5 Reasons To Head To Madh Island This Weekend That Doesn't Involve A Beach

Bollywood Stars is a slightly bizarre one: a family-run restaurant that opened up in Madh Island a few years ago. We decided to go and check it out after the locals recommended this place to us.

It’s a multi-cuisine restaurant with a unique feature–it’s an open-air space with huts that patrons can sit in and eat. Complete with a bamboo structure and framed photographs of almost every Bollywood star. We found mainly tourists gorging on the tandoori dishes and sipping on the beers. Their menu is pretty basic with an extensive amount of tandoor dishes like kebabs and tikkas–we liked the paneer tikkas the best.

Price for Two: INR 950

You might have probably spotted this one in Bollywood movies like Baazigar, Mard or Khalnayak. In fact, it's even made appearances in many episodes of the Hindi crime series—CID. Built back in the 17th century, this Portuguese-built fort offers a breathtaking view of the city's skyline and the Marve creek.

Although it's currently under control of the Indian Air Force and Navy, people are free to head there and take it all the nature. However, we warn you to be prepared to climb up a lot of steps, just in time for a lovely sunset!

On the same road as Bollywood Stars is the Passion United Astro Fields—a football turf that has its other branch on Kandivali. The football pitch is well maintained and doesn’t get that crowded so you can book it up for as many hours as you want. If you're looking for something beyond beach football then go the Astro way and get your friends on board to form a team. You need to book the field in advance which is charged on an hourly basis.

Timings: All days, 6am to 2am

Price: INR 1,400 per hour (weekdays), INR 2,100 (weekend) for 10 players.

Erangal village is a colourful and picturesque quaint town by the blue Arabia sea. Cross the village to come to the Erangal beach–and you’ll find St Bonaventure Church. It’s a small quintessential village church that has been there since 1940. We did not find too many visitors and were by ourselves in the church for quite a while which was super surreal. Make sure your phone's charged because you're going to be taking a lot of pictures of the stained glass windows here simply because of how gorgeous they are. 

What We Love: Its USP is that it’s bang opposite the beach with a pretty neat sea-view though the beach is mainly for fishermen to dry their fish.

We'd say avoid heading to the islands during monsoons. Summers and winters are the best time to hit up this place. Plan your day until 7 pm as post that getting hold of autos or buses gets tough, especially if you’re coming by ferry.

For solo travellers, please keep in mind Madh Island is isolated and isn’t as touristy a place and we’d strongly advise against going by yourself. So get a gang of your friends and make a lovely one-day trip to Madh.