We reached Malvan on the third day of a Konkan trip. Being a popular tourist destination, we didn’t bother to book accommodation. Armed with a list of ‘home-stays’ and their telephone numbers, given to us by our home-stay owner at Kunkeshwar, we started calling up these places soon after we reached Malvan at noon. We were all damn hungry, but decided that it would be safer to find a place to stay before anything else. This later proved right. AD, the only person conversant in Marathi in our team, called up the first number. The person attended the call asked…