Country roads, Camping & Waterfall bathing- A weekend at Jawhar

Road trips are a different kind of therapy, however, they are addictive. After a weekend getaway to Dapoli, I was tempted to take another adventure. I was planning something for 15th Feb weekend ( for the love of nature and outdoors) and everything fell in place.

Why Jawhar & How this plan?

I wanted to explore Jawhar from quite some time, however, I am so busy moving out of the state, that I haven’t explored Maharashtra fully. This year I am planning to explore more nearby places.

One morning I got a comment on Instagram from Deepali aka Albatraoz_stories that my travel stories are amazing and I am an inspiration for others. Well, that definitely made me feel good and I checked her profile, got impressed and followed back. She’s a bike rider documenting her explorations and journey to happiness. After some time I saw her story about Jawhar. That picture was with a waterfall and I was curious if that was a recent picture and she immediately confirmed the same. My next step was to connect with Jawhar Tourism and finalize my plan.

The people at Jawhar Tourism are prompt and super-friendly. Vaibhav got in touch with me and helped me finalize my plan, suggested which driving route to take and took our food preferences as well. I usually don’t wait for the company, however, my 2 girlfriends Sharanya and Pragya were willing to join. Girls’ day out on a Valentines day weekend 😉

Chalo Jawhar:

We decided to start at 10 am. It’s approximately a 4-hour drive from my place to the Jawhar Tourism office. We took the Ghodbunder road and NH48 route as the roads are good, and I am used to driving on GB road as my previous workplace was almost at the end of Thane’s GB road. The route is very familiar till Hotel Fountain. The fun starts when we take the right from there, continue on the NH48 and after crossing Vasai-Virar. I usually take my car out towards Panvel, so the drive seemed refreshing with view of hills and greenery around us. We took a lunch break around Ghol at a Dhaba as after that we leave the NH48 and enter Dahanu- Jawhar Road.

Dahanu-Jawhar Road is a treat to the eyes, a lot of times “Countryroads…” played in the background in my head. It felt good to finally hit the country roads. The road is surrounded by trees and well maintained as well.

As soon as we entered Jawhar, we were greeted by the statue of Maharaj Yeshwantrao Mukne, the last ruler of Jawhar. We missed the turn for the Jawhar Tourism office and realized that we were on Hanuman mandir road. I recollected that Hanuman Mandir was a viewpoint and thus continued even though Google maps kept on saying to take a U-turn. We halted for some time, enjoyed the view and clicked a few pictures there.

Jawhar Tourism:

After a short detour, we reached the Jawhar Tourism office, a small shop surrounded by beautiful Warli paintings, artwork and handicraft products made by Warli tribe. We met Shubham and Nutan mam there. Shubham was our host for the event, and Nutan mam joined us for the camping. We finished the formalities and began our journey towards the campsite. Well, we had no idea that the campsite was 10 km away from the tourism office, and that it would be such an amazing ride.

Reaching the Campsite village, Dhapar Pada:

We had to follow Vaibhav as he led with his bike and Nutan joined us in the car. We got to know that we were the only group for camping that night. That made us happier and we were like Private Camping yay! We crossed Jai Sagar Dam and Sunset point, which are the two main viewpoints of Jawhar. Thanks to Nutan she kept on sharing information with us.

The roads became narrower and greener as we followed Shubham; with every turn adding to the excitement. We crossed green patches, villages and finally reached the village where we were to camp. We parked my vehicle, and as soon as we got down the first thing we observed the beautiful Warli art on one of the houses. Then we saw a house with a notice on it, which read – “Warli Painting Workshop”. We were excited to try our hand at Warli painting and to interact with the locals.

Warli Paiting Workshop:

We entered the house, a clean minimalistic house with Warli paintings and were awed by the art. Kalpesh introduced himself and we bombarded him with questions about the paintings. All the paintings were made by him. We settled and our workshop started. It was fun understanding the motifs but what was more fun was to interact with them and understand the culture. We did not realize and it was one hour already, around 5:30 pm. My mind was getting distracted by that time as a wanted to watch the sunset I finished the painting and went out for a walk. Once we all completed our paintings and clicked pictures, we proceeded towards the campsite.

Sunset, Chai and Photography:

With Khadkhad Dam on one side surrounded by hills and trees, the campsite looked beautiful. The Golden hour had started, so we just kept our bags in the tents and went a little ahead. The sunset was mesmerizing, we dipped our feet in the water and watched the sunset. It was that kind of moment when you feel like putting a pause button on time. All our tiredness or worries were left behind and all we had was that beautiful moment.