Vasai Fort- A Hidden History
Last Saturday, I woke up at 4am. I wanted to sleep till late but found myself waking up at the wee hours even without an alarm. Once I wake up, I find it very difficult to fall asleep again, even staying in bed becomes difficult. Therefore, I left the bed and started reading a book.
While reading, I suddenly realized that it has been quite some time that we went anywhere as a family. Both of us are traveling but together we have not traveled in a long time and looking at our schedule (including the little ones who has the busiest schedule amongst three of us) we don’t see a trip in near future. The better half has been cribbing about this, since long.
I felt that it was a perfect opportunity to make the best use of waking up early. I woke up the man and asked if he would be interested to take us for a long drive. The driving enthusiast in him couldn’t say NO to this and within half an hour we were on the road. The son was still sleepy and we let him sleep on the rear seat.
[image error]
As usual, we had no destination in mind. I wanted to travel towards Lonavala while the man wanted to drive towards Vasai. We had a brief argument and as an ‘obedient wife’, I accepted his opinion.
[image error]
We had heard about Vasai Fort and even seen the road sign while traveling on WE Highway a zillion times, however, we had never visited it. We took a left exit from WE Highway and within 20 minutes reached Vasai Fort or Bassein Fort.
[image error]
Contrary to our expectation, we found the Fort in a well-maintained condition. A clean premise with manicured lawn and date trees arranged in perfect symmetry. Thankfully, even though it was a Saturday there were very few tourists. Apart from us and a group of Archaeology students, there were none.
[image error] [image error]
The main entrance to the Fort has a muddy road and during monsoon, it is difficult to reach in a car or by foot. However, there is another entrance on the road and one can enter through that but they have to come all the way around to reach the main stairs to climb the fort.
[image error]
These stairs take lead to the top of the boundary wall and the entire area looks beautiful from above.
[image error] [image error]
Adjacent to the main Fort area there are also smaller structures. The most interesting was the Portuguese Basilica. It almost reminded me of the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa. This place was also used in the Coldplay video for the song “hymn for the weekend“. I particularly loved the spiral staircase but I felt claustrophobic to enter and thus couldn’t click a photo.
[image error]
[image error]
The small door from which a child is coming out is the spiral staircase. Isn’t it claustrophobic? This area also used to have 64 bells. Now they have been removed and shifted to various museums all over.
[image error]
[image error]
These relics are outside the main campus, nevertheless, I found them equally interesting. Adjacent to the fort there is a memorial of Chimaji Appa and it was also an interesting place to explore.
[image error]
Our perfect Saturday long drive concluded with a beautiful breakfast at Misal Darbar where we had three different types of Misal. While I had the Malwani Misal, the man had Darbar Misal and the son had Cheese Misal. Yummyyy!!!
[image error]
