In the Garden of Gods
A river on one side, the sea on the other and in-between, a land that time forgot. What more could a traveler ask for? At the end of the monsoon, as bait fish from the Arabian Sea swim up the Karli River, the fish that eat them follow. Man is not far behind. I had first visited Devbagh after I got tired of Goa and started exploring the Konkan extensively. This time however, I was here as a hunter.
Back then Devbagh was a sleepy fishing village smothered in coconuts groves that held thatched houses. There was a boat in every backyard.
Progress was slow as the road got narrower after every bend and the dense canopy made the outside dark and muggy. It was like driving into Colonel Kurtz’s lair. The inhabitants stopped amid work, cast curious glances at me and went back to waterproofing hulls, repairing fishing nets and chopping firewood while leathery old men wearing thick spectacles and baggy shorts sat by the road side. I was as surprised as they were but quickly realized that a hatchback was a rare sight in these parts. They were more used to Sumos with a yellow number plate or ST buses’ that ploughed through roads that were barely six feet across at their widest. Elsewhere, in a sandy clearing, a cricket match was in progress with the beach as a backdrop, the teams consisting of children and grown up’s.
The road wasn’t all that was narrow. On one side, through bands of casuarinas’, I caught glimpses of the ocean and spied the river through thickets on the other. The distance between river and sea here was barely sixty feet. Before I knew it, I suddenly reached land’s end. In a large clearing there was a stationary S.T bus slowly filling with passengers. The first proper sight of the Karli made me want to go down on my knees and wail. The water was blue, and lapped gently on the small concrete dock. The sky was abuzz with sea gulls and ospreys and the hilly bank opposite was covered with trees.
The water was clear and clean, and when I waded in, warm. I couldn’t have asked for a better combination; Clear blue water, a slow moving river, a fussy sea and balmy weather. Little fish jumping at the water’s surface held promise. I left after a few days since i had more of the Konkan to visit. But as I drove out past the numerous home stays, the little children in school uniforms, and the leathery old men, I knew I would come back.
Circa 2009 I was glad to see nothing had changed. Despite an influx of tourists, Devbagh was still quite, still heavy-eyed. Its friendly residents and its magnetic pull were intact. In fact if anything it had gained a tourist attraction in the form of ‘Tsnunami Island,’ a heap of sand in the middle of the river that locals say, formed after the Indian Ocean tsunami. This sand bar was now included in the itinerary of tourist boat rides and had become a basking ground for flocks of seagulls. A slight bigger surprise came in the form of foreigners who had spilled over from Goa. I saw a white couple on an Enfield and another walking holding hands.
Armed with my fishing tackle, this time I prowled the Karli to catch the biggest fish i could although in reality I would have taken anything. The ride down the Karli itself was memorable. Unlike other, more famous backwaters of India, its banks were relativity free of habitation and the few houses were well hidden behind thick foliage. We came across small canoes bobbing gently and big boats ferrying passengers. Further ahead, were grassy islands full of noisy herons and solitary storks. A black mass in shallow water turned out to be a herd of buffaloes while a group of men and women bent at their waists were foraging the river bed for mussels.
I caught my first fish ever, a 2 kg grouper which I ate that very night in three different forms, fried, curried and roasted. Since I gave the prized fish to the owner of my homestay, he threw in some fried Surmai free of cost with my dinner. He scolded me the next evening for being incommunicado the entire day. I told him him I was in a boat upriver and had no signal. ‘At least you could have called, I was worried about you,’ he said. Then he fetched me dinner and left me alone. After I finished he sat with me and chatted about life in Devbagh and we were friends again.
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Tags: adventure, angling, barramundi, fishing, goa, Holiday, India, konkan, maharashtra, travel, trips
