Destination : Murud
Gang : Chakro, Maini, Kulki & Asif
Date : Oct 2/3 (yea! dry day the first, but we had our stock)
After multiple deliberations, we chose to head out to the Golden Swan resort by the beach in Murud. It was a big effort to wake up on time Saturday morning for an early departure. The bags carried by Chakro and Maini took us by shock. Somewhere I suspected they thought it was a weeklong trip. Was promptly reminded a one week trip would require more luggage!
Nevertheless, we took off in the i20 with Kesha and David Guetta setting the mood. The onward journey was marked with heavy traffic, missed roads, an unintentional tour of the JNPT (yea the containers are massive!) and twisted roads inside villages before we got on to the right highway. The experience so flustering, we kept confirming the route at every town while we entered the Raigad region. The roads got narrower and the vehicles got more aggressive. One Scorpio behind, honked the hell out of us like they were getting late for a Gang war in the town! Straight out of a Priyadarshan movie scene I say!. Asif managed to scare an old man elsewhere, shouting "bhaisaab bhaisaab" asking directions in his south indian rapid style ; it almost sounded "peshaab peshaab", to which the old man hurriedly pointed in some random direction!
We finally hit Murud by late noon and immediately hogged on the buffet spread. Decent place, okayish food, an almost private beach. not bad we thought!
It was beach time! The best part of the evening was spent inventing a game similar to volleyball with just 3 players. We chose to call it the "Mercedes Ball" since the court we drew(invention again) was in the shape of the Merc symbol. It truly was simple and awesome. I think we should make it official and write a rule book! The beach was surprisingly shallow. Close to 50 mts into the sea and water was still around knee level.
As the sun set, we kicked in with our drinks discussing Indian economy, labour problems, logistics business, Arundhati Roy, Chidambaram and Chinnai( yea - thats what Maini and apparently all Punjabi's pronounce Chennai). Put together 4 MBAs and what do you expect!
Sunday morning was welcomed with awesome Poha at breakfast. We checked out and headed to the Janjira Qila, a fort standing for close to 10 centuries in the sea now. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murud-Janjira . It is truly an overwhelming place, the trip all the more spiced up with some Munna'bhai style guide. The depth of Indian heritage continues to startle me and I only wonder why the government is doing nothing to promote this awesome destination. Public private partnerships can do wonders to these places.
T'was time to head back to Mumbai. The return was fairly quite with occasional discussions of extreme weird villain names in Bollywood.
All in all a weekend well spent! (I'm discounting the Sunday night which was ruined by a pathetic movie titled Anjaana-Anjaani)!
