This is my second trip to Diveagar. First was in April 09 and this one Feb’10. Both the time I traveled in my own car with y wife & kid taking the usual route Chandani chowk Diveagar. It took under 4Hrs to me to reach the destination with 2 breaks of 10 mins. The road is more or less good with some bad patches in between.
In my first visit, I stayed at "Anandyatri". I willsay it is best place to Stay in Diveagar with clean and Calm environment of typical "vadi" . It’s a place with very basic amenities hot water in room , clean and safe. Best thing is , there is no TV or internet and one can enjoy nature to full extent. There is no AC & one doesn’t even need that even in month of May. The breeze coming from the ocean is cool and nice. The food they provide is awesome. I am big time foodie & never had such a typical Konkani food anywhere else. Only drawback of this place is , you need to book well in advance, like a month of two (specially for weekends).
This time I was unlucky to get bookings at Anandyarti and tried many home-based accommodations but all were full. This trip was planned on a short (4 day) notice. finally, I got booking at Mauli Resorts for a special non ac room. The room was good and very big, with big TV + DTH connection (which I avoid at such places). The resort is OK , not typical Konkani style , no wadi and they charged a lot. It’s not up to the standard of a Rs.2000/- room. It depends on everyone’s preference and taste but, personally I didn’t like that accommodation.
The beach is very Pristine and calm. The sand is very fine and I feel very safe to go in waters. We enjoyed almost 3 hrs playing in the sea water and making sand castles till sunset. The sunset at the beach is awesome, the colors you get to see in the sky are very vibrant shades of orange , red , purple and very beautiful. One need to be there on the beach for 30-45 mins after sunset to see the colors in Sky. Although it was a weekend , but I didn’t realize much crowd on the beach. It may be because it is very long and people are scattered everywhere. If you go on the beach early morning you can see very nice patterns made on the sand by small crabs. It’s spread on entire beach in the morning time and looks wonderful. In my previous visit I went to see Fort Janjira. We took a motor launch from Dighi which took us near the Fort and we were asked to move in small boat “hodi” , as the water was shallow for the bigger boat. Jumping from one boat to another in mid ocean was There is nothing to see in the Fort , but one can get some historical facts.
We also visited Harihareshwar temple in both the visits. The temple is very divine. There are some incredible spots on the way from Shrivardhan to Harihareshwar. One can take a stop and see natural beauty. We also visited the Suvarna Ganesh Temple in our visits. It’s a wonderful place to be and very popular these days.
The change I realized in my visit in ’09 and 2010 is that the place is getting very popular and hence lot of commercial establishments coming in. One can see lot of concrete made hotel in Diveagar & Harihareshwar. Also on the beach , there were lot of horses, horse –carts , bullock carts & camels available for ride. There was a parachute tide to a jeep , which can take a person in sky for a ride (Sorry folks I don’t know it’s name). It’s good that tourism is developing in this area but, I feel local Government and MTDC should keep a check on it. Instead of allowing these on entire beach , they should be restricted only on a part of beach & rest of the beach should be kept clean and serene. Beaches can loss it’s beauty very quickly if these kind of things are not checked , which has happened in many beaches in India.
I request all the readers to keep the beaches in Konkan clean by just following simple rule of not throwing plastic products & garbage. Lets keep it clean & green for our future generations.