Road Trip to Goa - Day 3

We left Bambolim after breakfast, headed for Vengurla in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra. Our objective was to check out some of the beaches in the South Konkan, before heading back for Mumbai via Kolhapur the next day.

We deviated off the main Mumbai - Goa highway before crossing into Maharashtra. Our first halt was at Mochemmad Beach. The access to the beach was through the village itself. The beach was completely empty, save for thousands of gulls right at the waters edge. Proof that humans rarely venture here. While the beach had clean sands, and water, it lacked shade where we could sit down to admire the view. It clearty did not measure up to the expectations I had, built up by whatever I had read about the beach.

We then headed for Vengurla town for lunch. Along the way, we saw a signboard for an MTDC Resort. We could not locate the resort on the first approach, and landed up at Vengurla town. We then backtracked and discovered that one cannot drive up to the resort, but had to park at the end of the road, and trek over a sand dune to reach the resort! On reaching the resort, we found that there was no accommodation to be had, as it was a long weekend on account of Shiv Jayanti. We also discovered, to our surprise, that this particular MTDC resort had no restaurant! We had lunch at a small restaurant at the place where we had parked the car. The lunch was homecooked, and quite delicious, though over priced (at Rs. 60 per fish thali).

After lunch, we checked out Sagareshwar beach. This was a nice stretch of clean golden sand, fringed by casuarina trees. The water was also clean, and inviting. We then decided to check out accommodation at Vengurla town itself. But as our guidebooks had mentioned, the hotels were very basic, though the location was awesome - overlooking Vengurla jetty, and the pristine stretch of sand marking Sagareshwar beach.

We then headed for Kudal, to check out accommodation there. And while it was definitely better than what we saw in Vengurla, it was a fair distance away from the sea, so we decided to hit Malvan town. We found decent accommodation right at the edge of Malvan beach - Hotel Sagar Kinara. We got a spacious room, overlooking the beach. We then strolled down the beach, taking in the sunset. We retired for the day after dinner in the room.