The plan for today was to visit one of the very far and little known attractions of Mumbai, Murud.
We had to start as early as possible, and as usual we failed. We were able to reach CST only by 0820 by that time; our first ferry to Alibaug had already left. Again, blaming each other I and Subha walked through the lanes of Mumbai. We reached the RBI building first and took a snap in front of it. as soon as I was trying the click the second one, 2 security constables surrounded me and asked me not to take snaps. He also asked me to delete the snap which I took; I managed to escape from that. Then we took snaps in front of Library. We walked further and reached Mumbai stock exchange.
Here, we checked to the security before taking the snap. We waited till the market opened and saw the first transaction before leaving.
After having a quick breakfast, we reached gateway of India at 0900hrs. The ferry started at 0915hrs and again sailing on the Arabian sea, we reached Madwa port. We had to take a free bus from there to Alibaugh town and this free bus was operated by ferry guys itself. The bus took us through the old village roads and crossing through the broken roads, small village schools, huts, wells, tea shops and typical fishermen boats we reached Alibaug at 1100hrs.
We were disappointed as soon as we reached Alibaug, because the fort there was closed due to high tide. We will never return or accept the defeat just like that; we decided to move forward and proceed towards Murud – Jhengira fort without even knowing if we would be able to reach there or not. We hunted for the best possible ways to reach there and ended up taking a bus. The route was really great; we had sea on one side and hills on other, and immediately the bus gets into some deep forest, then to a village and near a abandoned bus station and people in that bus station jump over the bus as if it is a summer rain.
We were dropped at Murud bus station, with countable number of tea shops and small pan shops, it was very silent. We were told that we need to take an auto till Jengira fort. We boarded a share auto and it took another 30 mins.
We were dropped somewhere near a ferry ghat and I was still trying to see where the fort was. To our surprise the fort was in the middle of the SEA. I was wondering how to reach there, like other people did. We were assisted by the local school teacher, who took us to a counter where he said we could take a catamaran to reach the fort.
The people at catamaran, charged 30 rupees per head as up and down charge, they said they would give 45 mins time in the fort to roam around.
While on the catamaran, the person rowing it started scaring us, he said the fort is very big and we might get lost inside without a guide. He said a guide is must and he made us believe that we won’t return in 45 minutes. We all agreed to pay 50 Rs per head for the guide, and on reaching the shore we understood that he himself was the so called GUIDE.
The fort was of 18th century, completely surrounded by Water. It was initially called as jaljeera and changed to jhengira in course of time. They were covered with 22 canons on all sides we spent more than an hour admiring each and every stone of the fort. There were even a couple of sweet water wells inside the fort, which was completely surrounded by salty sea water. Need to appreciate the king, who built it, it would have been one of the master pieces in his times. The left over walls were still strong.
After a long travel around the fort we took the same way back to our nests, that is, catamaran auto Bus again a bus Ferry till gateway of India.
It was only 1900hrs and we still thought we had time to hang around; we popped into the Jehangir art gallery, where a art exhibition was conducted. Again from there after having dinner we took the local trains to our destinations and one more day was over in Mumbai……
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