Konkan Coast

The Konkan is the strip between the Sahyadri wall and the Arabian Sea, and most travellers drive straight past it on their way to Goa. Six hundred kilometres of coast hold sea forts, mango orchards, laterite villages and beaches with almost nobody on them. In the north, Murud-Janjira rises straight out of the water off Rajapuri, the Siddi island fort that neither the Marathas nor the Portuguese nor the British ever took, reached by sail boat when the sea allows.

Alibaug and Kashid are Mumbai's weekend beaches; Harihareshwar and Diveagar are quieter; Velas fills for a few weeks each spring when Olive Ridley hatchlings are released at dawn. Ratnagiri is the capital of the Alphonso, the hapus mango whose season runs from April to early June and which Konkan families ship in wooden crates to relatives everywhere. Ganpatipule's temple sits on the sand with a self-manifested Ganesh facing the sea.

Far south at Malvan and Tarkarli the water clears enough for scuba diving, and Sindhudurg fort, built by Shivaji between 1664 and 1667 on a tidal rock, still keeps his handprint set in lime. Malvani food is the reward: coconut, kokum and red chilli, a thali with surmai fry, and sol kadhi to finish. Arrive by the Konkan Railway, which crosses nearly two thousand bridges to get here.