We're in the Goa!

Its been a while since I posted. In this brief interlude I have managed to travel to places I had never been to before and experience things I otherwise wouldn't have. My earliest daydreams during my college life (I've had a long one, 4 and half years, still going strong) were about me finding a shelter from night-time inside a moving a bus/train; my home, a dilapidated rucksack and my destination....ANYWHERE.

On the 22nd of January, a friend and I set sail (caught the APSRTC Super luxury bus) to Hubli. From there we found another to take us to Karwar, from where we caught a third to reach Canacone, Goa. The only bit of excitement on the road was a random telegu film playing on the bus fraught with rape scenes and a stop at New Welcome Dhaba somewhere a little beyound Mahbubnagar. The Dhaba was on an empty highway and when you look up you find a wilderness of stars gazing back at you in mute wonder. I had never thought you could catch more stars in an eyeful of sky outside my campus. I was wrong. There are places more forlorn, desolate and peaceful than my misbegotten university.

So anyway morning found us in Canacone, Goa; from where we could we could either head South to Palolem or travel North to Baga/Calangute etc. We had already decided to make our trip South to North, hence we headed towards Palolem. The joutnry (Hyd-Hubli-Karwar-Canacone) cost us a grand total of about Rs.1500 and roughly 22 hours of our lives.

Palolem is beautiful. Its the kind of place you'd like to take a beautiful girl to. Not because you want to marry her, but rather because you wish to impress her. Palolem is too good to be wasted on the already impressed and satisfied. This beach is a tool, a beautiful one, that must be used to sweep someone right off their feet. And the surroundings are perfect. The beach is lined with eating joints which all serve basically the same exotic seafood at similar prices. But what really amazes you is the atmosphere around. When you're in Palolem, you're on just one mission. That is to loosen up and relax. And the beach provides the perfect setting. The crowd there mostly comprises of foreigners, and not the older, uglier and uptight ones you find in North Goa; but rather a young crowd, easy going, with no issues or interest in the locals, who unlike other tourist spots, serve both Indians and foreigners equally. Plus the sea at Palolem is like your own swimming pool. The water is crystal clear (you can see your feet even in neck deep water) and the water currents are negligible. A nice place in Palolem is the Sunset Point towards the western rocky bit of the beach. Beautiful.
* Budget Travellers : you can get coco huts on the beach for Rs.100 per head per night (Bargaining is accepted) if you're Indian and look cheap. It is unadvisable for women, esp urban women to go and bargain for prices of rooms since Indian women aren't considered cheap. They're especially more expensive looking than foreign females cause well most of them are overtly concerned with "safety issues" and "toilet facilities". But there are enough and more cheap places to be found around, if you haven't travelled all the way to Palolem to simply play it safe or find a nice shitpot.
While accomodation is cheaper on the beach, food is slightly expensive there. However, you find cheaper eating joints outside the beach, towards the townside.
Scooties (Activas) are excellent as a local conveyance to the other beaches of the south. They cost anything between Rs. 150 to 250 a day, depending upon your bargaining skills. Buses also run daily between beaches till about 8pm.

About 7 kms. further south from Palolem is Agonda Beach. If Palolem is the beach to go with a hot damsel, then Agonda is the beach to go alone to. Loaded with intoxicants. Its an expansive beach with a sea as calm as the one in Palolem. However, the number of shacks lining the beach are fewer, and even fewer are the number of people present. When we were there, we were the only Indian tourists we could spot. The prices for everything is in the same range as in Palolem. People searching for kicks might do well to look for their cures here. Agonda is an esoteric, peaceful, almost Zen beach where the only sound one hears at any point of time during the day is that of the sea licking the toes of the beach.

Other beaches in South Goa, where we left our footprints were Colva, Betalbatim, Majorda, Thonwaddoo (and its siblings/beach extensions....Benwaddoo & Runwaddoo), Benaulim, Varca and Canvallosim. The first 4 beaches are towards Central Goa falling in Salcette district. They are ordinary beaches as far as I could tell. Colva is especially crowded, full off local holiday goers, and extremely irritating. There's plenty of water sports available too. eg. parasailing, motor-boat sailing, banana rides etc.
Majorda is a relatively calmer beach where one can spend some time sipping cheap port wine.
The latter beaches fall closer south to Palolem. To cover all of the abovementioned in one day, you must hire an Activa head towards Margaon City right after breakfast. All beaches (except Canvallosim) are accesible from Margaon.
Canvallosim is another beautiful beach. It hosts The Leela, Goa near its shores. Personally I found none of these beaches worth spending a night at. Palolem and Agonda are the stars of South Goa.
* Note : While travelling from beach to beach on the same day, we took random dips in the sea whenever we felt like. As a result we were wet and sandy most of the time. Hence we decided to commute simply in our wet boxers with our clothes packed inside out scooter. BAD IDEA! While nudity is encouraged in the beaches, it is ill advised near town areas or the highway. We were hauled up for lack of clothes by a cop, and then fined because neither of us were carrying a driving license. kels!

Our third day at Goa found us heading North towards Donna Paula and Miramar beaches in the Tiswadi District. For this we had to head to Panaji (locally called Panjim). Firstly this was a mistake. Because;

a) Donna Paula BEACH is a misnomer. THERE IS NO FUCKING BEACH AT DONNA PAULA. Its a goddamn pier where the urban filthy rich of Goa (like rich enough to spend atleast Rs.2000 per night for accomodation) come in the evenings to take a walk.
b) There are no shacks and as we found out to our misfortune, no eating joints around. However there are these huge fancy hotels where one can spend the night. Having reached Donna Paula on the last bus, we were stranded with no money to spend the night and no public transport to take us somewhere cheaper. So we walked and hitchhiked (if stranded look for lifts. rides are easily available esp on NH 17....I regularly hitchhiked between destinations for the first time in Goa. Usually its always been a last resort) about 10 kms back to Panjim where we managed to find ourselves a shabby dormitary for the night.

Morning found us on the free ferry that heads to Batim in Bardez District, Goa. The ferry runs from 6am carrying people across the waterlet separating Bardez and Tiswadi districts. Bardez is the district housing the most famous & commercial beaches of Goa, beginning from Candolim, Calangute continuing into Baga, right uptil Anjuna, Vagatore and the Chopara Village. While Baga is extremely crowded, it still houses the cheapest accomodations alongside Calangute. We spent 2 nights in Calangute for a sum of Rs.300 for both of us. Again the cheapest accomodations are available on the beach while food is cheaper indoors. The sea in North Goa is rough to say the least. Especially in Calangute, where the currents at shore are strong enough to hold a person rooted to where he's standing, not allowing him to move a muscle. Caution is suggested while finding the sea at Calangute. Also in the eaches in North Goa you will find areas earmarked for swimming and places out of bounds (except Anjuna). The beaches are also covered with lifeguards in red and bustling with people experiencing the thrill of watersports. The walk along the beach from Calangute, across Baga is beautiful, especially towards midnight with the crowds thinning out, the beaches hosting rows of candlelit tables, and with the fireworks happening at Baga. You can walk right through underneath the fireworks with rockets going off all around you. Its exhilarating to say the least.

However, the spots in North Goa that tops my list are;
a) Anjuna Beach : This is a hippy hangout in North Goa. The beach is peaceful like Agonda, full with exotic shacks blasting trance/reggae and a coral reef right a the start of the beach where sometimes with the help of certain substances one can find underwater territories, lifeforms and full continents submerged under a foot of sea water. I spent nearly 6 hours loitering about in awe in the reeves, and playing with the fish trapped there. You can submerge your feet in the water and get it cleaned by the fish who come in all shapes, size and colours you weren't taught to name in highschool. The sad part is when you realise that these fish will be dead by the morning post low tide, and that the high tide again will trap fresh, equally colourful fish in the reef tommorrow.
Anjuna is a place extremely friendly to Indian hipsters with various substances available for your experience at good prices. And sold by decent people. As decent as a pusher can be.

Living in Anjuna is expensive if alone. Anjuna usually has these places, sort of houses with rooms to be rented out irrespective of the number of people present. Each cottage usually charges Rs.500 to Rs 700 a night. There's no cap on how many people can crash inside. Food prices again are the same as every other beach.

b) The other place definitely worth heading to is Chopara Fort ahead of Vagatore Beach. The fort is built as a watchtower on a hilltop at the edge of Vagatore Beach overlooking the sea on one side and a river on the other. Before you lies another hill across the sea, hosting another beach (presumably Morjim). Its beautiful, serene and one of then most scenic places I've been to.
Below Chopara Fort lies Chopara Village which is a very famous hippy settlement. There are no places to stay here, cause well its a settlement and people live here. Permanently. And only foreigners. There is nothing, not so much as even juice from the Ganesh Juice Centre which is available to Indians. The few Indians found there are extremely well versed in European languages. This place is a nice visit as long as you keep to yourself.

On our way back we took a slightly more efficient and economic route. We travelled from Calangute-Panjim-Raichur-Hyd in around 16 hours spending around Rs. 700 cumulatively.

This was Goa. Goa is Paradise. A place that has excited me just as much as the first time I spied a snow covered peak from some mountain road in Uttaranchal. It was the first time I'd seen snow.

Goa was the place where I tasted absolute freedom.