The Hindu Business Line : Off the Goa track…

Sawantwadi is a small town that you cross late in the evening if you’re taking the Goa bus to Mumbai. In normal circumstances, you could easily miss the place. Recently, one had the chance to look around the small and scenic town. An architect-friend had told me before the trip, as we chatted online: “It’s a very scenic town.” Strange, I hadn’t thought of it in these terms earlier.

This town (population about 40,000) is centred around a large lake, and has hills on all sides. Neatly dressed girls and boys attend morning school. I rode on my bike up to Sindhudurg fort, a couple of hours further north of Sawantwadi. The fort is actually situated on an island outside Malvan, and you need to take a motorised canoe to get there. Unlike Goa, prices are reasonable, and you pay under Rs 30 for the return boat-ride.

The trip back to Goa took one through the forest-ensconced Sagari Mahamarg (Coastal Highway) that’s under construction not far from the western Maharashtra shoreline. It’s a road repeatedly interrupted by green hills and miles of little-inhabited land, with migration to Mumbai from these parts being a big issue. At Vengurla, we even ran into an abandoned Dutch factory.

At Sawantwadi, visitors can go on a detailed tour of the palace, which remains open in the mornings till 1 p.m. The entry fee of Rs 25 includes a guided tour that is patient and unhurried. The royal family encourages the promotion of the ganjifa art tradition. We could walk into the darbar hall and take a whole lot of photos there. This place is a photographer’s delight and I completely exhausted my camera capacity. That was rather unfortunate as it meant no images of the blue waters of Vengurla, or the narrow peninsular jutting right out into the sea there.

At Sawantwadi, I picked up a nice book being sold at the palace (External Relations of Sawantwadi State, 1651-1838 by Dr Ankush Sarang) which had a lot of references to “Portuguese Goa”.

Needless to say, the book proved interesting for someone trying to understand the historic ties between these two regions. Sawantwadi town itself is known for its wooden toys and the fish-based Malvani food is simply yummm... Everyone recommends the small, inexpensive but businesslike Hotel Gomantak there. Amboli, the nearby hill-station, is an option too.