DWARKA TRIP

I was sitting watching Kimi crash out of the 2006 Malaysian GP, when one of my friend barges in, “Tomorrow’s a holiday, windmills chale?” I thought 400 km n less than 24 hrs? What’s the doubt, let’s do it. After some desperate last resort ‘managing’, in under 3hrs we had 32 packets of Maggi, butter, 10kgs of firewood, a tent etc.

We left Jamnagar at 1730 hrs. For the initial 30 km the road resembled a dirt track which made us curse the organisation, our decision to came, the hot climate and anything concerned with the trip. At this point we reached Reliance greens, which incidentally is the world’s largest grassroots refinery. From here the roads were absolute bliss and all the previous thoughts reversed immediately. Actually speaking, the roads in Gujarat (and for that matter the entire western states) are one of the best you can find in India.

We reached windmills off Bhatia village at 2030 hrs, after covering a distance of about 120 km. Now for some info on the amazing windmills. Made by Enercon, a German company from the city of Aurich, each windmill as a tower of height 74m and 3 fan blades each 22m in length (that takes the overall length close to 100m!). Each of them is capable of producing 91kW of power and has an automatic monitoring and control system. Along with all the obvious environment and power benefits, they are a great sight to behold and certainly add to the beauty of a place which otherwise has little to offer.

We decided to set camp there for the night. The tent was set up below the only windmill having a light (at the top, so it was just enough to carry out our jobs, but didn’t spoil the night glory), and again the bikes served as the pegs. After that was the munching session and we had quite a lot on the menu. Butter Maggi, barbecue paneer n chicken, and some soft drinks to go along. The only problem was that paneer was a little excess and by the end everybody was quite sick of eating it (I didn’t feel like eating paneer for a week after that!). Our logistics support vehicle (an Esteem to be precise) provided some much needed music (keeping it soft, not to spoil the ambience). Once we lied down and faced the sky, we realised that there actually are a lot of stars up there. Don’t laugh on us, in which city today, is one able to see a lot of stars? That is if he gets to see any at all, after all that pollution! Well finally we slept at around 0300 hrs.

Got up hardly any time later, at 0530 hrs and freshened up. Then we moved ahead to Dwarka, which was only 30 km away. The stunning roads n pleasant weather (in summers, 0630 hrs is actually perfect to drive) ensured that we munched the miles in a jiffy. After visiting the famous lord Krishna temple there we went ahead to Nageshwar and Paushetra. We had expected some ferries to take us to the beautiful islands off Paushetra, but were bitterly disappointed to find out that no such service exists. The only way to visit the islands is either arrange your own boat or persuade one of the fishermen to ferry you till there (n back of course!).

So finally we started back and stopped to have lunch at Dwarka, which was some traditional Gujju food. But a surprise lay ahead of us. On our way back, about 25 km after Dwarka, we spotted the sea (at visual distance from the windmills). We sensed that there has to be a beach somewhere in the vicinity. Spotting nothing, (as there was a hillock alongside the road) we parked our bikes below the road, covered them with our sleeping bags (it was pretty hot, n none of wanted our beauties to get sun burns!) and set to search the beach on foot. As we reached above the hillock we were rewarded with spotlessly clean beach barely 200m away. I’ve never seen a beach this clean anywhere else. We could see the sea bed and our legs on it; I mean it was in the league of the beaches of Seychelles and Mauritius that we see on Discovery and Nat Geo. The sand too was so fine and clean. Actually no one visits this beach (not even fishermen and any kind of trawlers) and that is the reason for it being so clean. After a couple of ours of playing around, we finally dried ourselves, dusted the sand and hit the road again.

What followed was one of the fastest drives that I’ve driven till date. Finally by 1630 hrs we reached back to end a very fruitful and close to the nature trip. I would like to add one thing here. If anyone of you plan such a trip (do it, you’ll realise what you’ve been missing) please let the nature be as it is. I mean whenever you leave a camping place/beach or any other place please do not leave behind muck like polythene packets, wrappers, newspapers, cans, anything at all. We always have a bag dedicated for all the junk. So that who ever visits that place next (it might be us again) gets to enjoy nature in its purest form and is not disgusted by the accumulating junk and is driven away. It will boost our image among foreign tourists too (no point only blaming the authorities, lets do our bit).

On this note, I finish my travelogue. Hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I liked writing it down. Looking forward to more such trips, so watch this space, and if you have any queries/suggestions, feel free to mail me.