The media used by TheBlueDrive blog is created by us and not copied from elsewhere. Therefore, we have not used any maps etc. which would have been helpful in understanding the progression. Without compromising on this principle, I can show you a map because it is a photograph taken by me. Human beings go to any extent to justify their own actions.

In the last post (no. 52) we have reached the beautiful beach of Shriwardhan. In keeping with the Charter of TheBlueDrive, we should have crossed from Agardanda to Dighi and then driven to Shriwardhan. Now that this is a violation of the Charter, we need to make amends and cover the omitted area.

The starting point is Dighi.

Dighi is a privately managed port with facilities for storage of liquid cargo. The Rajpuri creek looks beautiful from here and one can also see in it’s entirety the Murud Janjira fort. Apart from the port it has several other landing facilities one of which was used in 1993 by Dawoodbhai and his associates for landing RDX which was used for 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.

On the way back we come across this Picture Postcard village. It is called Aadgaon.  The fishing boats have returned and an auction is in progress.

 

We buy these fishes and prawns. It is about 2 Kgs and we are going to have them for the lunch.

But how? There are no restaurants here. We find this small roadside place and the owner agrees to cook the fish for us and also provide us some rice and curry.

We are grateful to the family of Navanath for the delicious meal with very fresh fish.. His wife refuses to be photographed.

We proceed towards the next village, Diveagar or  Dive Aagar but on the way we come across these migratory birds. We could identify 4 different species of Gulls in adiition to some waders.

The whole area is exquisitely beautiful.

Between the hills which are the foothills of Sahyadri range, there is very little land between the hills and the sea. Therefore there is hardly any agriculture. However the people do grow something within the land available.

This is the ’til’, Sesame seeds. They are being dried on the roadside. The whole plant is uprooted and dried and then the pods are separated.

This flower grows wild in the area.

Diveagar itself has along beach and lot of facilities for tourist. It also has a famous temple of Suvarna Ganesh Mandir. It had attained fame after the original gold idol was subject matter of an armed robbery.

We return to Shriwardhan for the night halt. We start in the morning and visit the memorial to Balaji Vishwanath, the 1st Peshwa.

And then proceed to Harihareshwar where the family deity of the Peshwas is located.

We did not find anything interesting at Harihareshwar. It has two beaches and a lot of people visit the place for religious and leisure purposes.

We proceed to Bagmandla, the last place in Raigadh district to cross the ferry into  Ratnagiri district.

In the ferry we find this motorcycle with this message. Tu 13 Dekh, loosely translated means ‘mind your own business’.

Text : Suryakiran Naik

Photographs : Suryakiran Naik & Veena Naik.