Goa

We?d arrived.

I opened my eyes in the morning to the beautiful view of the western ghats through large glass window of the bus. It reaffirmed my belief that very few places can get as beautiful as the western ghats during the monsoons. A couple of hours later, we were standing in Panaji - capital of Goa and our host city for the next 3 days. This being off-season, we didn?t have any trouble getting a decent room for cheap and bikes to help us explore. We rented a considerably used blue Bajaj Avenger and set sailing.



Goa is known for its beaches, so much that in India, beach and Goa are synonymous. People come here and just get wasted on the beach - be it noon, evening, midnight or wee hours of morning. And that?s exactly what we didn?t want to do. The idea was to explore the place and see the Goa that we haven?t seen earlier. We started off like typical tourists though, visiting one of the popular spots. But a couple of beers down at lunch, better sense prevailed. We picked up maps and headed off to one of the isolated beaches. Somewhere we missed a turn and instead ended up at a fort and lighthouse. No complaints though. We decided to go to a rather popular beach instead and spend rest of the evening there.



It rained as we took a walk on the beach. I sat down on the beach to take a picture and I didn?t see this big wave coming. It drenched me from top to bottom...even the camera was not spared. It was much later that I realized that it took away the keys of the rented bike and my driving license away. It did take a little bit of enquiring with local people to find a key maker...I was amazed how quickly he made a key for the lock - that way, no bike is 'safe'.

Best part of the day was riding back to the hotel. The beach was about 20kms from the hotel. Riding in an unknown place, on dark roads, through the rain gives a different kind of high. I was enjoying the needle-like rain hitting my face. By the time we reached back hotel, I was again drenched and had the beach sand and salt all over me - life can't get better!