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 :)