Well.. Well.. Well… Finally destination Goa has come to colours! Its a dream come true for me… Finally! After loads of pre-planning, pre-planning, pre-planning (phew… It took me 3 yrs to finally go to Goa), I could proudly brag to my family, friends and relatives that I am finally off to a vacation. Whoopie!
Now coming back to the point, its 7th november, 2008 and my first day in Goa. Now let me confess that most of the planning for my vacation was done by my chaddi buddy Rajesh. I m sure he must have really thought about bumping me off after calling him every 5 mins.
It starts like this…
After uncomfortably passing the journey in 3A class of Konkan Kanya Express (tickets being RAC), after bribing the TTE and finally after loads of other small obstacles, I along with my buddies Aatish and Dada got down at Thivim Station. (It is the closest railway station if you are planning to stay in North Goa.) We spent around 30 mins to buy our return journey tickets.
There are prepaid taxis available for different places and they charge a bomb for it.. Well.. The fare for Calingute is Rs. 350. We got down near Subway restaurant at Calingute and thats where the real game starts… After around an hour and half of finding a good hotel we checked in at Trini’s Resort owned by Tony Uncle (courtesy Rajesh).
The time passes and its 2.30 pm, our stomachs groan with hunger and we land up in a 100% pure veg restaurant The Plantain Leaf (courtesy Rajesh, again). The delicious meal gets completed and we are back to our hotel, getting freshen up and off to rest (or maybe sleep)…
Its evening time around 6 pm and the whole Goa is pitch dark. We roam around at Calingute beach, reviving funny memories of past and as the time passes, dinner is calling us. Plantain comes to our rescue again and we are off to the hotel to change our clothes and go towards Baga.
Baga is around a km away from Calingute so its definately a walkable distance. We plan to go to Tito’s disco pub at 9.30 pm but we are too early as the timings are 10.30 pm to 3.30 am midnight. So we try to roam around towards Kamaki, Valencio and finally to Mambo’s.
A word of caution: 2 reasons why not to go to Mambo’s…
- Stags are not allowed.
- The management is quite rude.
- Mambo’s definately sucks because of its rude management behaviour. (The 3rd one is what we have experienced)
So we go towards Baga beach and sit near a beach shack. The rest of the hours pass blissfully and we return towards our hotel via rickshaw. (Rs.80 for a km… Whoa! That’s quite a fortune!) Its time to sign off to sleep… Ciao!