 Maritime navigation during the early years must have been a risky business — brave souls arbitrarily setting out to a distant land with the faintest of ideas about where they were in this ‘flat world’. Little wonder then, that after months of battling everything from scurvy to bad breath to captains going bonkers, they’d ram into a vacation island halfway around the world instead of what they were really in search of — India. Hindustan, back then, was the world trade hotspot and the strip of coastal topography sandwiched between the vast expanses of the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea — the Konkan — was one of the places to be. Convenient harbours, long shoreline, rich in resources, yummiest of mangoes… heck, what more motivation do you need to drop anchor? Even today, the often ignored nooks and crannies of the Konkan region make for spectacular travel destinations, more so in the magical monsoons but the weapon of choice to get around these days is, but of course, the motorcycle.
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