Friday, April 11, 2008

Stories from a three days Goan

Atlast found some time to chip in something for the blog. Last weekend i was at Goa, a welcoming break from the boring job. Started to Goa on April 4 Friday night by train, setting aside two escalations that were pestering me for sometime. Once the trip was on it was only fun. You could see signs of Goa in the train itself. Most of them were tourists going to train and most of them were already in excited state with the help of drinks. The train was travelling through the western ghats giving some opportunity to explore the scenic beauty of the mountains.

Reached Goa by 1.30 on Saturday. From the journey to the hotel we could confirm what we have heard about Goa. Yeah Goa is famous for drinks  because of low tax, and is visible from the numerous wine shops in the  roads. Most of shop that serve soft drinks also contained atleast some  cans of beer. But one thing that is not known about Goa is that, it is  difficult to move around in Goa, unless you have a lot of cash to burn.  We had booked room near Colva beach and were soon at colva beach having  a really good time in the beach. Though the sun was scorching the skins, the sea water helped in with standing the heat. Evening we were at
Majorda beach, playing football after around 4 years.

On sunday we hired five vehicles, and started the trip to the northern beaches. We started the expedition with a visit to Dona Paula. Then  we were at Coco beach for a boat ride to see the dolphins. We were  lucky the back of few dolphins. Be careful about the rates for the  boat ride, it ranges from 100 to 400 depending on persons. While we  went for 100 per person, we had two people in the same boat paying  Rs.400. Then we visited the Aguada fort and few other beaches like calangute, Bagga. But did not spend much time there.

On monday morning the plan was to visit paulolem. But since time was running out, visited cavelossim and Benaulim beaches near Colva. After that we were off to Panaji or Panjim to catch the evening bus. While on the way stopped at the Basillica of BOM jesus church, a 400 year old chuch that still contains the body of St.Francis Xavier who died  few hundred years ago. After some shopping in Panaji market for a while  we boarded Sharma travels for a 20 hour trip back to work. Heard that KSRTC is better when compared to private transports.

One last point about Goa, Goa does not follow the Indian rules and the policemen there have their own rule and gazette. If the fine for driving without "Pollution check" is 100 in other cities, in goa it is 500. Before you  rent a vehicle make sure you check for all the docs and make sure you have the DL.

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