Well, it’s been two weeks since I got back from Goa and I’ve spent the last two weeks documenting the daily visits of Goa.

To sum up, my entire visit of Goa was fun. It was the first time that I went there, but I’ve learned how to get myself around it (hopefully)

Anyway, here’s the listing of the trip to Goa.

• Day 0 – Bombay to Goa
• Day 1 – The Hitchhikers
• Day 2 – Museum Hunting
• Day 3 – At Home
• Day 4 – Shopping and Walking
• Day 5 – Wining and Dining
• Day 6 – Church
• Day 6 – A Day at the Beach
• Day 7 – Goa to Bombay
• Photos from Goa

As all good things come to an end, our exhausting but extremely enjoyable vacation in Goa finally drew to a close. We had tickets for the afternoon Shatabdi Express back to Mumbai.
But, the return journey didn’t mean we didn’t have an exhausting morning.

It began with Marise and me gardening, more like pruning the the plants out there in preparation for the monsoon, when they grow uncontrolled. This also meant my debut in this field

Before that, Crispin headed off to Badem to meet his grandmother. He returned with a huge box of mangoes… a huge, extremely heavy box that we had to lug back to Mumbai.

After lunch, the three of us, viz. me, Marise and Crispin, who would be travelling back set off with Ruth and Dora towards Thivim station.

However, looking at the size of our luggage we realized it would be extremely difficult to transport it without proper transport. Now Goa doesn’t have proper transport, unless you own it! We were lucky to find a rickshaw who agreed to take us and the luggage. Marise and me went in the rick with all the bags, while the others walked it out via a shorter route.

We were joined by Valley who came to the station after work.

We located where our coaches would come. The train was late by almost 30 minutes. Marise was in a seperate compartment, but we managed to get the TC to arrange for her to sit in the same comparment with us. And the man beside me kindly moved so that Marise could sit with the two of us.

The train ride was comfortable, except when the train went into the tunnels and we had the compartments all filled with smoke!

We reached Mumbai a little before midnight where Crispin’s dad picked us up. We dropped Marise home and then returned to Andheri.

Changed, deposited the bibic in the fridge and went to bed. Unpacking shall wait.

A week in Goa without visiting the beach is something very people would do. Well, we aren’t among those people.

We had plans to go swimming in a nice swimming pool, but when plans didn’t work out, we chose to visit the beach.

The beaches in Goa are usually crowded and on a Sunday afternoon it’s at its worst.

And Baga Beach is among the most crowded of beaches as the picture above shows you. However, Valley knew of a secluded portion of Baga Beach, which is where we headed to.

It worked well, because we got the beach almost to ourselves, with the exception of a few lechers which is a disgusting characteristic of uncouth Indian men at beaches.

Had brought along a change of clothes, but wasn’t too keen on entering the water. Finally decided to take the plunge and we all spent a good hour in there. Marise sat on the rock like the little mermaid, but joined us later.

I didn’t need to change into my other set of clothes, because the sun shone down bright enough to dry up all my clothes.

We took the longer route on the way back because we didn’t want to get wet crossing the river again. We finally piled ourselves into the bus heading back to Mapusa, which took a long time as it stopped at Calangute, where it got stuffed to the brim (luckily we were seated the whole journey).

We got back to Thivim safe and sound and extremely exhausted. Changed and got cleaned quickly and hit the beds for a sound sleep.

The next day, we come home and if you’re interested, here are the pics of the beach day.

We slept quite late (infact early in the morning) after the barbecue on Saturday and it was quite a bit of a problem awaking by 7am to make it for the 8am mass.

However, we did struggle out of our beds and get ready.

Now Thivim Chapel is right on top of the hill, which means a great deal of walking indeed! I had received strict instructions from Marise to wear formals. Walking is bad enough, walking up a hill is worse, walking up a hill in the heat can be a real pain, but walking up a hill in the heat in formals is a real killer!

By the time we were at the top we were totally drenched in perspiration. And the chapel was also overfull and we didn’t have any sitting place.
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We may have walked all over Thivim the previous day, but that wouldn’t stop us from travelling to Badem to visit Crispin’s Grandmother.

Our last visit to Badem was pretty much a disaster as it involved us hitchhiking all over the place.

Our trip to Mapusa was by the usual bus. We were accompanied by Dora, who for some strange reason buys half tickets for all of us. And the stranger thing is that the conductor gives her them knowing it is for us!

Anyway, our journey from Mapusa to Badem was extremely comfortable as we got a ride in a car, yes a real car, and one with an AC as well :O

We bundled ourselves in and reached there quickly. Picked up charcoal on the way for the barbecue in the evening.
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