A View At The Edge Of The World

At Saffron Stays Villa 270° in the Town of Dapoli, the Earthy Insistence of Simplicity Mingles With the Pampering Touch of Something Close to Luxury

- Siddharth Dasgupta

Strictly speaking, this isn’t the edge of the world. On a day like today though, it comes mighty close. After the residual tremors of a minor overnight storm, dawn and early morning have brought with them winds that howl their way along the coastline. The waves are just as temperamental; they rise and roar away in derision, their cries suffused with the rustic romance of the Konkan Coast.

From my front porch at Saffron Stays Villa 270°, the world unfurls with the liquor-laden arbitrariness of a wandering minstrel—from end to end, from coast to coast. The clifftop address of this temporary home has resulted in views that keep all aspects of my admittedly fissured personality—the poet, the traveller, the habitual dreamer— sufficiently sated. To watch the Konkan coastline stretched out below and far beyond me, as it snakes and winds its way along flat beaches of dark soil and the daily lives of the villages within its fold, is Buddhist meditation and narcotic-induced revelation, all rolled into one.

It’s my third morning here. I’ve grown accustomed to the solitude. I’ve become familiar with the hum of the ocean. And I’ve come to be attuned to the hushed rhapsody of the waves. At Villa 270°, five cottages (with each of the five available to be booked individually), welcome travellers looking for something a touch different—the city-worn weekender being top of the list. Technically, the villa isn’t in Dapoli, but situated roughly 30 minutes removed, overlooking the village of Pajpandhari—a place for which the moniker ‘sleepy little village’ seems to have been coined.