The bus journey was uneventful for most part(except detailed techgadget reviews by Manas) and long. The road down the Western Ghats after Madikeri was pathetic(it seems) with most of them not able to sleep through the journey.
We reached Mangalore Bus Stand at about 4:30 AM in the morning and checked-in to a hotel named Hindustan residency near the railway station. As the pleasant dawn rose, we were all set and walked towards the Mangalore railway station to catch our train to Madgaon.
The train journey was overall pleasant and we reached Madgaon at about 1:00 PM. The drivers in the group eagerly came out of the railway station expecting to put their hands on a rented Scorpio/Innova that we had booked, but were a bit dissappointed to see an old Qualis delivered instead. Ajith was the first to sit behind the wheels and quickly realised the value of the almost ubiquitous technology named 'power-steering' which was badly missed on the Qualis that we got. We headed north towards Panjim, had lunch at the Kamath Hotel in Panjim and then headed further north to Calangute. Kamath turned out to be good vegetarian hotel except for the terribly sour curd that they provided.
We had booked our accomodation at a place named La-Bamba resort which is a minute walk from the Calangute beach. The place was neat and spacious. The evening was spent playing with the waves on the Calangute beach followed by dinner at the beach side shack. The beach side dinner in open-air with the sound of the waves in the background and dark sky is a very soothing experience. As usual, the teetotalers dominated with their soft-drinks except that they were weaker than usual as Swamy made the transition out of the teetotaler's group so that he can complete his 'conglomeration' of events and experiences in his life. The other highlights were invention of M-PEG(Mahesh's peg which is 90ml in size rather than the usual 60ml) and a Mahesh's unintended live demonstration on 'how not to smoke' which consisted of 3 failed attempts to light the cigarette on its butt. The party ended past midnight and everybody retired for the day.
The next day started early with the plan of visiting the beaches in South Goa. After some unexpected delay in taking out the vehicle from the parking lot, we went to 'Sree Sagar - The vegetarians saviour' for breakfast. After a nice breakfast, Muthu was entrusted with the drivers role for the rest of the day as we hit the roads towards the Colva beach on the South.
The Colva beach is known for its fine grained white sand. We had a round of photo session on the Colva beach, came back to our vehicle, dressed(down) for the water and jumped into the sea. The waves became stronger and stronger making it more and more fun to be in water. We had a submersion exercise for Ranjith which ended up abruptly with screams echoing all around Colva :).
After about 2 hours of wave bashing and frisbee, we had lunch at the beach-side restaurant. The food was bad with no salt in anything that was served probably thinking that people would have had enough salt from the sea water before they come to the restaurant for lunch :) . At about 3:30 PM, we started driving back to North Goa and after some scary moments(courtesy: Our driver Manas) we reached the Aguada fort. The Aguada fort provides a very picturesque view of the sea from an altitude.
From Aguada fort we went to the Baga beach just before the sunset. This was the most crowded beach around and provided a beautiful view of the sunset. Viswesh, Muthu and Swamy decided to jump into the water while the rest decided to explore the views from the Baga Creek which is a rocky stretch on one of the sides.
From Baga we headed towards the Vagator beach which is supposed to be the among the most picturesque beaches in Goa. To our dissappointment, we found that the beach is open only during the day and at 8 PM it was not day anyways. The drive back to Baga was test for Muthu's driving skills due to narrow 10 feet roads being over-populated with vehicles parked all around. Muthu managed to squeeze out of it after about half an hour to face one more challenge of finding parking place in the 'Baga Beach Saturday market' parking lot. The Saturday market is open for all but in reality serves only the foreign tourists visiting Goa. It was a noisy, crowded place with nothing interesting to shop for any of us and hence we came out of it quicker than the time we took to find the parking space :). It was time for dinner and we started on our hunt to find food. The hunt was made challenging by the non-veggies insistent on having sea food for dinner.
The first place was a restaurant on the Baga beach which Mahesh decided was overpriced for sea food and we walked away. The second place was a restaurant on the Calangute beach that had a waiter who did not want to take order of 'more than 1 item at a time' because he could not remember them and it was below his dignity to write them down. After about 15 minutes of waiting and heated arguments between Ajith and the waiter we walked away from this restaurant too(rather rudely with the cold drinks spilt all around the table in front of the waiter - some times everybody is out of themselves). At 11:30 PM the options were few and we ended up in a Punjabi Dhaba which was a test for the vegetarians with the open kitchen showing how green the dot on the vegetarian food was in this restaurant. Overall the day was fun but bad food all around.
The next day started early with Muthu giving a wakeup call at around 6:00 AM. The plan was to do water sports at Calangute early morning and then start back to catch the afternoon train. We gathered at the beach at around 8:00 AM and after around half an hour of bargaining we finally settled for a package deal of Rs 4000-00 for all. The water sport started with a short jet skii followed by a boat ride deep into the sea to get a glimpse of dolphins. Then came the 'bummer ride' where a circular raft seats two people and is tied onto the boat with a rope of about 10 metres in length. The boat pulls the raft along making it twist and twirl up and down the waves with the ride ending when the boat brakes suddenly allowing the occupants of the raft experience the thrill of 'inertia'(whatever is moving keeps moving) except for the raft that seated Manas and Viswesh whose combined weight negated all effects of inertia. This was followed by the 'banana ride' where people are taken into deep sea on a tube and toppled into the sea. Ranjith almost drowned(with the life jacket) but was calling for help with a smile on his face which made people think Ranjith is enacting some scene from a Telugu movie. The boat that took us into the sea broke down and all of us had to swim back to the shore. The last event was para-sailing where a boat took us into the sea and we were transferred into a bigger boat which would be putting us on sails. We went in groups of two with Manas getting an exclusive sail due to odd number of people in the group. The participants were belted to the sail and a rope tied to the boat was released slowly putting the participants up in the air about 40 metres above the sea. The air-borne view really gives an adrenaline rush and this was truly the most exciting event of all that everyone visiting Goa must and should try. We were transferred back to the shore by a smaller boat and the exciting 3 hours of water sports ended with this.
It was almost noon by now and we headed back to our home stay. We got ready(since no girl(s) were there this time getting ready was quick :)). The dudes(Mahesh and Manas) went to the beach for some tatoo work while the rest of them went to the store to by Goan cashewnuts. We had our brunch at Sree Sagar and drove back to Madgaon railway station.
The rest of the journey was filled with 'crap-talk' on variety of things with Swamy opening up as never before(probably the late effect of the Vodka couple of nights before). The train had prolonged waits due to attachments/detachments of compartments before it started on its last leg of the journey. Hubli station was witness to Swamy jumping all over the place to capture photo of a girl whom Viswesh is going to propose the next time they meet(atleast that is what Viswesh claimed) :). Some more 'crap-talk' and we retired for the day at around 11. The train reached Bangalore at around 8:00 A.M ending 4 days of fun and frolic except with Ranjith dissappointed a bit about 'something' :)
