Goa

We have arrived in the promised land!



Whenever we haven't been able to get anything or we've felt sad, we've felt overwhelmed by city travel, we've told ourselves that everything will be fine when we get to Goa.  So Goa has a lot to live up to!

On a serious note though, after so many Indian cities, I am very much looking forward to not having to do anything or go anywhere.

We arrived and headed straight for Colva Beach which is the closest beach to Madgaon Station.  Unfortunately they had not received our booking and we had to pay again for a room, but it was nice and comfy.  Just not enough to it I suppose and a little too quiet at night.

We decided to move on though the next day and head down to Palolem.  Goa is coming to the end of it's main Tourist season and a lot of places along the beach fronts close down because of the Monsoon season which starts sometime in June.

We got on a bus and headed down without booking anywhere and landed on the beach.  We have found our selves in a cottage room right on the beach.  We've got hot water, a hammock and the sea on our actual door step.  We're going to stick around here for a few more days and see what this Monsoon season is all about.  The beach is still fairly busy eventhough the beach huts are being dismantled.

Lots of Indian tourists as well as Westerners dotted about playing games (lots of wrestling and ball throwing) and sipping cans of beer.  I wish though that someone had warned me about the amount of dogs roaming around on this beach.  They dont seem to belong to anyone and just multiply and sometimes they sit at your table wanting food.

I'm not very good with dogs at  the best of times, so this is going to be a challenge fo shizzle.  I swear they sense my fear though.  Andy says I'm being ridiculous, but am I...  Am I!

Colva Beach

Palolem Beach

 The view from our door.

Goa Continued.

We have now left Goa and are in a town called Hampi. Palolem almost started to feel a bit homely the longer we were there.  Home in that I suppose you know where's good to eat and where to go to see the sunset and who the local psychos are.  It was lush to relax for a bit. Plus it was a bonus that you could live quite cheaply in Goa.

We spent a lot of evenings in Cocktails and Dreams... where you could sit on the beach at night and eat and get a long beach ice tea for about £1.50 which is really lethal.  I had my first travel hang over here about a week ago today in fact.  We were befriended by a couple of crazies from England who I swear were on day release and to get through the whole ordeal drank my way through a whole lot of long island and long beach ice-teas.  I woke up the next day with a banging headache and feeling sick then had to lug my backpack around whilst we found somewhere to spend the night with air-con.  Aaargh!  Of course I'd also been bitten to shit by mozies.  Bad times.  Bad times.  I am laughing though as I write this, so I guess I must have had some fun.

Monsoon season began just as we left.  The sea draw further in until there was practically no beach to sit on and the waves got so ferocious.  I'm so glad we got there when we did as we got to enjoy it before it became mental.  We decided it was a good time to leave when we got woken by our roof leaking into Andy's open backpack...  Bad times.

Anywhere we escaped intact, got a bus and sorted train tickets all on our lonesome which made us feel really proud of ourselves.