MURUD JANJIRA
Why Murud-Janjira?
We wanted to take 4 days vacation to place which is near to Mumbai, easy to drive, & less costly. Murud-janjira met this entire requirement perfectly.
Getting there:
Murud is exactly 165 km from Mira road. The route being – Mira road-Thane-Wadkhal-Alibaug-revdanda-murud.
We started our journey at 7:30 on Thursday and in precisely 2 hours and 35 minute and reached our first stop wadkhal for breakfast in Sai Leela.
After the delicious breakfast of bhaji puri and missal pav and tea.
The journey from here on is smooth relaxing and enjoyable. For while you are amaze by coastline of revdanda on 2-3 occasion you crawl through narrow village road first nagoan, revdanda, nadgoan. It is indeed a pleasure to obverse the spacious dwellings, rickety yet well stocked kirana shops and the pace of life as people go about their daily existence in these places.
Having taken in the sights and sounds of our journey we drove into Aman palace.
Stay:
We had booked ourselves at the Aman palace lodge. However it is the only resort that is right on the beach. The other close contender like sandpipers and sea shells don’t even come close to this place. Room charge were 3000/-per room. We booked two rooms and were extremely comfortable and cozy. Especially since it was one of the rooms with best view of the beach.
Eat:
For lunch we went to patil khanaval and there were many more restaurant we visited they are anand vatika , hotel sea face, hotel vinayak, hotel shore line , hotel samadhan, hotel raigad. We had breakfast of poha, missal pav from hotel raigad and hotel samadhan and it was really delicious. We had lunch at patil khanaval, a popular thali fish it was very good. Fishes are the specialty of kokan place. We had surmai, pomfret and yummy prawns.
Place to see:
Janjira fort is the obvious must see here. After all, this fort is the janjira in murud- janjira. The rest of the town is simply murud. The word janjira comes from the Arabic word jazeera which means an island and since the fort is built on an island, such is its name.
The fort has to be reached via sail boats which charge either Rs 20 per seat or 600/- for a private boat of 4-6 people. The catch in the rs 20/- boat is that it does not leave for the fort until at least 20 people or so have gathered and it come back from the fort after 40-45 minutes meaning which, you have to finish seeing the fort in that much time or you miss your boat.
After a meal at patils, we headed for idhgah /sunset point as recommended to us by fellow hotel staff. This was a kilometer from our resort and provided a panoramic view of the entire village town, sea and both the fort janijira and kasa/padmadurga. And we enjoyed a lot at beaches in morning and evening. Horse cart ride was great at sunset time. We also had parchute ride which awesome one of the best thing we did in murud although it was expensive but it worth when you up in the sky.
Finally:
Murud- janjira by itself should not take more than 2 nights and 3 days of stay wherein you laze under the sun on beach on the day you reach. In the evening you can walk around and chat with locals or explore the market and take essence of the village.
Day 2 can be your visit to the fort, meal at patils and trip to sunset point wherein the evening is occupied by some board games with background music of sea play along. Dinner at anand vatika.
Finally the last day can start on the beach at 8:00 am wherein you can swim roll and swim in the beach till 9:30 am and then shower and leave for Mumbai by 11 refreshed and rejuvenated for the life in the city.