Hello Everyone! I haven't been watching this space closely enough for quite a while now ;) Was busy fighting the "good fight" that one must indulge in, every now and then - the good fight called "Life". And I seriously can't conjure posts out of thin air, I must feel what I write. So, what have I felt recently? Is it just a feeling or something more than that? I guess it's fair enough to call it a very strong emotion related to a wonderful memory that I have. This beautiful memory is about a trip. A trip to Goa - the place we all love - the place we never forget! Before I proceed with this post, I must thank all those people whom "we" bumped into, for making "our" trip memorable....
24th June, 2011@11:24 am:
Salleen calling Gaurav (a.k.a GC)
GC: Hello?
Salleen: Oye! Kya ho raha hai?
GC: Kuch nahi. Tum kaise ho?
Salleen: Yaar ek baat batao. I am writing a post on our Goa trip. Do you remember hum kab gaye the? The dates and all....?
GC: Humm... I guess it was 15th of Jan.
Salleen: Na! Na! Now I remember. You left for Delhi on Republic day. So that means we must have returned on the night of 25th of Jan. I guess you had come to Pune on the 21st of Jan and...
GC: Haan Haan...correct! I came on 21st night and we left the next day early morning - at around 3:00am. He he! Kheeeee!
Salleen: He he! Kheeee! Chalo sahi hai. Bahut hi khatarnaak post likhne waala hun. Title bataun?
GC: Haan bata..
Salleen: Low on Fuel...High on Spirits!
GC: Awesome!! Dude!! He he he! Kheeeee!
Salleen: Kheeeee! I am going to put some of our pics as well. And am also thinking of including the map of that "trench" where we actually were low on fuel.
GC: Sahi hai boss.
Salleen: Chalo... I'll call you later.
GC: Okie..Take care! Bye!
Salleen: Bye!
Okay guys! This is how it all began. GC flew in from Delhi on the 21st of Jan, 2011. Both of us were super excited about this trip that was long pending because of the good fight that we all fight :P I took GC home and we were preparing our bags for the next day. It was almost 2:00am when we realized that we were too excited to go to sleep. Crazy fellows, the both of us, didn't sleep at all and we were off to Goa by 3:30am on the morning of 22nd Jan.
22nd Jan, 2011@3:00am:
GC began loading our vehicle - a beautifully maintained Indica V2, courtesy: Auto Riders International (http://www.autoriders.net/). God! I can't tell you how excited we really were. Goa is roughly 530 km from Pune. That's about 7 hours drive, if you drive in your senses. The best part, I had to single handedly clock all these hours behind the steering wheel, cause GC is yet to learn the art of driving :P (Sorry GC your secret is out!!). But I must say, the guy is a "must have" navigator ;) I had taken prints of the route suggested by Google Maps. Speaking of which, please DO NOT blindly follow Google maps. I guess we should use Google maps as a guide and leave the rest to road signs and our god damn instinct ;) I followed GC on our way to Goa and it took us under 6.5 hours to reach destination salvation! We blindly followed Google maps on our way back and it took us 10 hours, packed with some unwanted adventure! I'll get to the unwanted adventure part later in this post.
22nd Jan, 2011@6:50am:
After almost 4 hours of drive, our crazy instincts had given up and we badly needed some sleep. But I really couldn't resist taking a shot of our navigator, standing beside our beautiful ride, experiencing the first few rays from the morning sun. By the way, we were in the middle of nowhere with no place to rest other than the enclosures of 8639.
22nd Jan, 2011@8:00am:
The sun shining on the waves...
Flavors of the sea carried by the wind...
The mesmerizing aroma on the beach...
I guess we were dreaming about Goa all the while and the excitement was just too much to control. We got up after having slept for a little over an hour and there we were, back on track!
Never had I thought that Goa would be so beautiful....
Hardly had I slept to keep my eyes open....
The sea breeze was more refeshing than I had thought...
The sea breeze was more refeshing than I had thought...
The mesmerizing view of the sea (above) is what I got ;)
Yup! By 10:00am we were in paradise! It was like coming back home after a very long time. Goa was never my home town, but I was there with my family from 1988 - 1992. That is probably when I used to wet my little shorts trying to make my way through water logged streets. God! I miss those days.
Well, this is probably not the post for me to pen down memories from my past. I think I should just carry on naratting the adventures and misadventures that were in store for me and Mr. Navigator ;)
We were sleep deprived..
We were thirsty and..
We certainly did not want to get high on water..
..
..
But most of all, We were hungry!
I don't quite "remember" how and why we drove to Calengute beach, but we were really happy to have found some really cheap lodges near the beach where we were able to address a few pending calls from mother nature! GC and I had decided that we will not be wasting money on the comforts of the modern world, such as expensive resorts, overpriced boat rides and any possible excercise contemplating all possible meanings of the phrase "farting money"!
By now, GC was so hungry that he started chewing my BB holder :P
Immediately after I took this pic, the waiter served us a wonderful "English" breakfast platter - ham, sausages, peanut butter sandwich with roasted beans, etc. You name it, we had it! After having our breakfast, we drove off to Fort Aguada to witness one of the best views of Goa city. Wish I could share a pic that I had captured at Fort Aguada, but then it would seem that this post is dedicated to GC :P God! now I realize that I really took a lot of pictures of my navigator friend! Well, I don't blame him. There were just two of us and I didn't want to give my phone to some stranger. Eventually, I turned out to be the one taking pics...
...with a few exceptions of course ;) !!
That's how some luxury resort looks like in my background :P Lol! Just kidding! This is me @ Fort Aguada.
And this is where we were heading to next. Enlarge the above image and you will see a small blue shack, where fate played its role and we met someone interesting.
"Luck favors the brave!" - am sure we all know this one liner. But what I didn't know was, GC and I would get brave enough to attract luck towards us ;) Ok guys, this is what happened:
1. GC and I took a refreshing dip with sun on our shoulders and beer in our belly :P
2. Both of us, unintentionally, spotted a very young and beautiful face soaking in the morning sun.
3. We thought of striking a conversation, but first a couple of pints down our belly again...lol !
4. Still no courage in our hearts and no food in our tummy. Food! Humm... ok! GC and I decided to first put our stomachs to rest.
5. We got ourselves a table in that same old "blue" shack (also see the picture above):
And...wouldn't you know it, that pretty face followed us (not really "us" but...yeah!) inside the shack and took a rather distant table right across the shack on the opposite corner. By now we had enough of beer in our belly and while we were waiting for our food, I guess it was GC who finally broke the silence and said: "Please! We must not leave that pretty face alone. Let us go to her and say hi at least! Look at her. She looks sad!"
I just didn't know what to say, to be honest. I mean, jokes apart, how can we just go and say hi? I was more concerned to not freak her out. She looked Indian, but felt more like a professional model. And I didn't want to scare a professional model who seemed Indian in Goa. Well! But after a very thoughtful discussion with my dear friend GC, we finally decided to save ourselves the embarrassment by writing a small note on a tissue paper. This approach was nice! We didn't have to walk up to her for what seemed like a probable embarrassment, and she had the liberty to not react and throw the tissue away (just in case).
Well yeah! that's us just before we sent that legendary "tissue paper":
Tissue Paper:
Size: A standard tissue paper found on virtually ALL restaurant tables across the globe.
Note: "Hi! Do you want to talk? [an arrow mark pointing towards our table] Corner Table [a smiley]"
Oh kay!!! That was it! What followed was that we added an upcoming model from the US in our friends list. We had a nice dinner with our friend and her aunt (from Mumbai), after which her aunt gave us the permission to take her out to Curlies (a very cool place on South Anjuna Beach).
@ A seafood platter while having dinner with our new friend and her aunt:
@ Hawkers on Anjuna Beach (Curlies):
I don't want you guys googling her on the Internet, so I will not share her name :P (Sorry, but she is a friend now). But I have no issues, whatsoever, in sharing this last pic (before she left for Mumbai and then the US) with her:
That's how that beautiful chapter ended in Goa. GC and I headed back to our resort (one we had booked the night before, just because our friend had a bungalow nearby)
After getting over the fact that our new friend left us in Goa, GC and I decided to see the city of Panjim and I also thought of paying a visit to my childhood friend:
That's me with my very old fishy friend at Miramar beach. I used to play inside this cement structure way back in 1992 (when my dad was posted in Goa).
Ok guys, it's time I conclude this post before GC kills me for stretching it longer than the infamous Ekta Kapoor TV serials! Lol!
But before I sign off, please direct your attention to the following "trench" which came on our way back to Pune. Very Risky! Very Much "Not Wanted"! Be sure to avoid this by not following Google Maps blindly, especially when you are low on fuel and high on spirits ;) Sayonara!
