Narsing Bharat Yatra

After leaving our biodiversity hotspot we drove back into Goa. On the drive into Calangute we saw a familiar face walking up the street. His swagger and wavy long hair made him distictly recognizable against the sea of Russian tourists. It was none other than our good friend Dan Dale! We shouted for him to get in the car but he didnt hear nor did the driver stop. We eventually met up at the hotel.  

After spending two weeks in budget accomodations we decided to upgrade for our extended time on the beach. Carnival was suppose to happen during our stay but it was unfortunately cancelled so we proceded to spend the rest of our time on the beach, drinking cold kingfisher beer and freshly squeezed juices, reading and going on adventures. Hard times indeed.  

On our adventures we explored the many beaches Goa had to offer. After making our way to Mapusa and doing our 300 Rs Market Challenge (see our earlier post) we cabbed to a beach called Anjuna. It was much quieter and was a quirky hub for hippies and German bakeries. We had a bite to eat at the bakery and decided to walk the way back. We figured it would take an hour max after consulting google maps. Following a road on the map that looked like a shortcut to the beach we came to a dead end. Thanks Google. After backtracking to the beach we found a trail over the hill conecting the beaches but quickly lost it somehow. We ended up trekking though thorny jungle. Dan was up ahead trying to pick up the trail again and found a wall that lead down to the beach. I was wearing the wrong footwear and skidded down the hill cutting my hand. Pravin lost his lens cap too but we made it down to the beach where we saw the actual trail. It looked a lot easier than the route we took.  

The next day Dan, Pravin and I took a bus down to South Goa where we walked about 10 kilometers of a 55 kilometer strech of beach. We saw an alarming number of dead turtles. We counted 8 in total. It didnt seem natural and they all appeared to have died recently. If any marine biologist might know if this is natural or not I would like to know. There were many undeveloped stretches along the long beach and since a scene from Bourne Supremacy was shot in Goa we decided to recreate it. I will post it soon once there is sufficient bandwidth.  

The last half of our Goa adventure was spent with our cousins, Deepika and Minesh and our Masa and Masi. They came to India to do some shopping for Minesh’s wedding and decided to take a break from shopping and hang out with us at the beach. We did more than that though. At the Anjuna market we employed Masa’s expert bargening skills and procured matching tropical shirts for 200 Rs each. We then reunited the Badgers scooter gang sporting our new tropical uniforms and rode up and down the coast exploring some of the northern beaches.  

Spending time in Goa was a much needed break in all the stop and go sight seeing we’ve been doing. It was so different to the rest of India and was hard to leave. I would definitely have not minded spending the rest of the trip on the beach but there were more things to see and our time here was running short.

-A