Travel Thursday : Kashid and Murud Janjira

Its been a while since we have visited these beautiful places around Pune,Kashid beach and Murud Janjira fort.

Kashid is little known place in Konkan region of Maharashtra but due to its proximity, slowly getting popular amongst Mumbai and Pune crowd as a perfect weekend destination.

We started at 7am on Saturday morning for Kashid by private vehicle.Kashid is around 170-180 km from Pune via express way to Mumbai.We undertook  the Pune-Mumbai expressway route..which is the fastest and beautiful as well 🙂

Route :  Pune -> Express way to Mumbai (ask them for Khopoli exit, as you will pay lesser toll money) -> Keep cruising along the expressway till the Ghats -> In the Ghats, locate the Khopoli exit (it comes after the second tunnel) -> Reach Khopoli and from there take the road to Pen (may be marked as Alibaug as well) -> Once in Pen, pass through the town to reach Mumbai – Goa highway -> Keep moving towards Alibaug -> around 1-2 km before Alibaug, take a left on the highway, to a road for Murud or Revdanda -> From there, keep following the road towards Murud at every intersection -> Around 35-37 km after Alibaug (approx 20 km before Murud) you will reach Kashid.

Kashid is a small beautiful beach town resides on Arabian sea-shore. I liked the simplicity of this place a lot. It is less commercial and very well maintained place.

Kashid has 3km stretch of beautiful beach. The first thing you will notice about this beach is, its remarkable white sand and the blue sea 😀 Yes, more or less like what you see in those foren locations in Bollywood movies 😉

If you are planning overnight stay in Kashid you should make prior enquiries and bookings of the resorts/motels available there. Private accommodations like big old houses converted in resorts are also available for booking.

After spending whole day playing,roaming on beach and witnessing most beautiful sunset, we returned back to the resort..which was gearing up for the bonfire and some tandoori food festival.

The night was full of enthusiasm, resort staff was very cooperative and polite every need was taken care promptly and with utmost attention.

Next day in our plan was dedicated to the fort Murud Janjira, which is around 20-25km from Kashid. The coastal journey was really beautiful but roads in the area are really narrow. Murud is basically an old town primarily dominated by fishermen.Janjira fort is famous for being the only fort along India’s western coast that remained undefeated despite Maratha, Dutch and English East India Company attacks.

 To reach Janjira fort we took passenger sailboat from Rajpuri port. This sailboats are available from Murud port as well. As we go nearer we realised the highness of the fort.

The fort is spread over an area of 22 acres its entrance is East facing. Mahadwar(Grand entrance) takes you to the place where cannons are kept. There are 19 towers and number of turrets in the fort. Every tower has a huge cannon kept which are still intact in spite of the fact that they are so many year old.

There are 2 water tank inside the fort and a deep well with cold and sweet water. It is wonder of nature that in the maddest of the saline sea still provides pure water to quench of the thirsty visitor.

It takes almost 3 to 4 hrs time to visit whole fort and observe the beauty of  surrounding Arabian Sea. Return ferry to the port was even pleasant in the evening..and ad on was the Sunset 🙂

P.S. My First entry under the Travel Thursday Category 😀 😀 😀