Goan Rhapsody 4.

By the time we could drag ourselves out of bed again a couple of hours had passed by. We had our lunch at Souza Lobos on Calangute beach, and called our favourite rickshaw guy that we had discovered by fluke to take us to Fort Aguada. This guy was one interesting character, willing to go anywhere when all the other rick and cab guys had made a fuss, and he won us over with his quirkyness and discounted




our favourite rickshaw







rates. He even assured us he could arrange any other vehicle if we needed it, and he did. We had used one of his contacts cars to get us to Thivim station when we were leaving Goa

Fort Aguada is more popularly know as the fort where Dil Chahta Hai was shot. You can see the sea in the distance from certain points, and it was the perfect place to have your own personal photo shoot for memorable Goan memories. But its really far from Baga-Calangute, and the summer sun that was not so bad till then had finally began to show its presence.

you can see the lighthouse in the distance

There is an equally picturesque lighthouse near the fort, but I was wiped out and I sat near the fort with two others from our group, drinking…Naariyal Pani. Finally!

After the fort we headed off to Panjim. Now we were told that there were 2 ways to get to it. One was from the highway and the other by ferry. We were told to take the ferry. It was just a short way away from sunset by the time we made it to the ferry, the setting sun shining over the water. We were the only people there sitting in an enclosed vehicle, and we felt like we were lab samples on display the way everyone was staring at us till we reached the other side. The ferry is a service provided by the government that’s free if you're on foot, but we had to pay 10 Rupees. Fair enough I think.

We were planning to head to Cidade de Goa, where there is a Casino. We ended up in the wrong place and we had already let go of our rick by then, so we had to hire another cab after a lot of bargaining. But it was a brand new Innova in really good condition. And the guy driving it acted as a tour guide, pointing out all the interesting things on the way.

Panjim is absolutely beautiful, and it looked so different from whatever we had seen and come to expect so far. The houses, the roads, the decorative street lights, the orderly beaches that resembled the Corniches of Gulf countries, Panjim made us feel like we were in another country for a while.

The casino at Cidade had 200 bucks entry/cover. It had a decent number of games to play, and after making the rounds, most of us ended up settling into the Roulette table. At first we played with (calculated) guess work where we thought there was a system and a pattern, and where we ended up being right for a really long time and I ended up doubling my money. But the quasi-system failed us eventually, so 3 of us stuck to a new system where we’d bet on the 3 columns or rows in 2 of the slots. So earlier when we played even-odd/ black-red whatever, we gave ourselves a 50% chance of winning. But in the new system we had a 66.67% chance of winning.

We got greedy and you couldn’t blame us, the game just sucks you in and we kept at it cause we felt we could win more. The only rule we’d kept for ourselves was to break even. And in the end all of us won a bit of money. We had to leave by around 1 am after maybe 4-5 hours of playing, and that to because by then the crowd was becoming unpleasant, filled with icky old dudes who were leching at us even though they had their wives next to them

Getting a cab back home was a nightmare. The hotel provides them to you, but at a price. A very high one. They ended up charging us over a grand. But we had no choice so we had to take it. We went back by the highway. The night air was fragrant, and the weather was beautiful. And the cab flew over the up and down roads and got us safely back before 2.

Our last day in Goa was spent in shopping, eating and lounging around. We were all sorry to leave, but we were leaving at the right time. I had stretched myself as far as I could go. Food poisoning is not easy to deal with even when you're at home, and being in a strange place and having to take care of yourself taught me many things, particularly about myself. I learnt that I was strong, and I could handle anything life threw my way. I learnt I had tremendous strength of mind, and an iron will, and that it is possible to deal with anything if you just convince yourself hard enough. I learnt I had so many people that love me, and cared about me no matter where they were. And I finally got over my phobia of public bathrooms because really I didn’t have much of a choice. Here’s a list of the locations of some of my favourite loos for when my body just didn’t want to behave:

Baristas (towards Baga beach)
Sunny Side Up (Candolim beach)
Souza Lobo (Calangute beach)
Brittos (strictly ok)
Mambos
Cidade De Goa (Panjim)

one of the many that i was forced to include in all my sightseeing

We made some more blunders on our way back home. For one, Thivim Station has only one track, and the boogie numbers are written on the opposite side in two different direction, one for when you're going to Mangalore and one for Mumbai, so we actually stood in the wrong place for quite some time before we realised it and ran in the opposite direction with our bags. Later on, we had planned to get off at Dadar where the train doesn’t stop for very long. So when we were fast asleep we were jerked awake and we rushed to the door and managed to throw all our bags off the train before we realised that we had gotten off at Thane. We quickly dumped everything back on, at one point I actually thought I was going to get left behind, and afterwards we stood near the door for ages because we couldn’t stop laughing.

It was a brilliant and highly eventful trip all in all, learnt some life lessons, made a bunch of new friends, and had very interesting experience.

We’re already planning our next trip for next month. Hope it works out…fingers crossed :)

Goan Rhapsody 3.

The next morning I decided to go down alone to buy myself something healthy to eat since there was absolutely nothing in our apartment. I asked a bunch of people where the local fruit market was, and armed with my wallet and cellphone, I headed out. It felt really strange at first, walking around in an unknown place all by myself. Although I’ve been traveling all my life, this was a bit of a first for me, so it was absolutely exhilarating.

The walk was long, and I had so many things to think about. But I was constantly flooded with phone calls from friends and family back home, asking me how I was holding up. So much love from so far away filled me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I could actually feel myself healing a little. Even though my health was far from improved.

I passed by a huge temple 2 minutes away from the market and, on a spur of the moment decision, I went inside. It was cool, empty and beautiful. I’m not a Hindu, and I dont believe in the concept of religion, but at that moment I wanted to make a little prayer. So I stood there in front of the idol of God, and prayed fervently for the rest of my trip to be ok. And so far away from home, alone in the dark, I prayed for the strength to get through it all.

After that I went to the market. I was given instructions to buy only apples, pomegranates and bananas. And to get myself some nariyal paani if possible. But the strange thing about Goa, despite all the coconut trees, is that no one there seems to sell them anywhere. And believe me, I looked everywhere for it cause it was either that or electral water, which I absolutely despise from the swirly bottom of my heart.

So electral water it was…throughout the whole damn trip! Wretchedly disgustingly nasty stuff! The others had planned to go for water sports that day, and I went along with them to Brittos for lunch. Our car was supposed to pick me up in an hour, but due to unknown reasons that I think were connected to that Saturday night when I was put of commission, the car never came back from the garage again.

I had to trudge through the whole of the Baga beach road in the hot afternoon sun to look for a cab back to the apartment. Everywhere I went people would point in another direction and tell me I could get a cab from there. One helpful waiter from Anthonys even called a cab guy he knew to ask him where he was (his cab was standing right there). But no luck. Because it was off season, most cabs had started to wrap up business. Which means there were a whole bunch of cabs lying around at the side of the road, but no one to drive them. How strange…and how horribly inconvenient! I finally found ONE guy who was charging me an exorbitant rate of 100 bucks (it usually costed only 50-70 bucks) and he told me I could look elsewhere if I wanted something cheaper. He knew I had no choice, so after almost half an hour of cab (and soul) searching, I made my way back home.

I spent the rest of my alone time washing my sandy clothes, clearing up the room, talking on the phone to convince whoever called that I was ok (even though I wasn’t) and watching the news. Yes the news! CNN can be oddly comforting when you feel like crap. Oh and I slept as well. For hours on end. I wanted to be better again asap cause I wanted to go out that night.

The others came back in the evening exhausted and sleepy. So after many hours of wondering if we were going anywhere that night or not, we finally headed out at midnight for dinner and Titos (sans car of course).

At the midway point of Infantaria we bumped into people who would turn out to be our friends for many moons to come, although we didn’t know it at the time.

We’d met many different kinds of people in Goa, who had many different ways of saying hello or asking us to get them entry into Titos. Some were polite, some creepy, some arrogant and most were just ordinary Indians from other parts of India. But this particular lot of people just struck us all as really nice and decent people, all at the same time. All of us instinctively trusted them for some odd reason. Most of our friends that we spoke to after the trip thought it was weird that we did, and that we continued to stay in touch with them after. But its just one of those strange things about life that are just totally fated in their randomness. For eg I was visiting pune for a one day trip just last week, and I was debating about whether I should call them up or not. And on the very first day I ended up bumping into one of them on M G Road when, in all these many years since I left school (I did some of my schooling there) I had NEVER bumped into any of my batchmates EVER. I ended up meeting some of them later that night for a coffee.

We ended having dinner with them before Titos, that went on till 2 am because none of us could stop talking. And when we finally got to Titos there were only 5 minutes left till closing time. It was the same story in Mambos.

So all of us and 2 of them headed to this place in Calangute where we could just sit and talk. We headed of to Candolim beach at around 5 am on foot. The way to it was beautiful. The sand was cool and clean, the path was secluded and twisted every which way, and it was flanked with greenery and flowers around us and over us, making us feel like we were walking in a never ending maze, even though we could hear the sound of the sea the entire time.

We made a beeline for the water as soon as we saw it, the beach was empty and in those moments on that beach it felt like we were the only people left in the world.

I got my wish of being on a beach in Goa at sunrise. There was an entire line of ships and boats twinkling in the distance, cutting the horizon in two. Dawn crept up slowly behind us, and before we knew it, one of the most incredible and memorable nights of our life had come to an end.
We eventually made it back to our room by 9:30 am, that is after we spent over an hour talking about whatever happened in a secluded corner of our apartments compound because we were too keyed up and weren’t ready to have it all end yet. Eventually we showered and slept, exhausted but exhilarated as well.

Goan Rhapsody 2.

A trip to Goa is incomplete without sunglasses, sunblock, and shorts. Leave your jeans behind. And don’t forget your digi cam, beach bag, and floaters. I looked like I was going on a holiday from the very first step I took out of my house. But the one thing I didn’t really think about, which I should have, was food and medicine. I took the wrong pills thinking I could cure my self the next morning. I was partially right. But I didn’t take the accompanying medicine which would counter the nausea the first pill brought. But it wouldn’t have made a difference any way. Food poisoning doesn’t go away in a day. Although I did my best to ignore it and pretend I was ok.

I really took care of what I was eating. Breakfast at Infantaria was a simple affair for me, even though I was dying inside when I saw all the food the others had ordered for themselves.

By afternoon I got my prescription medication from my doctor and I was barely hanging on. But not once did I think of going home. We went shopping for our Saturday night party wear, we went to Baga beach and were in the water at Candolim.

Candolim was amazingly clean. And surprisingly empty. After a bit of bargaining we got ourselves chairs and umbrellas because the sun was really beating down on us by then. The guys who owned the umbrellas offered to give us ‘Jasmine’ foot massages (for a price). We politely declined. All the others wanted to go in the water after some time but I just couldn’t work up the nerve. I have a bit of a fear, of the sea. If I enter the water beyond a certain point I start panicking. Stupid, but true.

But little by little I did go into the water. First till my ankles, then knees, and then till my waist. But that’s about as far as I was willing to go. Entering the water made such a difference to the weather. It seemed to go from blazingly hot to amazingly cool. It felt like heaven and we were behaving like kids, holding hands and jumping at the waves and splashing around. We let the sea take over.

Theres a good Shack-like eating place at the edge of the beach called Sunny Side Up. Pretty decent. We were at the beach for as long as it was possible, and then we made our way to Mapusa market.

It was yet another really long drive. We’d noticed that whenever any one told us that something was 5-10 minutes away, it usually translated to half an hour atleast. We ultimately got used to the Goan Standard Time concept. Even if something was far away it was just a matter of 2 minutes to any one giving you directions. Maybe it was because there is no traffic so long distances can be covered faster, but even 20 minutes of traveling in goa can seem like a lot, even if you count your blessings in Mumbai if it takes you that much time to get to anywhere.

Mapusa market was a bit of a let down. We didn’t know what we were expecting, but it was just like a weekly food bazaar. Very crowded and filled with local people getting their grocery shopping done. We looked really conspicuous in our shorts and singlets, so after looking around to make sure we weren’t missing anything interesting, we headed back.

The plan for that night after a coffee stop ( where we met some people that we helped out for entry at a club) and some more shopping (in the dark…power outage) was to head to Mambos which is open till around 6 in the morning on Saturdays. But by the time we got ready and were out of the apartment I lost my nerve. My condition had worsened as the day progressed and my false bravado had reached the end of its limit.

So I stayed back alone. It was a night I’ll never forget. Pride is a foolish thing to hang on to sometimes. I didn’t want to spoil the trip for anyone, and I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s Saturday night in Goa, so I stuck it out on my own. At one point I was so weak that I felt like the waves of the sea, the strong ocean tide was pushing me back and forth. Washing me away with it. I watched the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on TV even though I’d seen it before (the guy who plays Aurther Dent is so cute) and when that was over I watched the PowerPuff girls on Cartoon Network. And after that I don’t remember much. I went to sleep some time after 3:30 in the morning.

Goan Rhapsody 1.

Like any urban Indian under-forty-something-year old I had been bitten by the Goa bug for as long as I could remember. It had always been a dream of mine to visit it someday, and then to go there again and again. Maybe it’s because I’d heard so much about it, or maybe it was because it was one of those things you just had to do so you wouldn’t feel like cringing the next time a conversation about Goa came up somewhere because you're the only one of the lot who hadn’t been there yet.

Now I'm not usually one of those people that needs to follow what other people do. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I don’t listen to the latest whatever music on the radio, I don’t go for movies just because they have rave reviews and a big star cast, and I have a policy of avoiding best-sellers and the ever popular self help books like the plague. But Goa, Goa was just one of those must do things that I had to do or die trying.

My big chance finally arrived this year. After talking about it and planning and canning said plans for so many years, I was finally on my way.

Traveling by road was out of the question, so we had only 2 other options. Now at the time plane tickets costed Rs 500 only (dunno how much it is now) but the tax on each ticket was around 2-2500 Rupees!! What a rip off!

So we caught the Konkan Kanyakumari from V.T station at 11 pm. We had had a minor mishap on the way to the station (we got into the wrong train to go to town, one that changed direction and went the opposite way after…Dadar (I think) Anyway after jumping off with our bags and, getting into the right train in the nick of time, we made it to our seats (in the right train, this time we checked it thoroughly) after a LONG walk.

It was an AC sleeper and I had volunteered to take the topmost bunk (which no one wanted for some strange reason). We stayed up and talked and talked for as long as we possibly could before sleep took over…we had a long day ahead of us.

Generally people (seasoned Goan-holidaymaking friends) had advised us to get off at Thivim, but we had transport arrangements from Madgaon(last stop). Madgaon station finally made us feel like we were in Goa which was crammed with tourists and souvenir shops filled with printed t-shirts, maps, trinkets…you name it, unlike the route to it which, although was all coconut trees and quaint little houses, reminded us too much of the route to Pune.

It was a long drive to Calangute where we were going to stay at a studio apartment, but it was worth it. There were so many beautiful things to see on the way. The churches, the neon orange/yellow/green houses, the advertisements for beer all over the place, the trees-everywhere!! We could already smell the sea.

We had made it to Goa in the first week of the off-season, which starts in may and goes on till the end of the monsoons. So a lot of shopping places and eating joints, along with taxi-wallahs and certain shops were already shut, and the rest of them were planning to follow suite a few days after we’d landed.

North Goa was fairly commercial, with everything seeming to cater to the tourist-Indian or otherwise. One thing that we thought was really strange was the number of Baskin Robbins’ we’d come across over there… more than we’d usually get to see in Mumbai. But we were on such a high just by being in Goa that even the baristas and CCD’s seemed to be strange and exotic.

We had hit the beaches as soon as possible. A late Crab and beer lunch at Brittos hit the spot, and it felt like the world belonged to us at that point. After spending the whole day aimlessly (which was purposeful in its aimlessness) wandering, we headed to a place called Nine Bar in Anjuna which had been highly recommended. Damn but that place was really out of the way! Till we didn’t actually reach it we thought we were seriously lost, and even our driver was thoroughly confused. The way to Ninebar was dark, the roads were narrow and constantly twisting and turning.

But it was totally worth it. The crowd was decent, the music after sometime sounded pretty good too. The dance area was open air, the place was dark and had just the right amount of light, and everything there was insanely cheap, the quantities generous. We even managed to buy some gajras to wear like necklaces, and the smell of the flowers just added to the mood. The only problem (apart from the distance) was the fact that it shuts down by 10pm, yes that’s right, 10 PM! There were people who were handing out flyers for other parties after 10, but they all sounded too dodgy and they really weren’t our scene.

So we headed off to Mambos after that, but not before making a pit stop to get something to eat (where I ate the most without being aware of it, fool that I am), which changed the course of my trip, and in some strange way, my life as well.
That was the night I went and got myself some food poisoning.