Goa (Calangute - Palolem)

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First hot shower since arriving in India!!!! Aside from this we also arrived in Goa. First stop in Goa, and last stop on our Intrepid tour was Calangute Beach. Usually package tourist central, the place was almost completely devoid of Westerners due to recent events in Mumbai and bomb threats throughout all of Goa for Christmas Day and New Years. We spent our 2 days in Calangute by the pool, so as to avoid the hordes of Indian men down at the beach who would leer, harass and take photos of anyone wearing a bikini.

On our last night of our tour we had dinner at a fancy restaurant and geared up into party mode. Unfortunately, due to police crackdowns because of terrorist threats all music on the beach was shut down by 8pm, so instead everyone went back and we all had a party in the hotel room whilst listening to Christmas music courtesy of the Danes.

After our farewells we departed from Calangute and the tour and headed down to Palolem (we are now back to cold showers), a beach in the south of Goa. Since then we have basically been doing nothing but eating, swimming, lying on the beach and sleeping. There is practically no one here (... because of Mumbai), so Goa hasn’t quite been the party place we had hoped for, but still, relaxing on the sparsely populated beach and drinking cocktails over sunset isn’t that bad. On Christmas Day, aside from going to the beach, we had a very nice proper Christmas Dinner (Thanks Mum and Dad!) that wasn’t Indian food... we were very excited.

There is definitely an increased military presence in Goa, especially compared with what we have seen in the rest of South India. This was seen especially in the last few days (Christmas and the lead up to New Years) where there were groups of police patrolling the beach (whilst talking on their mobile phones of course). Whilst we have had a very relaxing time in Goa, we are looking forward to moving on and checking out what Northern India has to offer.

We are now in Mumbai after catching our first train alone. It was an exhausting experience as we had no idea what train to catch (the train was late and there were no announcements) and we only found out what we thought were our seat numbers actually meant something completely different. Turns out we had reservation against cancellation seats without knowing. Luckily some people had cancelled, though unfortunately Merric and I had to sleep in different carriages. Thankfully I didn’t wake up with a sleazy Indian man spooning me, we survived and arrived in Mumbai in one piece only to face a new horror… City Palace Hotel.

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