Ratnagiri

Ratnagiri is the Konkan's confident coastal capital, a working city of fishing harbours, laterite cliffs, and quiet beaches strung along the Arabian Sea, roughly midway down Maharashtra's long western shore. Its name means 'hill of jewels', and for much of India its greatest jewel is a fruit: this is the heartland of the Alphonso mango, the GI-tagged Ratnagiri Hapus, whose fragrant, saffron-fleshed fruit is counted among the finest mangoes anywhere and defines the region's spring.

For its size, Ratnagiri carries remarkable history. Thibaw Palace, a three-storey mansion built in 1910 to 11, was the exile home of Thibaw Min, the last king of Burma, deposed by the British and held here until his death in 1916, a strange, poignant corner of imperial history preserved as a museum. The city is also the birthplace of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the towering figure of the early independence movement, whose ancestral home is now a memorial; and it was here, during his internment in the 1920s and 30s, that the reformer V.D. Savarkar built the Patit Pavan Mandir, opened to all castes. Guarding the shore is Ratnadurg Fort, a horseshoe-shaped stronghold wrapped around a headland, with a Bhagwati temple and long sea views.

The coast is the everyday pleasure, Bhatye and Aare-Ware beaches, the fishing jetties, and the string of shores running up to Ganpatipule, only about 25 km north. MyTripMyTravel runs Ratnagiri as a rounded Konkan leg: coastal heritage and forts, unhurried beaches, honest Malvani-Konkani seafood, and, in season, the mango orchards that made the region famous, easily linked with Ganpatipule, Tarkarli, or Kolhapur.