Goa Trip Part 3

Our activities the previous night went on late into the night and consequently we woke up late the next morning.

On our third day in Goa, we had little to do apart from catching a bus to Ramnagar in order to reach Dandeli. After asking around in Panaji City Bus Stand we found out that there’re buses which leave to Ramnagar every hour.

We decided to go to St. Francis Xavier’s Church as we had sometime at our disposal. Xavier’s church is located in Old Goa and is approximately 15kilometers away from Panaji city.
The ride to the church is pretty intriguing as you can observe the newer buildings of Goa slowly starts to fade away while the old red-tile roofed buildings of Old Goa begins to show.

St. Xavier’s church which was built in the 16^th century holds the mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier in a casket. The chapel is huge with intricate designs on their walls. I found a notice in this church which read something like… ‘take photos of the church but not of people’. Weird! But anyway, I adhered to it and took pictures only of the relics inside the chapel.

The Casket which contains
the relics

It was already 3 in the afternoon by the time we were done with St. Xavier’s church. We headed back to Baga to our guest house which was 20 kilometers from Old Goa to pick up our luggage. After settling the guest house bill and bidding adieu to Mrs. N, we drove back to Panaji to return our Activas and board our bus to Ramnagar.

Departing Goa gave me a feeling of sadness as I was getting away from ‘The City of Night’! The beaches, the energetic night life, and the serene forts are some things which definitely call me back to Goa!

Our bus to Ramnagar left at 4.30 in the afternoon. Luckily for us, the three hour journey to Ramnagar was quite engaging. The conversation between the conductor of the bus and a guy who wished to relieve his bladder kept us entertained for quite a while during our journey. The bus driver finally agreed to stop the bus for 2 minutes and the entertainment ended.

We reached Ramnagar Bus Stand at a nippy 8 o’clock in the evening. The owner of the home-stay which we'd booked at Dandeli picked us up from the bus stand and we were 'home' after an hour's drive. There began the Dhandeli part of our 6 day trip. Little did I know then that Dandeli would surpass the fun we had at Goa!

Goa Trip Part 2

I see your hair is burnin'

Hills are filled with fire

If they say I never loved you

You know they are a liar

Drivin' down your freeways

Midnight alleys roam…

Cops in cars,

The topless bars

Never saw a woman...

So alone,

So alone,

So alone,

So alone

Motel Money,

Murder Madness

Let's change the mood from glad to sadness… 

The first thing we did next morning was to return the Santro which we’d gotten as a replacement for the Swift. We exchanged it for 3 more Activas.

At Emmanuel's

We had brunch at BAGA beach in Emmanuel’s Beach Café and the food was yummy. The vegetarian sizzler, the tomato and cheese pasta, the spaghetti bolognaise pasta were some delicacies which were appetizing. Although the food is similar to what we get in Bangalore, the Goans sell their food with a heavy price tag! The brunch at Emmanuel’s costed us approximately 300bucks per person. But I shouldn’t be complaining because the food and service was appreciable.

:-(

While I was still contemplating about entering the water, my friends had already entered the sea deep enough that I could only see their heads from the shoreline. The number of beaches I’ve been to during these 3.5 years of my college life has made me weary of them and therefore I decided to sit this one out. I sat down on the sand on a shaded spot and I was left with no choice but to guard my friends’ footwear!

The racist Lifeguard's stool

As I sat there in my vantage point checking out some bikini clad women, I noticed that a wide part of the beach had only foreigners swimming in the water. The lifeguard who sat on an elevated stool would shoo away anyone but foreigners, who went to enter the water. And this, he would determine only by the skin tone of the people entering this part of the beach! Outright Racism!! The ones who were shooed away had to swim in the remote and more crowded parts of the beach. Helpless as I was, watching this bigotry, I was ticked off by how people sellout so easily just for a little money! We weren’t allowed to swim at a beach in our own country! Disgusting!

An Interesting side story – Four of my friends were put up in a guest house which was let out by a lady by name Mrs. N. And the remaining three of us (my twin, one of my friends, and I) were put up in a guest house which was a stone’s throw away from Mrs. N’s guest house. This guest house was also rented out by a lady...I’m gonna call her Mrs. Uncooperative. The guest house which Mrs. N had given us was much more spacious and cleaner than the one which Mrs. Uncooperative had given us. Hence, the 3 of us wanted to move in to Mrs. N’s guest house to join the other four. But Mrs. Uncooperative, as her name suggests, wasn’t willing to refund our deposit so that we could move into Mrs. N’s. So we were literally stuck at Mrs. Uncooperative’s guest house for 3 days.

On the second day, when we got back to our guest houses after playing at the beach (luckily for us) we found a used something in our room (probably left by the previous occupants of that room) and I’m not sure if we were sickened or delighted more! :-D We used this as a reason to coax Mrs. U to refund our money and we gladly moved into Mrs. N’s ten minutes later.

Mrs. N's guest house

It was 3.30 by the time all of us returned from the beach to our guest house and got ready. Meanwhile, our (new) landlady, Mrs. N, a very garrulous but good-hearted woman bored me for half an hour with her subtle but cutthroat business principles and how she never wished to offend the other landladies in the area. This conversation sparked off only because I’d gone downstairs and knocked on her door requesting her to fill up the water jugs in our rooms. Clearly Mrs. N didn’t believe in the principle that a conversation must have equal contribution from both parties. Nevertheless, it was a nice chat!

Chapora Fort

Our next place for sightseeing was the Chapora Fort. Located strategically high up on a hillock, this fort overlooks the Chapora river on one side and the Sea on the other side. The Chapora fort, though mostly in ruins today, gives a spectacular view of the Vagator Beach and the Anjuna Beach. Two of my friends discovered a pathway and trekked down from the fort onto Vagator Beach. The rest of us reached Vagator beach by road. Vagator beach doesn’t have as many cafés and restaurants and it’s more tranquil than any of the other beaches.

Trying to trek down Chapora
Fort onto Vagator Beach

At 5.30 in the evening we were still jobless and didn’t want to head back to our guest house this early. Therefore we took up a wild-goose chase to find this pub by name CURLYS (on my brother’s insistence… sigh!) located on Anjuna beach. After maneuvering our Activas through narrow alleys, a Tibetian exhibition, and someone’s private land, we made it just on time to CURLYS, to gaze at the setting sun while we enjoyed a drink.

Curlys pub definitely gives an answer to the question why foreigners from all over the world, leaving all their luxuries behind, choose to put up in beach-side shacks and holiday in Goa!

After all the eating and drinking we’d been doing throughout the day, we decided to eat something light for dinner. We ate at a budget hotel by name “Spicy Idlys” at Baga. Although we were glad to meet a Kannada speaking waiter, he stoically asked us “yen order thogoLLi” in a heavily accented Hubli-Kannada. Dinner was ok.

What we did the rest of the night shall remain untold!

City of Night! (Goa Trip Part 1)

“Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

Took a look around, see which way the wind blow

Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows?

Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light?

Or just another lost angel

City of night

City of night

City of night

City of night

Woo, c'mon”

-LA Woman (The Doors)

This song (one of my favorite) can be precisely attributed to Goa! The night life of Goa is truly exhilarating.

I went to Goa with my friends last week and the trip was quite eventful. Me along with six of my friends set out by the 5.30pm bus from Bangalore and after a 15 hour bone-shaking journey (thanks to KSRTC Rajahamsa), we reached our destination, Panaji city, at 8.30 the next morning.

Fort Aguada

As we alighted at Panaji City Bus Stand, we were welcomed by a group of touts asking if we wanted to rent cars, bikes or get accommodation. We randomly picked one of those agents and rented a Maruti Swift and an Activa for ourselves through his agency.

After looking around in Mapusa and Baga, we found a guest house in Baga, which was rented out by a lady who lived in the ground floor of her building. The place was very spacious and the price was reasonable.

Once we were done having brunch at a café in BAGA, we set out to AGUADA FORT. It is a common misconception that the movie Dil Chahta Hai was shot at AGUADA FORT. I found out that the movie was actually shot at another fort by name CHAPORA FORT which lies on a hillock in northern Goa. Aguada Fort is as big as a football field and is surrounded by moats on three sides. The fourth side overlooks the Arabian Sea. There is nothing much to this fort except for the serene location and the scenic view of the Arabian Sea.

Asked not to look at the camera!

The day had been going on fine so far. But after our visit to Aguada Fort, we were duly reminded of the ill luck which people usually connect to Friday the Thirteenth. Yes… our first day in Goa was on the Friday the Thirteenth. Our first misfortune was a exasperating encounter with the Goan Police. We were stopped by the police (just when my brother took over the wheel :-P) for “over speeding” when we were driving only 10kmph above the 40kmph speed limit inside Panaji City. The stupid cop wouldn’t settle for a bribe amount less than Rs. 2300 and kept threatening that he’d “compound” the Maruti Swift which we had rented.

Deciding what to tell the cop

We lost an hour trying to negotiate with the retard who was endeavoring to read out some traffic offences and their penalties out of a book on traffic offences. Luckily for us, some guy who was passing by knew the owner of the car and he came to our rescue. He spoke to the cop in Konkani and convinced him to not “compound” the car and we were free to go after paying a bribe of Rs. 1000.

Sunset at Kolva Beach

Not being sure if we should continue using this car, we half heartedly set out to Kolva Beach which was 50 kilometers away from Panaji. An hour’s drive later, we reached Kolva beach just in time for sun set. Kolva beach, according to me is a replica of Juhu Beach of Mumbai. The place is buzzing with a lot of activity. You’ll find bhel puri vendors, people who draw temporary tattoos, cool drinks sellers and anything else which you can amuse yourself with while you are at a beach!

I'm asking in my butler Hindi if
he's fixed all the buckles properly

The seven of us decided to amuse ourselves with Parasailing. The boatmen would take us into the sea on their motorboats. We’d be harnessed to the parachute through belts and then we’d be sailing in the air as the motorboat tows us at a high speed. I had never done parasailing before and had high expectations of it.

The Parasailing ride we were offered here was a slight disappointment. The parachute took off into the air as the motorboat gained speed, and we were in the air for hardly 30 seconds when he started retracting the rope and slowing down the motor boat. Clever way to rip off 500 bucks from you!

If not by parasailing, we decided to raise our spirits by drinking Fenny... a Goan spirit brewed from coconut or cashew apple! Fenny... according to me... tastes like highly acidified vodka. Atleast vodka has a palatable flavor to it. The Cashew Fenny I drank had a bitter after-taste to it. My spirits didn't go any higher! :-|

The unlucky Maruti Swift which we
pushed for more than a kilometer

At 8pm when we decided to leave Kolva Beach, our Maruti Swift refused to start whatsoever. We spent three hours searching and picking up two mechanics one after the other to repair our car to no avail. After countless exchange of phone calls, our agent finally sent us a Santro as a replacement at 11pm and it was midnight when we reached Baga. Reaching Baga came as a very big relief to the seven of us as we weren’t sure how we’d come back 50 kilometers from Kolva with just one Activa and no public transport.

The amazing part of Goa is that even late in the night, the streets are crowded with pedestrians (I’m talking about pretty looking women ;-)) in their best attires, holding a bottle of alcohol in one hand and walking down to pubs and discos.

We decided to hit one of the beach cafés for a drink and an hour later we went back to our guest house and crashed on our beds.

First Trip of the year

Adding yet another pleasurable long drive to my experience, I commenced this year's travel by doing my biannual trip to Mysore last weekend!

Mysore, being the city where my grandmother lives, is a place I frequent more than I visit other relatives who stay in Bangalore!

I was driving down to Mysore this time for two reasons... first, my grandmother who was visiting us needed a ride back home... second, I wanted to play with my cousin's German Shephard Dog, Rocky, who is just 7 months old.

My Twin, Rocky, and I

The last time I played with Rocky was in September 2011 and back then he was small enough for me to carry in my arms. Now, I was eager to see him fully grown and looked forward to spending all weekend playing with him.

The onward journey was slow and steady owing to the fact that my grandmother dislikes speeding. Anxious as she was, to sit through a journey of 3 hours, she forwent her afternoon nap concentrating on the highway traffic, while the westward sun glared intensely inside our car at 3.30 in the afternoon. We reached Mysore before dusk and the rest of the evening was uneventful.

My grandma watches as my
cousin tries to make Rocky jump.

Waking up to MS Subbulakshmi's Suprabatha blaring from the neighbor's house at 5am in the morning is one of those traits which remind you of Mysore’s archaic lifestyle. The wide tranquil streets of the Jayalakshmipuram area… the foggy weather every morning… are some peculiarities which define Mysore to me! I spent the day playing with Rocky.

I set out to Bangalore next morning at 8 so that I could beat the Sunday traffic on the Mysore-Bangalore Highway. Speaking Out of experience, the traffic from Mysore to Bangalore on Sunday evenings is massive. The average speed on the highway drops hugely much to my frustration.

The drive back to Bangalore was effortless with little traffic on the highway. I was home by 10.30.