go goa!

With the excuse of a colleague's marriage nearby to Goa.. few of us decided to go to goa.. we planned the trip sooo well that we forgot that the main purpose was marriage and not goa and never bothered to book/arrange travel from goa to hubli :D

Day 1: We reached goa comfortably, thanks to KSRTC's airavata, landed at panjim and too a bus to calangute, hired honda activa and checked-in to the hotel. The fact that i had been there just 2 yrs back.. I could recognise some places/hotels and things were easy to locate and of course even easier with our own transport :) While in goa, its good to have your own transport: Either the one you take from blore or hire there. One can easily hire a 2 wheeler for 250 or 300 bucks a day or a santro/Gypsy for 2k. Only thing is u'll have to travel 8/10 kms to fill petrol or pay 60/lt in any local shop... we happily filled petrol from locals.. only to realise later that petrol is actually cheaper in goa and its just 46/lt!!! :( Got fresh and had breakfast and headed straight to candolim beach (again thanks to my previous visit, I knew exactly where to eat and where to go :)).. this is best beach as far as i know.. very less crowd and very neat. Spend almost whole day at the beach and back to hotel. Got fresh again and headed to Fort Aguda, the place is supposedly where DCH is shot. Its a beautiful place and very good view. The sunset from the bottom of Fort Aguda is awesome. After that, back to hotel and Everyone got ready to go to Titos, the best place of discotheque in calangute. Went for a beach side hotel, there was live music there too and didn't realise it was already 11:30 pm when we were out of the restaurant. So, ditched Titos and headed to Saturday night bazaar. Its like Sante, only with the difference that its filled with loads of Hippies and sell almost any handicraft available in India and some antiques and crazy stuff too... Its like a get-to-gether for Hippies, they have a live rock band there and some International cuisine too. Finally reached hotel at 3am after having a cofe at CD at 2:30 in the morning!!

Day 2:Planned to wake up at 6 and go for a walk on the beach :D. Got ready by 10:30 and had ususal breakfast at Plantain leaf and headed to explore in and around beaches, went to Anjuna, Vegator and Baga beach.. none of them were as attractive as Candolim. Of course, of all them have their own unique views of the ocean. Finally, ended up at Candolim again and relaxed a lot! In the evening, went for some water sports, Jet ski and Para sailing. Jet ski is too good, riding on water is like riding on humps every 10 mts on the road.. very bumpy..but nice :) Para sailing is even more fun, you'll be lifted to almost 150 ft above sea and you can see the complete lenght of the beach and endless sea! Sunday night, had dinner, bit of shopping and returned the bikes and happily returned to hotel to find that taxi guy who was supposed to take us to Hubli has ditched us, has evern switched off his mobile! That is where all the fun we had in goa just disappeared.. We started roaming calangute at 12 in the midnight to find a taxi, but in vain.. So decided to wakeup at 4 in the morning and go to panjim and take a taxi from there..

Day 3: As decided, we got up at 4:30, reached panjim at 5am in a taxi (omni) and the driver offered us to take us to hubli in just 4 hrs! we were thrilled by the idea and only thing is we had to adjust 4 ppl in the back of the omni and so we started.. the driver took us through a route which was probably a test track for trucks and in a ghat section! there is no road (attached is one pic of that muddy road), probably there was a road (maybe couple of years back).. the most horrible ride ever.. that too in a omni with 5 ppl in the back.. we were going at 5/10kmph, you can imagine, a stretch of 200 kms took us 7.5 hrs! Above which the driver wanted us to chat with him so that he doesnt fall asleep :) He and his hindi.. wah Meine bola na.. Mein aap ko hubli leke jaavoonga, lekin yeh raasta itna karab hain, mujhe nahin maloom tha.. When we asked him why we didnt take the karwar route.. he said.. waha pe bahut checkin hain aur mere pass permit nahin, bahut tax barna padega! Added to this, we had a puncture and had to dodge the commercial tax checkpost at karnataka border by one of us getting down and walking across the border as only 5 ppl (including driver) is allowed in a taxi!! We finally made it!! reached just in time to get fresh, wish the couple and run to the railway station!

What a trip! it was like AXN's amazing race :)