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Published: February 5th 2012
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I took a taxi from Goa airport to Vagator beach. I managed (as I often do) to choose a taxi driver hell bent on trying to kill me, himself and everything else on the road. Drivers in India are in general very, very bad and by far the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. I sometimes wonder if anybody here is actually bothered about staying alive, perhaps though when you believe in reincarnation though one life isn’t really that significant. From what i have observed and heard the attitude on Indian roads seems to be: why slow down when you could speed up? Don’t avoid head on traffic, aim right for it! Why bother driving on the correct side of the road at all? Lights are for decorating you vehicle and not for practical use at night. Talking on the phone whilst driving is mandatory, even if you are wearing a motorbike helmet and surely cannot hear or be heard. Indian roads are so silly and dangerous that they are starting to make me a little angry, many lives could be saved if a few basic safety measures were followed. Anyway enough moaning.
The beaches at Vagator were
pretty decent, although they were surrounded by rugged cliffs which disappointingly didn’t fit in with my palm tree tropical beach stereotype. From Vagator we headed south to the beach of Palolum. We stopped enroute at Old Goa and looked at some Catholic churches. This was of little interest to those of us who had spent the past few weeks looking at temples. Old Goa is apparently a UNESCO world heritage site, I’m not really sure why as it isn’t very impressive, then again UNESCO seem to be a bit slutty these days handing out awards to anywhere with a bit of crumbling rock.
Miss Dighton Silk left us in Old Goa, a key member of the group, wise master of all knowledge and most of all contender for retard of the year, we were all sad to see her leave especially those of us that were close to her. She will be sorely missed L
On the way to Palolem we were stopped by the police for allegedly using a road not designated for use by 6 wheeler lorries unless they were government buses! Jenny our tour leader shouted at the police in protest to their rather silly
accusation and was thus forced as a punishment to pay a 400 rupee fine and made to walk across a bridge and back! A very bizarre punishment indeed.
Palolem is the archetypal picture postcard tropical beach. A crescent shaped bay with squeaky golden sand, lazy palms and sparkly rock formations which have been smoothed to a glistening brilliance over a millennia by the sea. The mood of the town is chilled, its is the sort of place you feel you could easily spend a week, two weeks or maybe a few months bumming around, indeed many apparently do. It is indeed the sort of place I would certainly consider returning too. The food was great, we ate at a beach side restaurant called The Nest on every night and on both occasions I and everyone else had great meals. Beef, meat and fish were on the menu and knowing we would very soon be in vegetarian only food territory, I was keen to make sure I got my fill of proper protein. On the first night I at an excellent fish tikka, easily the best I’ve had and the portion was huge. Cost = 3 GBP. On the second
night I ate the multi meat platter. Basically it was platter of every type of meat tikka kebab they served, it was fantastic and fantastically huge also, enough for 2 people at least really! I saved the leftovers for breakfast the next day. Others ate huge fillet steaks (beef seems tastier here than at home) which cost around 3.50/4.00 and were cooked to perfection. If you’re ever in Palolem I highly recommend eating here. I highly recommend Palolem in general.
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