My Trip to Goa: Day 1

My trip to Bombay and Goa was business-cum-pleasure. I will write only the pleasure part here. 🙂 And I will start my story after arrival at Goa via Bombay.

After researching for few hours on Web and Lonely Planet guides, the beach of our choice was Candolim beach. A very good decision in the hindsight. 🙂 The more popular beaches like Calangute or Bagha were too crowded and commercial at this time of year. Candolim beach had right balance of privacy we needed and popularity. It was close to almost all our wannabe destinations in Goa. And Calangute beach was also few kilometers away.

People relaxing on sunbeds on Candolim beach. Of course, I did not set my eyes on this sunny view of beach until my day 2 at Goa.

Anticipating rush for Goa at new year eve, we booked our air tickets and hotel well within time. However, we were not sure about our choice of hotel choice. We had every intention of changing our hotel after we reached Goa. Until we actually landed there.

Our hotel, as it turned out, was a pleasant surprise. It was just a 5-minute walk from the beach. Well-maintained and also had a nice pool. Considering the new year crunch, rooms were very reasonably priced. In fact, we spent least on our hotel in our entire trip. However, this trip was expensive compared to my other trips. We spent about 36k per two persons including travel and food. But it was worth it, every minute of it. 🙂

Day 1: First thing that struck us when we de-boarded the train (from Mumbai) was that it was too hot in Goa. Ok, I knew Goa would not be as cold as Delhi. But I had no idea that it would be so hot that I would not be able to wear a even full-sleeved cotton T-shirt. And I was carrying only full-sleeved shirts and T-shirts. Darn! I needed a new wardrobe.

We were tired after our flight and train journey. It seemed that our hotel had been overbooked for the day on account of a guest overstaying. Sharon, who runs the hotel along with her family, promptly gave us a nice room (though not the one we had booked) to freshen up and have a afternoon nap. Sharon’s mother cooked us a nice vegetarian lunch at hotel. Also, food was cooked without onions, as requested by me. 🙂

We slept and woke up late in the evening after sunset. It was, then in late evening, we decided to explore our beach. We passed empty sunbeds while walking to beach. It was in complete darkness when I first laid eyes on a Goan beach. I was surprised to find that though beach shacks were crowded with people drinking and dancing on the music, there was actually no one at the waterfront! No one on a beach at Goa, just us!

There were high tides in the beach. Water made a huge gushing sound. Every few minutes the waterline would recede only to get back water with full force like a mini, sweet tsunami. My companions were very excited and running through water in dark. But I was scared and would cowardly urge them to move back to beachshacks! I could be heard shouting, “Don’t go deep, water might take you away, no one will even know, we are gone!” ha ha this in Goa! Of course, no one paid heed to me.

After a while, I did loosen up. I kicked off my floaters and waded in water as much as my meagre courage would permit. Cool and refreshing, that’s how water was. This was just beginning, we still had few more days to explore these beautiful, de-stressing waters. Hurrah! 🙂

I have just started telling my story and I realise that this post is becoming too long. More interesting stuff later. 🙂

to be continued in day 2 experiences