In my six years and a half years in Mum­bai, I have never been to Kihim beach.

So when the oppor­tu­nity cropped up, I decided to grab it. We reached our des­ti­na­tion — Danny’s bun­ga­low on Kihim beach — on Sat­ur­day evening at about 6.00 p.m. The bun­ga­low, also goes by the more glam­orous name of Sea Cas­tle. The acco­mo­da­tion is pretty basic but clean.

Dhi­raj cre­ates an inter­est­ing, albeit unin­tended effect while tak­ing this pic­ture, as we sit around gup-shupping!

After din­ner, we went for a mid­night walk and admired other people’s beau­ti­ful beach­side bun­ga­lows. Dhi­raj nearly went off to sleep on the beach until we reminded him of painful crab bites. Came back to Sea Cas­tle and had some totally strange con­ver­sa­tions, but at that time of the night, any­thing goes. Then chat­ted with Lynn till the wee hours of the morn­ing about wom­anly things (all the stuff you can’t talk to men about!).

Any other Sun­day morn­ing, I’d be dead to the world at 7.00 am. But this Sun­day, I was up and about, rar­ing to go. We were going step climbing.

There were around 1000 steps, though the offi­cial num­ber we were given was 760. I think they lied. Our out-of-practice mus­cles said there were twice the num­ber. And to make mat­ters tougher, one step was between 5–10 times a nor­mal step!

The rick­shawal­lah left us at the base of the hill. We asked him to return in one and half hours. He nat­u­rally looked very sceptical.

The hill is actu­ally a decoy because you can’t see the other hills behind it :)

So there we were climb­ing and climb­ing and climb­ing with no sign of the tem­ple that we were sup­posed to find at the end of it.

Accord­ing to our team leader Amit, every­thing you wish for is granted if you pray at the Kankesh­war tem­ple.

This is a really ancient tem­ple built around a gazil­lion years ago. The view is beau­ti­ful once you have climbed the first 300 odd steps as you get an almost 360 degree view of the sur­round­ings, includ­ing moun­tains, vil­lages and the sea in the distance.

There’s noth­ing except the sound of birds chirp­ing as you climb the hill. The veg­e­ta­tion gets denser and there are a wide vari­ety of trees to keep you guess­ing; if you are botan­i­cally inclined.

On the way down, we saw sev­eral vil­lage folk rub­bing small stones on the rocks, cre­at­ing an awful grat­ing sound. While I thought it was an ancient Maha­rash­trian rit­ual, Amit dis­cov­ered that they were actu­ally catch­ing crabs.

The sound makes the crabs uncom­fort­able and they come scur­ry­ing out of their hid­ing place. The vil­lagers then swoop down on them catch­ing them expertly in their hands and then deposit them into a bag. Even­tu­ally, they become someone’s lunch.

The hill is about 10–15 mins from Chondi junc­tion by rick­shaw. The trek upwards takes an hour (if you’re rea­son­ably unfit like me) and about 40 min­utes if you’re young and agile (like Ajay, whose wishes had got­ten granted by the time I reached the temple!).

Chondi junc­tion is about 8 kms from Mandwa jetty, which is about one hour from Gate­way of India, if you take a really slow (and seem­ingly unsafe, but actu­ally quite decent) boat.

If you’re look­ing for a quick get­away from Mum­bai, you can try these beaches — Alibag, Kihim, Rewas — eas­ily acces­si­ble from Gate­way. The down­side is that this par­tic­u­lar stretch is not very clean. The sides are lit­tered with plas­tic, food stuff, bot­tles, cig­a­rette stubs and human/animal exc­reta. But for a Mum­bai­ite, a beach is a beach is a beach.

So we enjoyed our­selves play­ing vol­ley­ball (actu­ally I watched, while oth­ers played!) and fris­bee, walk­ing on the beach and eat­ing (nice veg­e­tar­ian food cooked by two local women).

We were back at the Gate­way at about 6.30 pm on Sun­day. The Mandwa jetty was closed due to choppy waters so we took a detour via the pic­turesque Rewas jetty instead.

Lynn sug­gested we end the week­end with apple pies at Foun­tain Cafe. Sadly, they had run out of pies, so we set­tled for hot sun­dae nut fudge, wal­nut brownie, tiramisu and blue­berry cheese­cake instead. A pretty sweet way to end the weekend!

(The trip was organ­ised by India Out­doors. If you’re look­ing for a quick get­away, an adven­ture hol­i­day or a week­end break, IO organ­ises fre­quent trips from Mum­bai. So don’t think, just go!)

[*Pic­tures cour­tesy: Dhiraj]