Monsoons…the most amazing time of the year when you can travel around the Sayhadris and experience what this season has to offer to you. It’s amazing how refreshed you feel by wetting yourself in the rains!

This monsoon, for me, started with a trek to Rajmachi. After an extremely exhausting and tiring walk to Rajmachi, we decided to go to Konkan. Diveagar was the place decided, famous for its golden Ganesh idol, found here in the last decade. Unfortunately the idol didn’t attract us much than the solace the place had to offer. Though we expected to get caught by the rains, they failed to arrive. The weather was sultry but we didn’t care much the moment we saw the beach.

The beach was fantastic. What I really liked about it was how untouched and clean it was. They say not a lot of people visit the place and it was quite true. At about 6.30 in the evening the whole beach was deserted. We were the only people who were there and that just made us drop our ‘oh so mature’ facades! Off we ran along the beach, jumped in the water, rolled in the wet sand and the funniest of all, made sand castles like kids! It was fun to dig the beach like dogs to collect the sand we needed to make our castles!

The walk in the night to eat was nice; dark, with a lot of fireflies around to illuminate the night sky; a view that just can’t be described in words. Lovely modaks awaited us and we scrumptiously gobbled each one down.

The next day we went to Sri Hari Hareshwar, a place of presumably religious interest to the public however fun for us. The town has a historical Shiv temple and one has to take a walk along the circumference of a small hill, adjacent to the temple, to complete the circumambulation (pradakshina). The pradakshina was one fun walk for us. Half of the hill faces the land and the other half facing the raging Arabian Sea.

After a small ascent on the land face we went down a steep decline, about 50 steps, to the edge of the raging sea, stony edge of the hill on one side and the lashing waves on the other. Whoa was I scared at first. This was the very first time I ever saw dolphins. The sight was an absolute delight! Sadly we couldn’t capture them on camera. The walk along the edge was smooth! Smooth as in slimy smooth. The rock surface was full of moss and was slimy and slippery. One of us slipped and fell, but hurt only her ego. The pradakshina was taking long and it got hotter and hotter. Had I mentioned all of this was barefoot?

Now was the last day of our trip. We were supposed to head back and we decided that we will travel from the southern route than the northern. Each of us was crazy and said they wanted to have lunch in Malabaleshwar. The drive back was spectacular. I guess as one of us rightly said it was one time that we really bonded well. It is absolutely astounding how we friends met (thanks Orkut!!!) and had the most brilliant time of our life together on this trip. How amazing that we didn’t even know each other a couple of weeks ago and suddenly became these best of friends!