not even close. There is no comparison between the two at all. Even though I still prefer doing trips on my bike, the one thing I have to accept is that this type of travel is less tiring and involves more people than two which is a good thing when you are on a long trip.

Back to the trip…. The road on this stretch is quite good and we were traveling at a decent speed but like always there are villages that hv to be passed and we were stuck at one place for about 30 mins. But the rest of the drive went smoothly. We reached Kashid around 12:30 and after some searching managed to find a place where we rented a small house for the night. We put all our stuff into the room and ran to the beach. This beach is the best one in all the beaches that I have visited in the Konkan region. The sand is white and the water is green. The waves are just right and u can float on it all day if u felt like it. We spent more than an hour frolicking in the water before hunger started ringing bells in our stomach.

Lunch was simple and tasty, just as we like it. In the evening we decided to make a trip to Janjira fort which was about 20kms from where we were staying. We managed to reached the place at 5:30 PM and got one of the last ferries to the fort but after seeing all the crowd waiting to return we chickened out and took the next boat out without even putting foot into the fort…

History has it that Mr. Shivaji himself never managed to conquer the fort, we are mere mortals. So we decided that he must also have faced some such situation himself, if he couldn’t take over this fort. It helped to make up for some of the disappointment.

We watched the sunset from inside the car; actually we missed the sunset since we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way back. Those 5 mins were tough….small road, big car…recipe for disaster. By the time I got the car out of the fix, I was drenched in sweat but I was glad since I managed to do it without once letting the engine die on me. 5 points to me. 

So we managed to see the post sunset scenery when the sky is cooling down after being burnt all day. The red sky indicating the end of another day of our lives, but one that had been very good. We drove back to the room and then went to the beach for a night time stroll. In between sipping cold ‘drinks’ we stumbled upon something which made me even more glad that we had made the trip. As to what that is, pry it out of any one of us if you can.

We had decided to have dinner outside but when we went searching to find a place there wasn’t any 1km on either side of our room. So it was back to the room and thankfully the person there agreed to cook for us. Before and after dinner we spent the time playing UNO, a game that I have come to love. The more the number of people, the better. Dinner was also a simple affair but equally satisfying.

We went to sleep at about 11, tired and satisfied with the day’s endeavours.

The next morning we left at before 6 AM since Gujju had to leave in the evening. I drove the whole way back and we made the return trip in about 3.5 hours. I hit 100 kmph on the Palm beach road in vashi but when u can’t hear the drone of the wind, feel it trying to stop you from going forward, have the engine buzzing under you or your hands shivering on the accelerator, it’s just not the same. But let me mention it for the record. I was so involved in the driving that I never even asked gujju if he wanted a round at it. In my defence, I was expecting him to ask me and thought that he didn’t want to when he didn’t ask 

Somewhere after Panvel we decided to pay KKKs parents a visit. We called up aunty, told her we were coming for breakfast and landed there 20 mins later. Aunty, the awesome cook that she is, made dosa and chutney, omlette and pav, and coffee, all of which was cleaned up in double quick time. Thanks aunty…

Finally, Gujju got the steering wheel and the three of them dropped me off at home. The previous one had been a long day. We had traveled about 350 kms in 27 hours and enjoyed every kilometer of the way and every minute of the day.

It was a new experience for me; driving such a long distance. The most I had driven before was about 20kms to the Mumbai airport. I enjoyed the drive and understood the contrast between riding a bike and driving a car. To each his own…..