Tarkarli

India is blessed with a lot of beaches along its coastline. But Indian beaches are usually not what you'd call breathtakingly beautiful - the sand isnt usually white and the water can range from brown to grey, but never the beautiful blue-green or even plain blue. So when we reached Tarkarli, we were not prepared for the beautiful & empty white-powder-sand-beach that stretched off in both directions and the deep blue seas. Even with our limited travel experience, we would like to bet Tarkarli is probably the best beach you can find on the Indian mainland

Tarkarli is a jewel in the Konkan region of Mahashtra, less than 100 km from Goa and about 500 km from Bombay. The name Tarkarli means the bank of Karli river - the Karli river is more like a backwater, very tranquil and flows into the sea at Devbag, at one end of the Tarkali beach. It is just 8 km away from the town of Malwan - which lends its name to the spicy cuisine and is famous for its seafood as well. Its distance from Bombay means it is an extended-weekend destination rather than a overnight stay option. And Tarkarli has enough to offer to keep everyone involved for a couple of days

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Malshej Ghat

From relative obscurity till about 10 years ago, Malshej Ghat has now become one of the more popular monsoon destination for Mumbaikars - a destination of choice for people who are bored of the traditional trio of Lonavala, Matheran & Mahabaleswar. We had been thinking about Malshej Ghat for a while, till one beautiful sunday morning in the monsoon of 2009, 9 of us piled into two cars and headed out to Malshej Ghat to see if it was all that was promised

The way to Malshej Ghat is to take NH222 going towards Ahmadnagar. After travelling for a while on relatively flat land, suddenly a line of hills covered in clouds seem to loom up in front of you. The knowledgeable among us pointed out - Malshej Ghat stands at the top of this hill range. The place gets it name from a mountain pass - a natural pass cutting through the formidable Sahyadris mountains - on which a road was built through. Historically, this was one of the natural trade routes used by people from the Deccan plateau to reach the coastal regions. Now Kasara Ghat and Malshej Ghat are sites of national highways - the NH 3 to Nashik and NH222 to Ahmadnagar respectively

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