Goan Holiday! Wednesday, Oct 3 2007

Went over to goa for the October Second weekend, which explains the long hiatus. Well, what can I say except….”I love Goa.”

The place is a scenic paradise, with the Western Ghats meeting the sea and the people are amazing. Friendly and helpful, they made a good trip into a great one!

But first food. Ms. Potnis, my resident blog consultant informed me that most vegetarians don’t visit Goa because they can’t get vegetarian food. Well oh veggies, fear not. This is no longer true. Sure, you cant eat true Goan Food (unless you think fish is vegetarian), but anything else that is vegetarian is available here. From Vegetable Biryanis, to amazing pasta in spinach sauce. Naan’s and Kadai Vegetables, to Sweet Corn Soup and Porridge. There is something to appeal to every palate. I would personally suggest Munchies, off StarRock (another fine joint) junction, which has excellent variety.

Next, the beaches. I did not visit all of them, I will admit. My group of friends did visit Baga and Calangute beach, and while you could play a great game of frisbee there, I found the place a wee bit crowded. Nice beach, great view and shallow waters, but too many people!

We were staying near Anjuna, and finally wandered down to visit the Anjuna beach. The approach road was dreadful, but the beach itself was heavenly. Its rather isolated, and almost empty of people, and is constantly buffeted by the sea breeze which seems to funnel down to this beach. The breakers are rough, and threaten to topple you, and the beach itself is wonderful. I loved it. We also spotted Vagator beach which was not bad either, but Anjuna remains my favourite beach.

The Chapura fort is another place to visit. The view from there is great, and even the slightly intrepid can feel pleasantly pleased when they clamber down the hill-face to venture towards the rocky coastline. I would suggest company on the trek down though, for safety reasons, as well as to click good looking photographs!

We (the little gang I went with) also hired a Tata Sumo and wandered down towards South Goa. Amazing roads, and while we never did reach our destination (a beach i don’t remember the name of), the drive was amazing. I also learned why people like driving SUV’s (even a sad one like the TATA Sumo). Its a great way to ride!
I am not a big drinker, and I also discovered I am not a pool player either. But I did love the barstool of a roadside bar and pool joint in Calangute. A nice place, with not much smoke in evidence, and great music being played. Stayed there the entire evening, and finally left because the place was being closed for Gandhi Jayanthi ( a dry day in Goa).

All in all, it was a great trip. Great friends, Good food, excellent people, fun time. Nothing much more can be asked for. I would suggest Goa to one and all. I shall head back to my usual gyan based posts in a wee bit, but stopped off just to say that Goa Rox!

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Long time due update Friday, Jul 14 2006

Pure laziness prevented me from updating this…although I must admit that I did not even notice the amount of time that had passed.
Recent events have sort of blurred out the impact of earlier ones. The bombings in Mumbai for one! I find myself unable to even comprehend the need to destroy that those fellows had (Other words comes to mind, but this blog is still PG!). I wish that I could now believe in the fiery hells just to put those characters in it.
Anyway, to move on to brighter things and days. I have given my account of the train journey, and following that…nothing! Well, that was not because nothing happened! I went to Manali for a few days…the highlight of which undoubtedly was the paragliding. Did I mention before that I am terrified of heights? If I did not, consider it said now! But I have to admit, if I got the chance to do it again, I would. The only thing was that I was strapped to this other chap, who did all the guiding of the chute…I would like to know how to do that someday!
But that is moving ahead of my story. Some great philosopher (probably a chinese dude) said something about a journey being the destination. By the time my journey from Delhi to Manali had finished, I would have given that guy a real piece of my mind. Our journey started from Gurgaon, where my sister had thoughtfully prebooked from the net, tickets from this swanky looking website of South Delhi Travels (R)(tm). Looked real professional, those guys did. Had this big building type thing in the front, and funky looking buses too. Well, we finally reached their office (for the 4 p.m bus) at about 3:30, and saw this hole in the building, which was a one room thing, which was their entire operation!
However, that was not why we came. After all we were going to be travelling, not sitting in a silly room. And when the bus arrived (at 4:00 sharp), we were appropriately impressed. It was this sky blue, and looked BIG. Then we (family) got in, and saw that there were only about 6 passengers, which included us. And then found that the seats were temperamental. Some of them had movable backrests. Others, well they did not. And for a 17 hour (from guidebook) journey, these things are important. Anyway, since there were only 6 of us, we sort of switched until we found working seats, with the bus conductor telling us that we could not switch after this. “Why not?”, I thought to myself. After all, this bus seats 35, and there are only 9 of us, including the driver.
Well, I found out soon enough. We started off at about 4:05, and as we hit Rajpath, we picked up another 5-6 victims…err passengers. At about 4:30, the air conditioning decided that it would give up for the present. In Delhi, this is not good thing. Consider that the temp (in the shade) at 5:00pm was 41.5 Celsius. And we were parked in the sun, with no airflow allowed. Within 10 minutes, it felt like that torture thing the Foreign legion were supposed to be fond of. Soon, the bus started again, and we thought that he is either going to get it fixed, or put us on new bus. But no! The man has quite some gall. He continues to next pick up point and picks up more bakras…sorry passengers. After a couple of stops, a critical mass was reached, and we told him to either fix the AC or let us off, returning our money in the bargain. So he finally stopped, and by some miracle, got the damned thing fixed.
“Finally!”, I thought to myself, “We can head out to Manali.” But our conductor was still unsatisfied. He had only about 15 guys now, and the bus seats 35. So we wandered around Delhi, until we got 35. It felt somewhat odd, when I passed Kashmir Gate for the third time. The highway was right there, but our man had a quest to complete.
We finally filled the bus at 8:00 p.m, before which I was treated to Delhi Darshan! I dont think we missed any part of South Delhi, and most of the historical monuments as well! So our journey, which was to last 17 hours, took almost 23. We reached Manali at about 2:30 the next day.
I shall not describe the 12:30 stop for supper at this Dhabha, or the lights failing soon after, which also necessitated brief stops. Those were par for this course.
However, I did end up feeling sorry for the conductor towards the end of the trip. He had quite a sleepless night (so did I)…the AC which was now working too well, had a vent which was broken, and therefore I could not shut off the cold air. And I mean COLD! But we were discussing the conductor…not my lack of sleep. So anyway, the conductor decides to get some much needed sleep, by spreading charpoy and getting some much needed shut eye. By this time were on the mountain roads in Himachal. There was this little girl who I guess did not like it…and to cut a long story short, our poor conductor now had puke all over his pant legs. He did not even receive much sympathy from the other passengers as he stalked off muttering (probably) Punjabi curses at the unfairness of life.

So that was a not so brief description of the journey from Delhi to Manali. The only good thing I found about it was the absence of the almost inevitable movie on coach…the TV was not working on the bus!

Coming up in future posts: Daryaganj Book Market. Review of NO ENTRY. And of a couple of Tamil movies as well, including that all time hit, Mr. Madras.
So see you again, same bat time, same…oh sorry, wrong channel!

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