Day 10 - Wednesday/Budhwar - How To Run A Railway

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After the final yoga session, I took a wander into Lonavala to buy snacks for the 12-hour journey to Goa. We then got our minibus at 12:30 for our train at 3:00, so spent a while sitting at the station, which wasn't as busy as I'd expected, but had a fair amount of beggars, child street-performers, and food-sellers, by whom we were all harassed a fair bit!

The train arrived on time - listen up UK train operators: if a less developed country, with older trains, can manage it, why can't you? - and we boarded once we'd been shown to the right carriage. Our guides nearly took us to the wrong one, and I wouldn't have liked trailing through the train with my huge pack! The journey itself was surprisingly comfortable, in 3AC class (3-tiered foldaway bunk beds, with a fan). We had a packed lunch from Hotel Chandralok, consisting of diced fried potatoes in a spicy coating served with chapatis, and then spent the journey chatting, hanging out of the carriage doors (you can't do that on Virgin!), reading, and getting some sleep.

We arrived at Madgoan Starion in Goa at about 2:30 as expected (again a nice change for public transport!), and then waited half an hour for our transport to the resort. When it arrived our luggage was precariously stacked and tied to the tops of two jeeps, which then drove at uncomfortable speeds down the winding roads to our home for the next three-to-seven weeks, a rented section of the Colmar Beach Resort in Colva.

I had decided to share with Keith again - we get on great and he was the only other English guy in the group. Dumping our bags in our rooms, we had a quick look round the rest of the facilities and then asked the obvious question - "So where's the beach then?"

The coordinator was initially reluctant to tell us - "It's 3 am, you can't go for a swim! Go to bed, you'll see it in the morning!" - but we brought him round by telling him we just wanted a look, and would be back in half an hour. He pointed us to a path which ran round a restaurant. We followed this and literally 30 seconds later, I kid ye not, we were on the white-looking sands of Colva Beach. It looked spectacular! The moon was full, the stars were out, there were palm trees lining the beach, and hundreds of starfish and crabs on the sand at the shoreline, the latter of which scarpered down holes as soon as we got anywhere near. We just stood there in shock at the beauty for a few minutes, then went running towards the sea. We only went for a knee length paddle, but the water was warm and we couldn't believe our luck.

So close to such a beautiful beach - if nothing else, for this alone, these should be a good few weeks!

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