Advertisement
Published: November 15th 2017
Edit Blog Post
After another long train journey, the staple of our time in India, we arrived in Thivim in North Goa from Mumbai (which I’ll post about later as we actually visited twice).
We’ve found the trains to be a really good experience, perfectly comfortable and on the whole reliable bar the one train from Agra to Jaipur. We’ve mainly travelled on a mix of 2 A/C and 3 A/C, but there isn’t that much difference between them. 3 A/C basically means there are 3 bunks instead of 2 and you don’t have a curtain dividing your compartment from the rest of the carriage. The other passengers have always been friendly and we spent one journey teaching an elderly lady how to play the card game ‘shit head’ although we didn’t teach her the name in exchange for her sharing some fruit and snacks with us! We also got invited for dinner by a pastor from Mumbai (although we didn’t follow up the invite) and we made friends with a little boy who was transfixed by the pictures of elephants, crocodiles, pigs, monkeys and cows I had on my phone from earlier in the trip.
We started off in North Goa
and had picked Candolim as our first spot as we'd read things are a bit more built up in the north so it's good to go any time of the year rather than just high season. After a couple of weeks in the cities of Rajasthan and Mumbai we were looking forward to getting back to the beach and we were also looking forward to introducing some seafood back into our diets. Up to this point we've stuck to a vegetarian diet and whilst we've enjoyed some very good food it's fair to say we've missed meat - but we have realised that it's eating meat with every meal isn't necessary. I’d say the beaches of Candolim and Calangute were ok but they didn’t take your breath away and with Diwali coming up they were also very busy with Indian holidaymakers which sometimes caused a bit of discomfort especially when we witnessed a man walking along with a selfie stick pretending to take photos of himself but actually just taking pictures of the western girls walking to and from the sea in their bikinis! The lifeguards on patrol did deal with him to be fair and went through his phone
deleting the pictures before moving him off the beach.
After 4 nights in Candolim we headed to the south to Agonda Beach on the back of a recommendation from Orpy’s auntie who lives in Goa and quite clearly knows her beaches! We found a place on AirBnB called Alfonso Guest House which was cheap and had a kitchen that we could use. The moment we took our first steps on the 3km stretch of beach we knew we’d made the right decision. The beach here is protected because of the turtles hatching their eggs so there aren't as many shacks built up along the beach and there isn’t anyone trying to sell you stuff so it’s just a lot more peaceful and relaxing. We enjoyed a very easy way of life for the week we were here with days mostly consisting of popping to the shops to buy eggs and bread for breakfast, maybe grabbing a coffee to break up afternoons on the beach or sat on the balcony! I would really recommend Agonda Beach to anyone thinking of going to Goa for a holiday even for a few days as a break from the busier resorts.
One
of the best finds we had there was a
‘ghost’ hotel that a Canadian guy told us about whilst watching the football. I’d also quickly just like to point out to those jumping on the 'Bryan’s sports tour bandwagon' that Julia was more keen to watch it than I was although she was definitely more focused on how many Kingfishers she could consume in 90 minutes rather than the final score! At the southern end of the beach there is an abandoned half built shell of a hotel that you can get to from the beach or the parallel road. The story being that a group of Russians were building a seven star hotel but ran out of money in 2008 due to the financial crash so they pulled the plug and depending what blog you read committed suicide as a result. It was a lot easier to find than we had imagined as we followed a well trodden path eventually getting into the building via a balcony of one of the rooms. The bathrooms were partly tiled and they had laid the wires for the electrics as well but the only guests staying were the bats that would every now
and then cause Julia to lose her cool. We had the place to ourselves and we spent plenty of time on the top level enjoying the view across the whole beach. It felt like we had properly been exploring but no doubt countless others have made the same trip. I could imagine it making a good spot for paint balling or one of those zombie games they do in disused shopping malls back home.
Our cooking wouldn't have won any awards but it was nice to be able to cook for ourselves after a month of eating out and eating curry! We stretched ourselves to different variations of eggs and tuna pasta with the exception of one night when we invited Agnes and Erik over for veggie burgers in exchange for them teaching us a couple of new card games seeing as we only knew one and Julia couldn't cope with the fact that I'd finally got good enough to start beating her!
From Goa we headed back inland to Hampi. We stayed at a place called
Rocky’s Guesthouse which a friend of Julia’s had recommended to us and we arrived just as everyone was preparing to celebrate Diwali,
the Hindu festival of light, which we were really pleased about as we thought we might have missed it being in Agonda. I didn't know a great deal about Hampi but as we drove it had the feel of an ancient land with all the temples scattered around and I've never seen rock forms like it either - it looked like someone had dropped lots of boulders in various places to form the mountains! Diwali turned out to be a really colourful affair with lots of lights, candles, paintings on the floor outside people's front doors and then when the sun set the kids came out and started playing with the various firecrackers, sparklers, Catherine wheels that their parents had bought for them. They seemed to have an endless supply with firecrackers being set off the well into the night and the next night as well. It made me think of Dad and his exploits at the Lewes bonfire night but having sent him the videos of the firecrackers here he has bettered those with some of his videos from the 5th November! They are also allowed to gamble legally for 3 days and there were some big card games taking place at various street corners. We climbed the 600 steps of the monkey temple across the river and rewarded ourselves with lunch at a German bakery - we seem to be quite good at finding this kind of establishment! And the next day we went on a guided bicycle tour which was good fun and a good way of learning about all of the temples and ruins in the area.
From Hampi we headed to Bangalore and then down to Fort Cochin in Kerala. We had hoped to do a day trip down there to the backwaters but after a month of travelling the dreaded Delhi belly finally caught up with me and I was bed ridden until it was time to fly back to Mumbai for our flight to Bangkok!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0542s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Christophe
non-member comment
Diwali in Goa or Hampi?
Hi! Really interesting to read all of this. I will have a similar itinerary when I travel South India during the time of Diwali. I was trying to be in Hampi for Diwali, however as traveling from Mumbai to Hampi passes by Goa, I was wondering if it wouldn't be more convenient to just stay in Goa and celebrate Diwali there before going to Hampi. I feel like Goa is really touristy and Diwali in Hampi might feel more authentic? Any thoughts?