Weekend had arrived ... this time around there were no last minute cancellations and finally we were travelling to Alibaug. This was the first time that my new car was going to travel so far..... and thankfully the journey was without any incident .....except for the "Engine Check" light that turned on mysteriously.... and thankfully went off after sometime in a similar mysterious fashion. We reached Alibaug at around 12:30 PM. Oh.... and BTW after reaching there Ashutosh and I realized that it was a Dry Day (26th Jan).
Problem 1: Finding some booze.
Solution 1: Vikram knew about the Dry-Day and he had managed to smuggle two bottles of whisky from his dad's cupboard........ problem solved.... :)
Problem 2: Finding a place to stay (.... place to booze actually)
Solution 2: Unfortunatley we were not the only ones's who had this problem. Wherever my eyes went I saw nothing but cars with numbers starting with either MH-01, MH-02, MH-03 or MH-04....... it seemed to me that the whole of mumbai was here in Alibaug. Every place that was there for renting was taken.... we decided to move ahead and go to Akshi or chaul..... After driving through beautiful tree lined road for 15 minutes we reached chaul.... only to find more MH-01's and 02's..... there was no place to stay.
We tried our luck at various other places.... but everything was occupied..... this weekend was turning into a nightmare...... somebody suggested that we travel to Pune and spend the night in some disc. But since we had travelled so far..we decided to try one last time..... therefore we crossed the Kundalika river and reached Rewdanda's Birla mandir..... but it was the same old story. Dejected we were about to go back when the parking lot attendent suggested us to go to a place called Borli which was just a few kM's ahead..... he said there is place over there and you can try....... we went there and Guess what.... Problem Solved.
The place was under construction owned by a person called Sandeep... he sympathized us bcoz he too was from Thane and moved here a few years ago. So after searching for 4 and 1/2 hours and burning almost 5 liters of petrol ...... we had finally managed to find a place to stay.
Problem 3: Arranging for cash to rent the Room.
Solution 3: Now we had the booze, a place to drink that booze.... but we were short of cash to rent that place. Following things were on our agenda.
Arrange for cash for the following:
1. Renting the room. (1000 Bucks)
2. Dinner (300 Bucks Aprrox)
3. Chakna for the booze. (200 Bucks)
4. Cash for emergency until we reached Alibaug (atleast 100 Bucks)
We searched deep inside our pockets ....and collected what ever we can... but felt short by aprox 700 bucks...... our only option was that some one stays here at Borli and I would driveback all the way to Alibaug..... cause that's where the nearest ATM was.
Vikram saved the day just like he had done last time around by arranging the booze. He was carrying extra 800 bucks and that settled all our problems.
All Problems solved......
Finally almost at 7:30 in the evening we had solved all the problems and were finally relaxed. It was then I realized how beautiful this place was. We had a half constructed house facing the sea. A private beach all to ourselves..... the wind blowing through my hair made me forget all the hardships that we faced during the day.
That evening we managed to finish off 1 and 1/2 bottle of booze..... it was one of the best experiences of my life..... I had never thought that after spending one of the most hectic day of my life looking for a place to stay... we would end up like this boozing on our own private beach... under the starlit sky with nobody to disturb us.
There is saying in Hindi that goes like this "Sabar ka fal meetha hota hai." Today I realized how true it was..... this was one my best experience on the Borli beach under the watchful eye of the ancient Korlai Fort and its beautiful lighthouse, that flashed its beam a long distance over the vast windy sea.
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