Bordi, Chilling out in chikoo country

Bordi has suffered from an identity crisis long ago. There was heavy rush of tourist at Dahanu, Daman and Umergoan near to it. Bordi is famous for its chikoo shake. People used to stop at Bordi to drink its chikoo milkshake on their way to Daman. However now Bordi is famous for its lean white beaches, the quite response and the calm beauty of the place. It is still a self-contained big village that became a town. It has a long stretch of nice beach scattering of Parsis who have floated downstream from Sanjan and Udvada and lush orchards of juicy chikoos. There is only one place to visit in Bordi, which is the beach. The 17 km of virtually unspoilt beach is Bordi’s mainstay and the reason tourists come here. Most of the beach is canopied by casuarinas trees and on the other side of the road behind the beach; chikoo orchards make a scenic backdrop. Here you can safely lie on your towel and turn the pages of your novel without a balloon seller or a candyfloss man in sight. There are no lifeguards but the stretch is relatively safe and accidents are extremely rare. Asavli Check Dam, has formed a green lake surrounded by mountains and on other side, near the spillway are fields. It was manually built much in the manner of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. It is also a great place to picnic. There are mountains that contain Bahrot caves. Then we drove down to Depchari Dam and reservoir, which is a tranquil lake, much bigger than the lake at Asavli. It was also peaceful and quite with no soul around as Asavli. We also visited the Kalpataru Botanical Gardens in Umergoan, which is 10 km from Bordi. The famous Vrindavan studios are also in Umergoan, where much of the TV epic Ramayana was shot. After sight seeing we went for exploring its markets. We buyed fresh vegetables and chikoo as it grows some of the best chikoos in Maharashtra. We also picked up chikoo products such as chips, vadis, chikoo powder and pickle from there. Bordi has few places to stay like Tapovan Retreat, Anand Resort, and Gool Khush Reosrt, which are near to beach and many more. We visited Bordi post monsoons so we were able to get some seafood. The surmai was the best, the also had pomfret and Bombay duck washed down with cold sol kadi.