GOA - Day 3

Day 3 : March 4th, 2011

We slept for real long hours that night and woke up lazily at 10 am. Ravi and I were forced to wake up a little early as we had to vacate our room and adjust with our frens upstairs. New bunch of gang barged in our room as we were packing our things lazily. We went upstairs and woke up others. Our plan for today was to explore Palolem beach in South Goa, 80kms away from our place of stay (Candolim). We quickly rushed to Anand Sagar for lunch and started our journey on activas. It was really a very exhausting ride on activa, specially when you start late afternoon in scorching sun. In retrospect, a taxi ride would have been more comfortable but yes, the hard fun is always reserved for us and we took it by our stride. Our route briefly explained by a localite and as found during our journey was Candolim(0) → Panjim(15km)->Vasco Da Gama(45km) → Margoan(60km)→ Palolem. I'm not so sure of the distances though.

Palolem Beach

Shankar & Ajay, Bhanu & Pravin, Kiru & Purush, Ravi & I paired up on activas. Thanks to our non-uniform speeds, our four activas got scattered  and we rarely met between our ways. The journey was fun in a way as we viewed contrasting landscapes in Goa – from a crowded North Goa to a calm, scenic South Goa. We crossed ghat roads, red mud lands, shady coconut trees and a real soulful Goa. We reached a spectacular beach Palolem, the only beach we visited in South Goa. As usual we parked our vehicles and got ready for beach volleyball. The guides again pestered us to go for a ride on boats to visit “butterfly islands”, a hill within visible distance. We were not really keen to explore that and had only 1 hr to spend.

The beach volleyball was fun, as always. Ravi was diving like Yuvraj singh to hit shots while Bhanu was standing like Rahul Dravid, a solid-wall. We played for one hour. Kids playing cricket nearby caught my attention and I stood as wicket-keeper for some time. Really felt, we could have also made some preparations for cricket in the trip. A bat and a ball would also be an ideal bet in a beach for some real funtertainment.

The French Guy

After I quit wicket-keeping, I took the volleyball and sat on the shore watching the sun and waves. An innocent looking foreigner walks behind me and asks if what I caught was a football. I corrected him. We started chatting and he told me that he was from France. He spoke broken English and his accent, at times was difficult to pick up. When we were discussing about the geography of India, there was this one word - “Norf”, which took atleast 5 mins for me to understand. He meant “North”. I didn't bother to ask his name. He told me that it was his first day and first time in Goa and he is gonna hang around for a month. He was waiting for his girl friend him to join next week.

We spoke about places to visit in India and cricket. I wrongly predicted that India might not win the world cup, despite a strong batting line up as it had a poor bowling side. But I didn't claim any other team could win the WC either. Obviously, I am excited that my prediction went wrong and India raised the WC. The french guy told that he has to learn playing cricket too and opined that it is a tough game compared to the unintelligent baseball game of US. I thought he despised US and liked UK more.

The interesting part of the conversation happened when we spoke about careers. I told him what all a typical techie does which amused him. Contrary to that, he said he left his job in France tourism a while ago. I asked him why. He said, he had no particular reason and he just wanted to quit. This stuck somewhere in my mind and I was lost for a moment in my thoughts. He said, later he plans to go to Australia and work there for living. That's the reason he was learning english from his girlfriend, who was a english teacher herself. He lamented that he has to improve a lot on his communication.

The rest of the gang joined me, as we were running late to return to our rooms-80 kms away.

Return to Candolim

It was 6pm already. Shankar & Ajay, Bhanu & Pravin paired up as they did on onward journey. Ravi wanted to help Kiru who drove the full onward 80kms as Purush, the non-driver of activa didn't want to test his driving skills on a highway. So Purush and I paired up. We came across the ghat roads on our return way and took some snaps on the ghat roads which was fun enough. Also, I happened to get a glance of a beautiful sunset on the way.

The only discomfort I had was I left my glasses back at resort and it got highly difficult for me to ride entire 80kms at late evening without my glasses. The insects attracted to the vehicles headlight and a busy highway added pain to my eyes. We agreed to meet at Vasco so that Ravi could switch to my driving seat. A little mis-communication happened at the rendezvous point and Purush and I fell behind others, forcing me to drive the entire journey. My eyes got bloody-red and I had to take frequent breaks and wash my eyes during my journey. Purush looked sorry for being helpless. But tasted a good tea on our way back. I had to device some ways to charge up and keep my eyes open during my drive. It was a learning experience for me to act with caution while driving during late evenings.

Fun part was we reached Candolim from the opposite side of where we started. Obviously, we were lost and took a different route from original but were eventually happy that we reached home safely after a tiring ride of 160kms.

The Lost Volleyball !!

When I returned to resort, boys told me that there was a brief power-cut in the resort. Boys sat in the lawn for a while and when power resumed, they returned to rooms upstairs leaving the volleyball somewhere in the darkness in lawn. Now they couldn't find it and assumed, that the new gang who arrived in resort would have sneaked in the ball. I felt bad again for the carelessness we showed. We really had loads of fun with that ball in 2 days at beaches. Further, I took trouble on Day 0 to make sure I bring the ball along with me and now its gone. It was as if Tom Hanks in “Cast away” has lost soccer ball, his only fren in a deserted Island. We thought we could check with Dilip and new gang the next day.

A Noisy Night!!!

We had our seats bumped up badly after our ride. Kiru brought us dinner from Anand Sagar. I crashed on bed for a while as I couldn't open my eyes. The much awaited night was yet to come. We assumed that Goa was meant only for partying hard but somewhere deep within, I felt, there was a broader meaning to fun in Goa which I realized on the last day. With that notion, we started our party in balcony. Wine, pints and scotch tempted us and slowly, we made the start. Ravi and Shankar, were double excited, which gave them a kick at the end of the party. Pravin continued with his classy wine. Bhanu and Purush teamed up for pints. While Bhanu, with all his experience, guided us on the party process, Purush surprised him by putting new pints on table, everytime Bhanu thought he was done with. Purush was hellbent to empty the pints in fridge and insisted Bhanu, who seemed heavy and helpless. Purush completely enjoyed it and we enjoyed his excitement.

I wanted to play the moderator role and was more into leading the group discussion. We spoke about a topic on marriage and Shankar, unusually spoke in never ending lengths. Glasses kept breaking, voices peaked the decibels. A noisy night was building up and the resort incharge, waking up from his sleep, frequently reminded us of the inconvenience being caused to other guests. (There were few foreigners in our adjacent rooms).  I tried in vain to control Shankar and Ravi, who got  uncontrollable with voice. The discussion didn't exactly proceed as I wanted to. I had much more to ask and speak in lengths with the rest of the group. I was not sure when would really be the next time we all could meet and talk so freely. To avoid any trouble, we had to put an end to the noisy night at around 3.30 am.