Day 9: Ratnagiri - Dhartale

We left at about 7am with Golu(!), who woke up to escort us up to the city limits. We went to Pavas and onward to Purnagad (23km). On the slope down to Purnagad, Madhu tried to avoid an oncoming Jeep and lost control. He crashed on a rock and burst his front tire. There's no cycle shop at Purnagad, so we found some shade and repaired the burst ourselves.


There is a creek at Purnagad and work on a bridge is under progress. We crossed by ferry. The ferry dropped us 50m from the shore and I carried my cycle through 1.5 feet of water, thinking about the life of marine commandos. I went to the edge of the pier, washed my feet in the water there and sat down waiting for them to dry. By the time I put on my shoes, I found that the incoming tide had inundated the rest of the pier and I was on a mini-island of sorts. The inevitability of shoes getting wet!

Later we asked the site engineer the technicalities involved in the bridge. He was a very helpful chap who offered us tea and took us up to and inside the bridge to explain its intricacies.

By now it was already 1pm. Enquiries revealed no lunch spot here (Gaokhadi), or for a considerable distance. So we prepared Maggi at the local chaiwala.

The villagers of Gaokhadi are a very lazy, suspicious and unhelpful lot. We concluded this from the behaviours of the cyclewallah, the guy who filled our bottles, and even the chaiwallah, who talked conspiratorially about Europeans and oil. Nonplussed, we slept over this, watching out for further strange behaviour from the villagers.

We started at 4:30pm, planning to reach Vijaydurg by nightfall. But it was already dusk by the time we reached the checkpost of Dhartale. The people here were extremely friendly and advised us not to proceed at this time for Nate, if we desired any food or sleep. They said the villagers at and near Nate are not very hospitable to strangers; one person claimed they could even take our water away from us!

Dhartale is not a village but a road junction. It consists of a police check naka, two chai shops and a primary health center (PHC). One chaiwallah agreed to prepare dinner for us. We had our baths by drawing water from a nearby well and spent time chatting with Balu (the chaiwallah), some local characters and Dr Pandit, a fresh MBBS who was on his compulsory year of rural service here.

By talking with a local, I learnt a bit about the people here. According to him, they are a lazy lot and half the populace of any town usually ends up in Bombay, doing some menial job. They preferred that to the harder work involved in the rural areas. In contrast, the hardworking laborers from Karnataka come here for work on the various Government projects, and finally settle down. The local became quite sentimental and introspective while talking. His view was that, finally due to all the development, the Konkan would become highly industrialized like Bombay and it would be hard to find any "original" local. This was due to the selfish and conservative nature of the people, according to him.

The doctor was pleased to see us - guess he doesn't get to interact with too many city-dwellers here in the midst of nowhere. We spent a lot of time during dinner and afterward talking of this and that. At dinner, I had my first taste - in life - of shrimp, which we skimmed off a policeman’s skim off a truckwallah. The doctor revealed that this was the only PHC for 27,000 people (the Government rule is 30,000) and it consisted of two doctors (including him) and three nurses. He showed us around and everything had a new look to it - including the mattresses he gave us – due to funds from WHO and UNICEF. 60 to 70 percent of the cases are of snake and scorpion bite, and antivenin of all kinds is stored in a refrigerator - also new.

The doctor revealed that all the surrounding progress including the tar road is recent, and much more is expected once the Purnagad bridge and the Konkan Railway are completed. Already locals talk knowledgeably of foreign collaborations, central policy and the like.

We slept in the PHC on the new mattresses.

Estimate of distance covered today: 41km