Seeking 'Redi' Divine Intervention!

What do you do on a cool winter morning when it is Diwali week and you have nothing much to do? Well, I set out on a trip to seek blessings of Ganpati in Redi village in Maharashtra. Redi is a small village which is located in the outskirts of Southern Maharashtra. Goes without saying that it is quite close to North Goa. Its proximity to Goa is what prompted us to visit the temple. Frankly, i admit that I had not heard anything about this temple before. I came to know about the existence of this temple from my in laws and will be forever thankful to them for adding this place to my bucket list. The time had come to visit the temple, so we ventured out. We travelled by road till Keri after that we boarded a ferry to reach Redi! (That rhymed!).The journey from the ferry to the temple is hardly 5 mins.

The temple is a quaint little one, it manages to lure you into it's simplicity.  It is made of white marble. What floors you is the idol inside.  You witness a cute medium sized colourful Ganpati idol with only two hands (Dwibhuja). The idol was not like anything that I had seen before... I was used to seeing Ganpati idols with four hands (charbhuja). There was not a lot of crowd inside which made the darshan an unhurried one. I took my time to linger around the temple, soaking in the divine atmosphere and of course lost in the cuteness of the Ganpati idol.

Legend has it that the entire area was a manganese mining area and one of the workers in the mines was a certain Mr.  Sadanand Kambli. It is said that Lord Ganesha once appeared in his dreams and asked him to conduct an excavation in the very place where the temple is built now.  He did so and what came out of the excavation was a Dwibhuja Ganesha idol.  Local people started worshipping the idol and temple did not exist then.  It was later that the temple was built.

There is a beach at a distance of 2 mins walk from the temple. The beach is untouched, clean and rocky. It is like a smaller version of Goa's Anjuna beach with a slight twist. The twist is that it is secluded and that is what really is interesting. You can spend hours just listening to the sound of waves hitting the rocks without any disturbance...there is total peace around.  Needless to say the surrounding was scenic.  There are two rocks in the middle of the Sea visible from the beach. The rocks are called 'Mama Bhanja'. Legend has it that one uncle and his nephew used to go on fishing excursions together however one day during one such excursion the uncle fell into the water.  The nephew waited for 10 days after which he jumped into the water to search for his missing uncle. Eventually none of them came to be found but there appeared two rocks parallel to each other one smaller than the other on the very spot where the uncle and nephew went missing. The rocks came to be known as 'Mama Bhanja'.

The visit to the beach was followed by a yummy missal pav breakfast at a local restaurant.

In all, the visit to redi temple and the neighbouring beach proved to be a trip to the unexplored and exciting.