Murud Janjira

I have read all the reviews and the comments on Murud-Janjira.

I have also made comments after reading the reviews as I was reminded of my visit with a group of some other colleagues, about twenty four years ago.

We had been to Bombay (now called Mumbai) for official work.

This involved visit to the coastal ports.

On the way down from Mumbai we visited Alibag.

As we had heard of Murud-Janjira we visited the beach.

On the way, we were happy to travel on the road from where we could sometimes see the sea and coconut trees.It was a new experience for us.

At that time the Murud -Janjira sea beach was very clean. Immediately we saw it, we fell in love with it. It had such an attractive appeal.

The sun was shining.The waves were lashing the beach gently.The sand was white and sometimes golden in the distance.Excitedly we stripped down to our underwear and jubilantly, in delight rushed into the sea waves and enjoyed the bathing with the sun warming us and the sea breeze and the sea water cooling us. We just went on enjoying for hours, as time almost stood still.

There was not another soul in sight, except for our group.

We had shed our inhibitions when we saw the beach empty, as we were feeling embarrassed initially, to go and bathe in underwear without the swim suits.

There was only a shack or two of bamboos and straw.

Occasionally we had also been looking at the Janjira fort and imagined what would have happened there, if we had been transposed back in to history.We imagined sailing ships and canons booming.We thought of sea pirates hiding in the ruins of the fort.

As we moved out onto the drier beach I noticed some holes in the sand and some interesting patterns. I watched and found a small crab or spider was responsible for making the designs on the sand. I photographed these.

It was time to move.

We had to get ahead with our job.

So we decided to leave without taking the boat for the Fort some distance ahead.

Our experience was good.There was no smell or dirty beach at about noon.We had the full benefits of a nice, lovely, clean beach, where we freely imbibed the sun, sand, sea, breeze and the sights and sounds of nature.

It is a long time since then.

I find all places which get a ’’Good place’’ tag are swamped with swarming tourists.This naturally leads to environmental pollution and increase in uncleanliness.The increasing population and absence of proper facilities for the large number of people of lower income groups and general lack of creation of awareness amongst them by local leaders, leads to unhygienic conditions, pollution of all kinds and stench. Some local people also start using the beach for their natural ablutions.Fish naturally smells.And after some time bacteria start acting on the dead fish creating more smells. Remember the fishy smells in Colaba, at the fishing village near Cuffe Parade or any other basket of fish, fishing boat, or fishing village any where in the world?

It is surprising how many beautiful natural places have become dirty over the last two decades, due to lack of cleanliness, awareness and lack of a will and desire to have a clean environment, not only in the home, but around the home, village, city, and tourist spots.Some people think it is bad to clean up the mess they create. Perhaps they feel they get demeaned if they have to pick up their garbage and put it in garbage bins.This shows that the psychology of the populace has to be changed for the better.

I hope we all and the people would wake up to the call for saving our environment and prevent damage to our beautiful places, natural spots and beaches and take positive action.

I can recommend the beach only on my experience of twenty four years ago.

However, one has to have first hand current accounts to decide when to visit, which places to see and when( time of day) and for how long, where to stay and in what budget.