My Trip to Goa: Day 4

This is last post in my Goa Trip series. I am posting this after a long gap of posting Day 3 experiences at Goa.

So back to Day 3 in Goa, we spent day exploring beaches on our Kinetic. Before evening, we realized that we hadn’t yet booked ourselves a return ticket to Mumbai. Trains were all booked. We were to spend the next day in Mumbai before catching the night flight to Delhi. We certainly could not miss spending one day with friends and family in Mumbai.

So we set out to Paulo travels office in Panjim on our Kinetics. Panjim is about 35 kms from Candolim Island. We had no clue about the roads. We asked around and used the ferry on Mandovi river to cross it. As soon as I landed in Panjim, my eyes fell on the movie theater in front. It was then playing Khoya Khoya Chand, a movie I had not watched and wanted to watch. My first instinct was, let’s watch this movie here. Of course, my friends berated me. You have come all the way to Goa just to watch a movie that you can watch in Delhi? I had no choice but to agree with them. 😦

View of a Panjim church at night. We just passed by them.

We asked around and rushed to Kadamba bus stand. To our dismay, there were no tickets available for Mumbai at either Raj travels or Paulo travels. We asked around and finally managed to book ourselves a Volvo for next day to Goregaon in Mumbai. Our main purpose fulfilled, we decided to buy goodies from Panjim for our families.

My Trip to Goa: Day 3

Lost in Goa

After indulging in water sports in Goa, we started moving toward our rented Kinetic. What! we did not remember where we parked it. All exit points looked same to us. Sand and shacks everywhere. And you know what, when we asked for the directions, we were told that we were still at Candolim beach and not Calangute! Calangute was just a road away at next turn! We spent 15-20 minutes to search for our bikes, but no avail! 😦 I was getting tired, hence I was very chauvinistically suggested that girls should sit at Barista so that guys could get the bikes! Well, we girls revengefully ordered most expensive drink at Barista, hoping to get it paid by absentees. 🙂

At a Goan Disco

At night, we decided to go to famous disco called Tito’s at Bagha beach. They were having a full-blown party-cum-stage show that night that cost 4500/- for a couple. There was a long queue that would have easily taken us 20 minutes to buy their tickets. The show was too crowded inside as well. We decided to go to Mambo’s that was adjacent to Tito’s. It was also crowded, yet comparatively it was not as suffocating as Tito’s. They were charging 1200/- per couple. We were starving for dinner. So we verified at the counter, if they did serve food. They answered yes, a false claim that we were to discover later in edibles. 😦 Once inside Mambo’s, we were told in the kitchen that only kathi rolls were available. I guess that night we all had only kathi rolls, drinks and hookah. I had gin and tonic. I don’t remember what else I drank that night, but I remember being bit tipsy. 😛

My Trip to Goa: Day 2

Day 2: We hired a bike in the morning for rest of our trip. Actually it was Kinetic, for 600 bucks a day! With a map in hand, we set out to Calangute beach, king of all beaches in Goa. We were all charged up for water sports. And the sight of parachutes flying in the sky over beaches was a huge temptation. Folks were parasailing! 🙂

Without wasting any time, we bargained (a must at this time of year!) and went for parasailing. There were seven of us on a speedboat that sailed in water for parasailing. Four of us were two couples from a separate group. Both the girls in the group were petrified at the prospect of parasailing. They made lot of noise about their fear. To tell you truth, I was petrified too inside. I had been asking my friend since morning, “Would I be able to parasail?” He would patiently answer, “Why wouldn’t you be able to?”

The men manning the speedboat tried to show us a demo of para sailing that failed due to huge gust of wind. Everyone started making noise that this was a demoralizing demo. Girls (excluding me) were more hyper. However, after a very small brief, one-by-one each of us was ready to fly up in air with parachute, harnessed safely to the boat. I went in second, ahead of others in my group. Why? I thought going in second was lucky.

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. 🙂