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“walking into a cow on a dark beach...” |
Ann-Marie sez:
The title of this entry is a song from a Bollywood movie that we saw on a bus in transit to Goa. Since then, we've heard the song every where we go, and kids and elderly paan-wallahs hum it on the streets. I bought a CD of it and may threaten to play it at our wedding--just try to get it out of your head after that.
Goa was great because we did nothing for 5 days. When else have we ever done that? Our hut was right on the ocean, with a little balcony, and we listened to the waves all night. We spent our days going from one lassi and book reading cushion to the next, and -oh yes-occasionally taking a dip in the water. It was the perfect place to rejuvinate and get psyched up for tackling more India.
Ron sez:
This is my second attempt at typing this so it may be a bit short.
Goa has a stretch of dozens of beaches on the Arabia sea. We chose to stay at a southern beach, Paolem, as it was suppose to be a bit quieter (the other beaches are known for their "parties"). The beach was 1 ½ miles long, and even though it was a bit "less" developed, it is lined from end to end to end with bamboo huts in which travellers stay, each set of huts has an attached restaurant. Each restaurant is lit with some form of eye-catching flashing, colorful, blinking lights, so that at night the beach could be a bit garish. However when the electricity would go out, which was frequent, the everything was candle lit and the beach was beautiful. Looking like one giant shrine with thousands of prayer candles.
Our activities were pretty standard for staying on a beach but I will give a few highlights. We had a favorite breakfast place, the banyan tree, which had great fresh ginger-lemon-honey tea. And we had a great dinner place, Cuba, which used mineral water for ice and to wash vegetables, so we could have cold drinks and a salad, and they made great Indian food—the veg Kurma was out of this world.
One evening we ate next to a group of folks from the UK, Ireland, Australia etc who were all musicians and proceed to jam through the evening singing folk songs from their respective countries – really a treat.
While the beaches were predominantly populated with tourists—typically Indian was the omnipresence of Cricket—played in the early evenings on the beach, and cows. The cows showed up some time after 4pm or so and would stay until the late evening—We arent sure where they came from, but walking into a cow on a dark beach after a late dinner was a bit startling and the cow-pies a bit of a hazard, but it was really fun to see them hanging out on the beach.
A few other things of note. We went for a sunrise dolphin watching tour in four man boat which was a bit touristy but pleasant. We had a magical evening swimming in the ocean in the dark floating on our backs and spinning while staring up at the stars and then playing with sparklers that AM bought on the beach. We also befriended the 13 year old boy who ran the shop below our hut. He was an aggressive salesman who asked us to buy something every time he saw us (at least 5 times a day for 5 days), but ultimately still just a kid and we had fun playing frisbee with him. While we never bought anything, but we left him our frisbee as a gift when we left.
previous travel blog entryComments or Questions for the Author
Thing 1 and Thing 2 says:
The going rate for most huts at the time was 400 rupees (at 40 rupees to the dollar). We paid 600 rupees for a hut right on the water.
PhilipMorris says:
Hey, thanks for the insight on Palolem beach. I have scheduled a visit to Goa next month(October). Can you tell me what is the rate u paid for staying at beach huts there? I wud be very helpful. Thanks.