Our group of friends shifted
hostels in the second year and took rooms close to each other and the
friendship grew stronger from there with each passing day. Thus was born x0x-ers (3, 4 – 0 – 1, 3) i.e. rooms 301,303,401 and
403. We spent countless hours planning trips, parties, discovering music and
other random shit.
Goa is a destination every
college group plans to visit during their college days. This was one trip we
just had to make. After hundreds of hours spent on planning the trip, many last
minute changes and one person pulling out we finally managed to make the trip
with a bunch of our European friends joining us there for what would be the
most memorable trip of my life. I as a writer am incapable of putting in words
the sheer fun we had on this trip so most of you would not realise how
beautiful some of the moments were.
Day 1
I arrived before everyone else travelling
from Mumbai. Riding 30 km on a scooter solo from Madgaon to Calungute was a
sign of how the days ahead were supposed to be – blissful. After finding a
cheap hotel to stay, I left to meet the European friends. It was so good to
meet them after many days and hear the stories of their Kerala travel. There
was something that happened on the very first day of our trip that made me see
a different side of India. A couple of
guys actually paid 50 rupees for a picture with bikini clad white women.
While they took all this in lighter vein but the sheer attention and the lack
of privacy got even me annoyed. There were people all around trying to take
pics, talk random shit or just ogle at the girls making the stay uncomfortable.
The first night in Goa was the
first time we faced the so called “distance
conundrum”. People in Goa measure distance in some paranormal metrics. We
had decided to walk to Club Cubana as it was only 5 minutes away. We only
realised after it was too late that it was far and impossible to walk to the
club and hence decided to visit the clubs in Baga, Tito’s or Mambo’s but ended
up drinking on the beach. It was good that we didn’t go to Cubana that day
because that is a place to go with everyone and after the tiring day some of
our friends had already left.
The x0xers still in train were adamant on visiting Cubana as it was a
ladies night that day. By the time they made it to Baga, my day was already over and I was back in our hotel. But I
didn’t have the keys so a couple of them came back to give me the keys but
instead ended up taking me back to the beach with them. The moment we all
united for the first time in Goa is a memory etched in my mind forever. A bunch
of crazy guys, a bit tipsy singing a cacophonic tune on the karaoke. The song
was bad but the memory unforgettable. That is all I remember from the first day,
we returned really late and I remember little of it. It was also the day when Katsaridaphobia struck. A debilitating
fear of cockroaches. The most fun girl
on exchange reduced to tears at the sight of the petty creature.
Day 2
After claustrophobic Calungute on
the first day we moved further north to Arambol
the next day. It was a beautiful beach, less crowded, less Indians, lots of
foreigners, BIG waves. This day was particularly eventful not because of the
beautiful beach but because our beloved Papa
lost his Activa keys in the very first dip in the sea. While the afternoon
thereafter was ruined for him, we made the most of the beautiful beach drinking
chilled beer along with the most awful hukkah ever made. A couple of our
friends got inspired by company and tried chocolate pancake here. The waves in
Arambol are strong, good for surfing (saw some people enjoying it there) and
the beach is clean, good for foreigners. A special mention to our party freak friend RoJa, who travelled a couple of days in train for this one day but
didn’t even set foot in water. Instead enjoyed dal roti in the shack.
In the evening we decided to go
to Curlies, a place I had thoroughly enjoyed on my last trip to Goa but this
time it was something completely different. All boys had to pay an entry fee of
rupees 500 which included absolutely nothing and the drinks sold inside were
astronomically priced. The entry fee for boys suddenly turned to entry fee for
Indian boys. It was astonishing to see a repeat of “Dogs and Indians not allowed”
sort of restrictions in Independent India. While some of us didn’t want to pay
money for nothing so we decided to listen to music from the beach, eat
something and drink a few beers. However, in some time things turned to worse,
the entry fees increased to 1000, you couldn’t even be on the beach and more
than anything it felt a bit humiliating. This is when one of us lost his cool
shouted at security and that was the end of Curlies for us. We however had
great fun getting drunk with our set of party-freak
friends back in the shack at Baga followed by the late night omelette.
The scenes at Curlies however
were pure psychedelic. Lots of people swinging uncontrollably to the music. The
crowd and atmosphere there was freaking crazy, very few people in their senses.
The firang friends enjoyed it a lot,
one person in particular who stayed till 6 am. I heard a lot happened there
which everyone was giggling about but nothing said loud in the open. It was
also very nice of them to try plenty of times to get one of us enter the party.
This was one of many instances that we realised how genuinely nice and friendly
these guys are, and we met just two months ago!!! I also vividly remember then
having a candid chat with the Katsaridaphobic
girl. She is someone who always has a smile on her face and makes everyone
around her smile as well. I fondly call her the most fun girl on exchange.
However, that day I realised it has not been very easy for her in India all the
time. She has had some very difficult times but doesn’t let all that affect her
at all.
Day 3
The next day was the much hyped
day of Club Cubana. We had already visited the place on our way to Arambol to
ensure no goof-ups this time. In the afternoon we decided to do some water
sports on Calungute beach. We did
only the deep sea diving which
wasn’t really deep sea for most of us. For someone like me who doesn’t know
swimming if I can’t feel ground under my feet it’s all the same. A wasteful
event but an item off the checklist. No water sports in Goa again for me. Here 4 of our other firang friends also joined
us and we had all 18 of us at one place now. It became almost impossible to do
anything collectively with such a big and diverse group. We finally decided to
move to Morjim after Calungute but it was already 4 by then and I didn’t want
to waste more time in figuring out the logistics. So Baniya and I headed straight to Morjim with 1.5 Spanish and 0.5
French girls.
Morjim
was surreal. A very beautiful beach, quiet, secluded with not so strong waves.
One of the best beach in Goa for me and definitely the best I visited in North
Goa. There weren’t too many people on the beach so there was little
disturbance. It was a perfect way to relax after the cumbersome morning and
just a couple of beers in this background was enough to get us tipsy. We left
Morim after a small meal at the shack there. It is hard to forget the cute
little Russian children we saw on
the beach and the Swedish women who visited Goa every year but that’s all she
knows about India. It is also amusing to see foreigner’s interest in cows. A
cow on the beach was the centre of attraction at Morjim. On our way back we
stopped at Cubana again to ensure everything was smooth there.
The entry into Club Cubana was just like everything
else on the trip- very interesting and complicated. What pissed everyone off
was that the security couldn’t believe a bunch of young Indians could be
friends with so many foreigners. They went to the extent of asking for proofs
of friendship. I am still looking for a perfect test of friendship but the
photos of our Jaisalmer trip on their phone and recital of tough Hindi names
was enough for them. The club was good from inside but maybe I had too high
expectations from it so it was short of something great for me. The place was
buzzing with people. Four bars, two dancefloors and a swimming pool. The place
definitely had many memorable moments.
My favourite was when our Thulla took help from a French/African
girl to strike a conversation with a Russian. Obviously nobody could understand
anything but full marks for the effort. The gallery on the first floor of the
disc was my favourite area and my favourite drink was something Thulla only
made me try. He went to the Russian bar tender and said “surprise me”. She gave
him gin with tonic. So my favourite drink for the night was gin tonic with 3 slices of lemon. A few
people (read exclusively for girls) also got their face painted which to be
honest didn’t looked pretty and I remember telling this to one French girl (Chinki). Everyone was having fun in
their own unique way so it is difficult to know all the stories from the day
but I distinctly remember the incroyable
(incredible) story told by one of the French guys (Mastram). On a trip to Mozambique once with his father, everyone
in the tribe wanted to marry their daughter to this white young man. His father
told them he was already married to protect him but then his father got drunk
and revealed that he was not married. The young boy got chased to a home and
was shown into a room with a naked women lying on the bed. He ran as fast as he
could and was protected by a village elder. My scariest moment in life is
nowhere close to this.
I made friends with the DJ there-
DJ DryTeeth. And we danced to his
music till 4:30 a.m. after which Burnu and
I went to have what would be my favourite cheese omelette of the trip at 5:00
a.m. at Baga. Later I heard that a few people tried staying up to see the
sunrise on the beach but everyone left one by one and no one was there till the
sunrise. I had no such fetishes.
Day 4
The next day was a day of departures with Baniya leaving
early in the morning followed by 4 firangs and finally Uncle in the evening. The first two were going back to Delhi while
our Uncle Dude (Chacha Chaila) was
his aberrant self, taking a bus to Bangalore.
A couple of other firangs also decided to shift base further north in Arambol. So
now there were six of us, four Indian
guys, a Spanish and a French girl. We had 4 rooms with us in our hotel but
with so many people leaving we had kept only 2 rooms and were to check out of
other 2 rooms. But this hotel had a very interesting check out time of 9:00 am.
A task almost impossible to achieve in Goa, especially after the hangover of
unlimited drinks at Cubana. Some of them checked out as late as 11:30 a.m. A
long discussion with the hotel owner followed as he wanted us to pay the full
days rent for those two rooms as well. This was one of the many instances of
the apoplectic local Goan behaviour
we witnessed on the trip.
After lunch on the beach and
bidding goodbye to everyone we left for Sinquerim
stopping at the Sinq club in between trying to figure out our plans for the
night. It has the Taj Hotel on one end and the water is relatively clean. There
is also a fort there which offers a great view of the sea. Our Thulla being
true to his name decided to skip the waters and slept on the beach there. Papa and
I spent a long time there trying to learn floating with our eyes looking at the
sky. I took some engineering brain of Burnu to teach us but we somehow finally
got it.
We heard another incredible story here, this time from the Spanish girl. We
all know she can be lazy but this was laziness of another level. While relaxing
on the floating mat she fell asleep and ended up in the middle of the sea. She
later had to swim 30 minutes to get back to land. It was so tiring that she was
saved only because she could wait in between on the mat. We also met our
biggest pervert on this beach. A guy offering water sports on the beach had a
stare so disgusting it would put Prem Chopra to shame. A slight setback met us
in the parking outside. Papa had another instance with his Activa, somebody hit
his Activa in the parking and the front grill got damaged.
We still had no plans for the
night and since many people had told us about the party scene in Vagator, we headed 30 km to Vagator. We
were welcomed on Vagator by a cultural program called Leher, but there were no
signs of any party whatsoever on that beach. We asked the guys up in Arambol if
there was something happening there but we couldn’t get a reply so we decided
to leave Vagator. (To great disappointment of Burnu, who was thoroughly
enjoying the cultural show) We came back to Baga to have some good food at Brittos. The sea food platter is really good for sea food lover but it was a bad
day for Papa so he also gave it a try to finally realise he is not a sea food
person. He stole my fries but the fried
chicken speciality I ordered was really good, a must try. The desserts were
pretty awesome too. My favourite was mango
mousse followed by blueberry, also a must try.
Since nobody wanted to go to the
club we decided to drink on the shacks. We went shack hopping on Baga beach from there on. One had music too loud
so we moved to another one playing drinking card games which got us really
drunk after few hours. The Goan weather also took an unexpected turn and it
started to rain. We had ordered some
feni (the worst drink I have tasted ever) and burnu mixed some beer in it too
but we finished even that off. I stole a
beer mug from there as they won’t give me a disposable glass. Papa got
drunk and fell asleep there. The Spanish girl tried everything but throwing
water at him, it didn’t work. Even my favourite slap trick didn’t work. When
the rain stopped we headed to the road on our way back.
Here started the craziest and the most favourite part of
the trip for me. While waiting for the others out on the road I heard some nice
music from Club Mambo and started swinging to it a fair distance away from it.
I suggested this to the Spanish girl that we shall dance to this nice music.
Being her crazy self (when drunk), we moved right to the entrance of the club
and started dancing. We asked the security for entry but they would still
charge us the hefty entry fees so we decided to enjoy the music from the
outside. It is impossible to explain the scenes and the craziness of the entire
event. A slight drizzle from the sky and 6 people dancing like crazy outside a
night club which has only a few people left inside. All the people on the
street and inside the club wondered what was wrong with us but we were too
drunk to realise that. After the music stopped we realised this is a very long
way to reach the parking so we went back to the beach to go to the parking. It
is hard to forget that walk on the perfectly silent beach at 4 am which was
otherwise so crowded. By the time we left the world cup match had already started.
One of the most craziest moments of my life.
Day 5
Having faced the backlash of not following the checkout time
the previous day I made sure everyone was up by 8 the next morning and ready to
leave by 9. Everyone was sleep deprived so some wanted to sleep on the beach
but finally we decided to head straight to Palolem
in South Goa, 80 km from our hotel. The journey didn’t start well as just after
5 minutes of leaving the hostel, we had our first fall. The rain last night had made the roads slippery and
Burnu’s Activa slipped and down went the Indo-Spanish duo. So we returned back
for some clean-up. It was great to see the girl’s spirit who was still ready to
ride along with Burnu but obviously he was too scared to let her fall again.
Then we headed for the repair job on Papa’s Activa. We spent a good time
looking for the garage and then finally for the repair. We had to stop again
because we had decided to move together but we lost one of the Activa (Papa
again). Then we stopped for some brunch to finally embark on the 80 km journey
to Palolem. The drcision was to stop in Madgaon and Canacona in between to take
breaks, only to realise Canacona was 1 km away from Palolem. The journey was a
really long one with a stoppage for rain and a break for resting on the
footpath. It was one of those journeys that I will not forget for a long time. The last leg was so serene and beautiful.
Palolem is a
quiet place with lots of foreign tourists. The water is clean and the beach is
beautiful. We rented a hotel and ate some very good food at the adjoining Spicy Bella restaurant. We headed to
the beach straight after that to have one of the most memorable experience on
the trip. These guys sure know how to have fun. We were lifting each other on
our shoulders and throwing them back in the sea when we saw the Spanish girl
standing on the shoulders of the tall African/West Indian/French girl and then
jumping back into the sea. Soon we could see a number of people on the beach
looking at our group trying to do this trick. We also had water fights and other stuff to make it the best day in the sea for me and some others. All of us slept after
the shower as we were so tired. We tried to look for a party that evening only
to realize that the Leopard valley party is on Friday and Headphone party on
Saturday and we arrived on Sunday. So we bought some beers to drink on the
beach but there was rain waiting for us. Uncharacteristic for this time of the
year in Goa but we had heavy rains that night. Stuck at a wrong place we were
thinking of a way out when we saw the girls running in the rain towards Spice
Bella. This was probably the longest I have waited for my food at a restaurant.
After over an hour of waiting we had dinner and went back to our hotel to drink
awfully warm beers. After which everyone slept like a baby. We had decided to
move to Panaji for our final day after sending off the African girl as she was
leaving a day earlier than us.
Day 6
Before sending her off and leaving for Panjim we decided to
trust TripAdvisor and eat our breakfast at Little
World for some delicious pancakes which we had never tried before.
Certainly a must visit place in Palolem. We wished goodbye to the African girl
and went to the beach to enjoy the serenity of the place. I remember having a
great conversation with the Spanish girl sitting on a rock overlooking the sea
about travel and life. It is fascinating to talk to people who can understand the world beyond money. A trivial
moment etched in memory for a long time.
The plan was to visit Agonda before leaving for Panjim but
it seemed very similar to Palolem. There were some great reviews that we had
heard about Cabo de Rama and it was
13 km from Agonda, on our way to Panjim. So we skipped Agonda and headed
towards Cabo de Rama. Everyone was glad to have come to this heavenly place in
Goa. The road to the beach wasn’t easy and we also went wrong and reached Cabo de Rama fort instead but what we
witnessed finally was eternal bliss. A handful of people on the beach and a
stunning view of the sea. This is where I saw the best sunset of my life. There was just one shop there and we
ordered omelette and tea. The food was normal but the view was exceptional,
absolutely postcard like and it was hard to leave that place. Everything was
still for some time and everyone quiet. Like most plans, the plan to leave the
tricky road in daylight failed.
We left late for Panjim
having overspent the time watching the sunset and reached really late and
starving. After a brief search for a hotel, we settled in the first one we
checked. It was close to the casinos
because that’s why we were in Panjim. But at the last moment we started having
doubts as the cost was 1500 but by a vote of 3-2 we entered the Casino, Burnu
being the decider. The first thing on our minds was definitely food and that is
where we rushed straight to. We had to make the most of the 1500 paid to the
casino so everybody had their plates full. Everyone was particularly happy
seeing the Spanish girl hog on the food there, giving tough competition to our
fiercest eater. There was a moment in between when Burnu for the first time in
his life found something worth giving up his food- a dance by some troop on
“Birthday Bash”.
We entrusted all our coupons with the lady luck and she
played unbelievably winning 8 out of
first 8 attempts (Papa did one of those). We lost the last two but everyone
got their 800 rupees back. Papa then went on a killing spree winning 8-10 on
the trot. So everyone had a great night finally paying only 100-500 rupees for
the food but I had to pay 1000 rupees for my food. The Spanish girl took two
free coupons for girls at 2:00 and 4:00 am to win 500 from those. A happy end
for her indeed. We then went out to sit on the bridge where a guy came to sell
tea from nowhere. You can get chai anywhere and at any time in India. We went
to sleep at around 5 am on our last night in Goa.
Day 7 and 8
We left nice and early for the Madgaon station after
breakfast where I forgot the place I had parked my Activa (I accept I am
geographically challenged). We stopped in between for some juice and the
Spanish girl tried some ice cream for the love of almonds. We reached the wrong
side of the station and hence wasted a good amount of time figuring out the way
to return our Activas. Dealing with local Goans isn’t easy and we couldn’t have
left without a final altercation. In the most stupidest of remarks the guy
wanted Papa to go back to Baga to change the new front panel as it was “fake” and get the original broken one. The
funniest thing however was that it was broken from the time we received it but
we wasted time and money getting it repaired.
Anyhow finally we got on the train in time with moments to
spare. The return journey was mellowed because the most exciting girl on the
trip had fallen sick (for the love of almonds). She was weak and slept for most
of the 48 hours without eating much at all. But there was a moment in between when
we were playing card games and she beat Papa and said “Sorry Papa” with almost child-like innocence, all of us instantly
broke into laughter. On this journey we also borrowed a laptop to watch movie “Baby”. We tried borrowing Bluetooth
speakers but weren’t able to connect them. English subtitles were also
downloaded to help the Spanish girl but those were the worst subtitles ever for
a movie.
Before we could realise, the journey was over. A tight hug
and that was it, in an auto back to hostel. The end of good times, a million
memories, an epic trip, awesome people, serenity, craziness, stupidity and a
thousand other emotions rushing in all at once to create a cocktail of
feelings. An emotion impossible to describe but easy to feel over and over again.
It beautifully sums up what this trip meant to each of us. I am sure in the
moments before I die when my life flashes before my eyes this is what I will
cherish, this time and these people.
“We don’t meet people by accident, they are meant to cross our path for a reason.”
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