Planning a
trip from Mumbai to Goa? Drive. It’s more satisfying than flying.
Our family drove from
Mumbai to Goa and back last week. It’s a long drive - about twelve
hours each way. It was worth the effort because Goa looked so much more
beautiful on this trip than on the many earlier trips when I’d just taken a
flight into Dabolim.
Why?
Robert Pirsig explained this effect in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“To arrive
in the Rocky Mountains by plane would be to see them in one kind of context, as
pretty scenery. But to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies
would be to see them in another way, as a promised land.”
Similarly,
to get off a flight, pick up stuff from the baggage carousel, find the coach sent
by the beach resort, and then notice the pretty sunset while sipping a welcome
drink is one kind of experience.
To leave
home early in the morning, drive on to the Eastern Freeway overlooking Mazgaon
docks, across the Vashi bridge from Bombay island to the Indian mainland,
through the concrete jungle of Navi Mumbai, and then to zigzag up Bhor ghat to
Lonavla, spot Duke’s Nose across the range in Khandala, trundle through the anonymous urban sprawl
of Pune and then past acres of sugarcane fields in Satara, the railway
bridges across the Krishna and Koyna rivers, the brick kilns at Karad, the
movie studio signs in Kolhapur, and to then cross the border into Karnataka, zigzag
back down to the plains through the waterfalls of Amboli ghat, drive through
the buffer zone of the Radhanagari National Park while troops of monkeys bound across the road, get lost on a kuccha road, meet young water buffalos
who won’t give way to a car, discover an unexpectedly lovely temple tank at
Sawantwadi, reconnect with National Highway system and discover that NH66 is
still a kuccha road because of construction work, get off the highway to
drive through banyan tree canyons to get to our villa just before dark, and to
then notice the sunset on the water while swigging a welcome drink; that is a
totally different kind of experience. Goa does objectively look so much more
beautiful, more unique, after that experience.
Here are
some pictures we took along the way:
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| Up Bhor Ghat towards Lonavla |
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| On the Mumbai - Pune Expressway |
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| Across the Koyna River |
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| Service Road along NH48 |
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| Highway pitstop (desi-jugaad style) |
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| Ghat roads |
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| Ghat roads - will be a tough drive after dark |
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| School @ Ajara |
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| Vista @ Amboli Ghat |
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| Down Amboli Ghat |
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| Monkey Troop @ Amboli |
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| Entering Sawantwadi |
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| Sawantwadi Talao |
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| Sawantwadi Talao |
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| Kalash @ Sawantwadi Talao in the evening light |
Next time,
maybe we’ll do the scenic route through Harihareshwar and Ganpatipule. Maybe
we’ll do that route on a motorcycle that we actually know how to look
after, like Pirsig did in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance.
