Travel: Head to a fifth book of Chikoo Festival in Dahanu this weekend

A chikoo sculpture combined for an progressing book of a fest

The start of a famous Dahanu-Gholvad chikoos can be traced behind to 1890 AD, when a shining Parsi businessman Sir Dinshaw Petit brought home a sapling of sapota from an outing to South American rainforests. Due to a miss of space in his home garden, he entrusted it to his crony Ardeshir Irani, who lived in Gholvad, Dahanu, 3 hours (roughly 150km) from Mumbai. The sapling blending to a meridian of a coastal encampment and a camp grew until a charge uprooted a cultivation. Then a internal rancher Merwan Khodadad, grafted a fruit onto a Rhyne tree. With stronger taproots, a tree began to bear luscious, murky brownish-red chikoos turn a year, heading to a mercantile growth of a region.

A internal performer plays Tarpa

Over a years, chikoos from a segment have done their approach to a APMC marketplace in Vashi, tools of India and regions in a Middle East. In a final dual decades, they have also lent themselves to several products including chips, pickles, mukhwaas (mouth freshener), chocolates, cereal flakes and many recently, a wine. If you’re penetrating to declare how a villagers applaud a medium fruit, conduct to a fifth book of Chikoo Festival, holding place over a weekend of Jan 21 and 22.

A guest plucks chikoo regulating a normal bedni instrument

“The thought is to boost a region’s tourism and yield farming entrepreneurship development,” says Prabhakar Save, who spearheads a festival cabinet and was obliged for a fest’s pregnancy in 2013, with support from MTDC, State Agriculture Department and internal organisations. To be hold in a camping belligerent in a beside encampment of Bordi, this book facilities 156 stalls charity chikoo and other agro-based products along with Parsi, Koli and Gujarati fare, as good as Warli handicrafts, interjection to a vast race of a Warli clan staying in a area. “The festival provides a height for internal communities and home-run ventures, mostly by a women of a village. The festival is eco-friendly; there won’t be a singular case of chemical fertiliser,” adds Save.

You can also soak in a country vibe with a line-up of activities, designed for kids and adults. These embody workshops on Warli painting, pottery, kite-making and bamboo-weaving conducted by internal experts, along with Warli folk dance performances where a clan dances to a beats of Tarpa, a normal trumpet-like instrument. You can also pointer adult for a four-kilometre Chikoo Run (on Sunday) or opt for Chikoo Safari, where we get to take a wander in chikoo orchards, learn how a fruit is cultivated and even bravery it regulating a normal Bedni, a prolonged hang with a steel harness.

FROM: Jan 21 to 22, 8 am to 8 pm
AT: SR Save Camping Ground, Bordi.
Log On To: Chikoofestival.com

Introducing Dahanu-Gholvad Chikoos
Though chikoos are grown in other tools of India too, namely, northern Karnataka, Kolkata and Bihar, a ones found in Dahanu are graphic given they can be cultivated around a year.

“The same tree will bear dual forms of chikoo – turn and elongated. They ambience opposite too — sweeter and we can ambience a granules,” says Milind Bafna, secretary, Maharashtra Rajya Chikoo Utpadak Sangh. Recently, a chikoos were postulated a GI (Geographical Identification) certificate by a government, and are now famous as Dahanu Gholvad Chikoos. The certificate helps a village direct a reward cost for them and assuring a customer of a quality.

Sip on chikoo wine?
“Chikoo is rarely perishable given a pH turn is 5.2. Hence, women use it in several products to make it final longer. Two decades ago, Sharda Patil, a Dahanu resident, brought together a organisation of women to object dry and make chips out of chikoos depressed off a trees. Today, many companies solar-dry and vaccum-pack them,” shares 31-year-old internal Priyanka Save, who runs a Hill Zill review in Bordi. She has roped in a Canadian fruit booze consultant to furnish chikoo-based wine, Fruzzanté during a resort’s micro-winery. Priced during Rs 255 (for 330 ml), a tropical-flavoured booze is prepared by an eight-week routine of distillation of pristine fruit extract.

Sign up
Mumbai Rangers is conducting one-day trips to a festival with pick-up points from Dadar (E), Andheri and Goregaon.
ON: Jan 21 and 22, 6.30 am 
COST: Rs 970 
EMAIL: connect@mumbairangers.com 
CALL: 9819299164

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