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Throughout the trip during some of the more challenging/dirty places our thoughts were focused upon the reward waiting for us at the end of it......Goa!!The girls were excited for some chill our bikini time, to have the freedom to wear less clothes and generally party.So you can imagine our disappointment when we arrive in Calibra to be greeted with a Costa style resort.....full of fat, burnt British and Russian package tourists all walking round trying to find out where does the best full English!You couldn't have felt more away from India, which after becoming so engrossed in the culture over the past few weeks was a massive culture shock.We imagined palm tree fringed beaches with beautiful beaches.....instead we were got a sunken, rusted boat which had been rotting away next to the shoreline for 20 years, row after row of trawlers on the horizon shipping in and out of Mumbai, dirt and hassle constantly from people selling to you, all topped off with huge swarms of young drunk Indian men out for a goodtime (or perv!)!
Still, the tour came to an end on a high note though with everyone in good spirits and for the first time...no one was sick!Yogi had helped us all make plans for after the tour whether it was taxis to airports of overnight trains, he mentioned there was another Gap group who were arriving in Goa on Saturday and it might b good for us to stay with them and make more friends....excellent i thought.....until he told me that it would be 4,000 RPS a night to stay in the filthy hotel we were in where we had had power all of a couple of hours during the entire stay.....we'd even had to go to bed by candlelight the night before....and with no A/C or fan it made for an uncomfortable nights sleep!Needless to say we didn't want to spend anymore time here, regardless of the cost...so with minutes to spare we decided to jump in a taxi with the Aussies and head off to Palolem in the South of Goa, this has been voted one of the world's best beaches in the world by New York Times......and oh boy did it live up to the hype!!
We stayed at Papillion beach huts to begin with at the quieter end of the beach.....we would lay in bed and listen to the roar of the ocean...bliss.It was here during a thunder storm that we got talking to 2 knobheads (in the Yorkshire knobhead = legend sense).Sam and Nick from Portsmouth were stranded at Papillion until the rain had cleared so we thought it only fair that we entertained them with our stories from our trip so far.....sexual abuse on a bike......donkey d*** ....being groped in Mumbai.....seeing the men of Agra line up to have their morning poo....to the man who sells fake beards outside the Red Fort in Delhi. These 2 would become my great pals once I was alone, sharing many an hilarious moment.....fishing for bearded barracudas using turn up jeans.....surviving a surprise Uzbekistani attack.....falling in love with the dessert menu at Home (3 tarts in an afternoon is good going by anyone standards).....I will forever associate Nick with this crazy Uzbekistani neighbour who's English was basic....however she seemed to think that we're fluent is Uzbekistani.....she would be laughing away, gesticulating...obviously telling a great tale but all of it a mystery to us!We couldn't hide our giggles and would be pissing ourselves.....she maybe saw this as enthusiasm to continue with her story.....if you tried to challenge anything she said she would simply get louder and point more....but still in Uzbekistani!!!
There is a common theme about the type of people we came across in Goa....there all off their nuts!From Tatiana to 'Dog Man' who gets smashed and starts claiming he can speak to dogs...he actually just makes barking noises and then passes out in the middle of the bars.....to Marco the lovely crazy man who claims he can see my future.....I think he scared poor Mike with his predictions!!
Among the semi sane friends i've met here are Alli and Gem, a wicked couple from London, Andy, Rex & Jake, all mates travelling together from Brighton, Craig a sound Scotsman, Peder a giant of a Norwegian man, Jamie, Mike, Paul & Jeff all from London and they all have a strange love of Bacardi Breezers...only a park bench away from a teenage pregnancy!! There were many more who came and went from the group.....all of them more off their t*** than the next....they've made my time in Goa.The boys even took me in once Alana had left for Bangkok....3 of us sharing a 500RPS per night room....making the room about 2 quid each a night....lovely jubbly as the Indians would say!
The first night I met the group there was a Meteor shower forecast for around 4am....we stayed out but weren't too hopeful about seeing anything as it was overcast.....by 3am the haze had lifted and as we all lay on our backson the sand we saw stars blasting their way across the galaxy...amazing!!
We went off to Turtle Beach to see the new turtle eggs in the hope that they had hatched.....they hadn't.....there wasn't really anything there to see other than another pretty beach....even the restaurant Gordon Ramsey had recommended was closed.....think they've probably made enough money off that to never work again!We had a day out with the boys to the Nature reserve...we didn't see much whilst trailing around on the mopeds but we did see some huge spiders, massive cobras which locals had found in their homes and had been rescued.....even a baby alligator had been captured.We got chatting to a guy who ran a little cafe from his home on the reserve and he'd had his dogs savaged by leopards a few days previously!From here we drove to Agonda beach......a beautiful, less commercial stretch of beach where we sat in a treehouse and watched the sunset...bliss!
The other days in Goa were easily filled with sunshine, barefoot walks around the beach and going off to discover the smaller beaches around.Pat Nam to the south of Palolem was reached with a 20 minute walk.This lovely quiet beach was recommended by Mike and Jamie and became a regular haunt for me and Nick......'Home' was run by an ex-pat and had a menu you would expect to see in any British Deli.....but the magic really happened on the dessert menu.We would torture ourselves for ages agonising over which dessert to have....from the Lemon Tart to the Strawberry and Custard Tart....each one better than the rest......we will never forgive ourselves that we left without sampling what Lonely Planet calls 'Indians best Chocolate brownies'......big statements.....what were we thinking.....we shall have to live with ourselves never knowing!!
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