I had a short stay at Diveagar from 1-May-08 to 3-May-08.
I, my wife and daughter were in my car and a friend, his wife and son were in their car. We took the route Aundh-Chandani Chowk-Paud-Mulshi-Tamhini-Nijampur-Mangaon-Diveagar. We came back by the same road.
The roads are in good condition from Pune to Paud and partly after Paud. Tamhini ghat has lot of rough patches. The roads are consisting of good and bad stretches till Mangaon. Mangaon to Diveagar is fairly ok.
Diveagar is actually a decent place to go even in Summer though ideal time should be winter(I’ll definitely try to go in winter). Food is not a problem and typical tasty konkan style vegetarian stuff is available almost everywhere. For Sea Food lovers it should be a good place but I can’t comment as I am a vegetarian. Drinking water quality is good. At least typical Indian folks who are not yet spoiled by Aquaguard kind of water should have no trouble! I never bought any bottled water in this place.
Overall, the local people keep their homes very very clean and home made break fast and tea are of good quality, hygiene and taste. It is the outsiders who should maintain the goodness of this place as they have started polluting to some extent due to cola cans, mineral water plastic bottles, cigarettes and wine bottles littered in few places. Even then it is still quite clean beach. It is not much crowded.
Now I’ll come to the bad part of my experience: Prathamesh Holiday Resort
We found name of this resort on the net and found photos fairly ok. We booked by phone and cottage room rates were not ultra expensive nor too cheap(Rs 1200 a night as originally decided - I’ll come to that later). The problem started once we actually checked in.
Cottages or other rooms have no natural ventilation. Biggest surprise was that each cottage had windows just as seen on internet. Unfortunately, the window panes are not movable! So only light and heat can come into the rooms due to the windows but NO AIR! The curtain rods were poorly fitted and just a slight touch can damage them!
Rooms have no intercom. Means for every problem, you have to go to the front desk personally.
Generator back up is present but there is always a lag of about 10 minutes when the electricity goes out and the generator is manually started. Sometimes the lag is more if the person supposed to start generator is not around.
Some of the cottages are so close to the generator that the noise and kerosene smell will very soon irritate any normal person beyond control. Looks like the other guests visiting the spot were having no expectations despite not so low costs! I think when we are paying amounts similar to any American Motel($30-40 a night i.e. Rs 1200-1600 a night) we should be at least somewhat demanding about the service we get if not closer to international standards. It should at least match the best in Diveagar.
When the tube-light, Fan etc work on generator, they are ok but when they work on MSEB power, the light is very dim and fans are so slow that they have no cooling effect on you at all. Lack of natural ventilation adds to misery especially at nights. I had hard time in putting my kid to sleep.
Toilet cleanliness is very low by local standards. Diveagar people have very clean homes. I don’t know how the resort guy keeps his toilets so unclean. Flush tanks don’t work well.
Cable TV clarity was poor most of the time. Some channels were decently visible but the main ones(i.e. sports channels where we wanted to watch cricket, F-1 etc) were bad. Resort owner pushed the responsibility to cable guy.
Worst thing was the amount of persuasion needed to rectify each problem.
Finally while paying the bills, we did confront the hotel owner with all the facts and he had to agree on most points. We got a discount to reduce avg rate from 1200 to 900 per night. It was only a consolation as due to this experience we cut short our trip by one day.
Next time I plan to stay in some local person’s house as a paying guest. This should work much better. Also I’ll avoid summer rush as in Summer everyone gets holidays.