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.