Gone Goa

Second week of March, on the Mas-Vasco Express, overnight and a little over day journey to cover a distance of about 600 kilometers with prolonged stops in between was a little frustrating. Luckily i decided to board the train at Yeshwantpur junction at 9:30pm, instead as per the earlier plan to board at KR Puram junction at 7:30pm. What’s with the Indian Railways?! The train to Vasco-da-Gama from Chennai takes two hours to reach from KR Puram to Yeshwantpur in Bangalore, and for a train from Chennai to Vasco, there is no pantry!

Hubli station at 7:30am, a vendor making bread omelettes almost in a flash, surely he didn’t take more than 30 seconds to make one, provided a nice breakfast.

Reached Vasco at 2:15pm, after few tunnels, and spotting Duhdsagar waterfalls which to much of our disappointment was mere a trickle of water flowing unlike the Youtube video showing the falls in its full vigor.

Goa, serene long coast beaches with splendid views. Shacks are thronged all along on popular beaches. You mostly see ugly old Europeans sunbathing, getting massages and more from few locals offering such services. Evening walk along the Calangute beach was mesmerizing with locals playing football, kids building sand castles, and young couples walking hand-in-hand.

The Portuguese left Goa in 1961, but they’ve left a legacy to rule people here. There are many Europeans who get all kinds of services one can imagine from locals, treating them almost like slaves. All this for a very cheap price for a lower class poor European who can not afford even one such thing back home or anywhere else on the planet. The locals have tuned themselves to maximize the opportunity. I could hear at least a couple of women, selling some kind of jewelry and handicrafts on Vagator beach, talking flawless English with impeccable foreign accent.

Late night, Goa’s splendid beaches are mostly thronged by foreigners, shacks are all along the popular beaches serving liquor and ‘whatever’ you want almost all night long. One guy at a shack said ‘we’ll be serving you as long as you are here sir‘. This was at 1am. No wonder Goan beaches are the most preferred. Then there are night clubs that open only by midnight and serve you till wee hours in the morning, which you never see in Bangalore. Also, Riding the rented Honda Activa all day and night is much less stressful than riding in traffic clogged Bangalore road.

My favorites from the trip:

1. Chapora fort, the view from this place is wonderful. Looking over the Vagator and Chapora beach with cool breeze blowing on the ruins of this fort on Sunday evening was enthralling. Relatively fewer people out here made this my favorite.

2. Four a side Beach Volleyball game on Vagator Beach, that my team won 9-15, 15-12, 17-15. :-)

The return journey was at on the Vasco-Bangalore City ‘express train’ which halted at Londa junction for two and half hours for the bogeys had to be joined to another train in this route to reach Bangalore.

Here are few moments captured on this trip:

Beach Volleyball on Vagator Beach

Filling the Vagator

View from Chapora fort

Hippie on Anjuna Beach, some acrobatics

Taming a bull on Anjuna beach

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