Last year we spent a day at Ganapati Pule en route to Goa. This time it had to be Tarkarli Beach. We set out in the morning of February 9th on the now all too familiar NH 17(Mumbai-Goa). After a breakfast break at Mahaad and a lunch break at Sangameshwar, we headed straight to Kasal. From there we took the state highway to Malvan. It was a very peaceful drive to Malvan through the lovely Konkan countryside. The road was near empty and the road condition was acceptable. Only the last six kilometers to Tarkarli seemed almost never-ending, probably because I had been driving since morning. After having read reviews on MTDC resort on MS and elsewhere, we chose to check out a hotel called Chintamani which had received a good review by Vishal Agashe on the Royal Enfield site. It turned out to be a compact 8-room kind of an outfit where a we could hire a double room for Rs.1000. The room was clean and the only drawback( if at all one were to call this a drawback) was that the place had an Indian commode. The spice rich Malvan food they served us was excellent and reasonably priced.
The next morning we went to Tarkarli beach. I loved the ambience of the beach. It is so different from a Palolem Beach in Goa or the Om Beach in Gokarna where you have hills bordering the ocean and yet so beautiful, peaceful and inviting.
The Tarkarli beach we saw was a gorgeous expanse of whitesand blending into the azure blue of the ocean extending all the way to horizon. The beach was clean and almost desterted. The only souls on the beach were my wife, my child and yours truely. Of course, we had some birds and a couple of stray dogs for company. The waters were shallow and inviting. A boatman volunteered to take us for a cruise to a point where the river joined the ocean, but we could not have gone for that and yet reached Goa by the evening. So we let it pass,
We are planning to head back to this place and explore the countryside around all the way to Sindhudurg the next time.