Vijaydurg is a sea fort on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra, built on a rocky headland where the Vaghotan river runs into the Arabian Sea, and the setting alone is worth the ride. The fort was an old hill-fort of the Shilahara king Bhoja before Shivaji took it in the seventeenth century, rebuilt it, and made it one of the main bases of the Maratha navy. Later Kanhoji Angre, the admiral who held the coast against Portuguese, British and Dutch ships, used it as a harbour for his fleet, and the walls, bastions and triple line of defences look out over water that his ships once patrolled. They say there was an underwater wall to wreck enemy vessels that came too close, a story told at the gate with some pride.
The Konkan is one of India's loveliest coastal strips, with laterite plateaus, coconut and cashew groves, red-tiled villages and a string of quiet beaches between rocky points. Mango trees grow everywhere, and the Alphonso mangoes from nearby Devgad are the most prized in the country, picked in April and May and sold from roadside stalls. In the monsoon, from June to September, the whole region goes brilliant green but the rain is heavy enough to make riding miserable and landslides common, so go between October and February, when the air is warm and dry and the sea is calm. March and April get hot.
The ride along the coast road is slow and rewarding. Roads are narrow, patched and often one-and-a-half lanes wide, running up and down over laterite ridges and through small villages, with sharp bends, buses that take the middle and cows that take the rest. The surface is better on the main highway, NH66, which runs inland, but the coast roads have the views. Watch for loose gravel on corners and for sand blown across the tarmac near the beaches. Ferries across estuaries sometimes replace bridges, and timings should be checked locally.
Rajapur, twenty-odd kilometres away, is the nearest sizeable town, with a population over ten thousand, and it is the place to count on for fuel and a mechanic. Smaller villages may have a pump, but they are not to be relied upon, so fill the tank in Rajapur or Devgad. Konkani cooking is built around fish, coconut and kokum, a sour fruit, and a thali of fried bombil, rice and sol kadhi, the pink kokum drink, is the right lunch after an hour on a hot road. Carry water and wear sun protection.