A Goan Experience!!

I'd been to Goa with 6 of my colleagues. It was awesome fun and I thought I should share it with all you guys! This happened around 7 months back, and we freshers had just finished our first ever project at work. Obviously all of us were excited, and whats more we had got a week off from office, as compensation for all the weekends of work that we had put in! So what do we do - we planned a trip to Goa, on the fly, and within a couple of days the plans were finalised and even the tickets were booked! Talk about plannin well in advance! :) We were scheduled to leave for Goa the next week and before we realised it, the day of departure had come! We had all been working for almost a year now, and even though we had been earning for a year, we never got a chance to really enjoy and spend the money!! This was our first opportunity at blowing up our own money, and boy were we excited! :D

And so, we left Chennai central by the 'Vasco-Da-Gama' express. We were 7 of us - close friends! The journey was fun, especially the rail route after the Londa Railway station. Londa is a station in Belgaum district.. From Londa to Goa, the train passes over the western ghats, studded with 20 odd tunnels. The view from some of the spots was breath-taking! We reached Vasco station around noon the next day. We were received at the station by Mr. Vishnu, he was my mom's old student in the school where she teaches!! We owe him so much... In fact the whole trip was possible partly due to him! He put us onto a Sumo (which we had hired for the entire stay, thru Vishnu), and we were taken to our hotel - The Miramar Residency. For those who dont know, Miramar is one of the many beaches in Goa. Must admit, Miramar is one of the more polished areas in Goa.. Nice place, nice crowd ;)
This is the gang that went to Goa :) From L to R - Venkat, Prakash, Ashok, Kumaresh, Murali, Myself.

We had booked 2 rooms at Miramar Residency from Chennai before leaving, and worth mentioning that the place we stayed was neat! Often, if the accomodation is not proper, it tends to pull down the joy of a vacation! Thankfully we had no room for complaint, in this regard.. The first day, we were already tired and thus we asked the driver to leave us at our own free will - anyway no long trips for the day! We jus walked down the roads, explored more into the city and then of course had a long lovely stroll on the miramar beach. Our cottage was right next to the beach ( In goa you need to search very hard to find a cottage, away from the beach :P ). Among the 7 of us, 3 were absolutely 'No' to drinking.. Me, well i would not say that I never drink :) But frankly i'm not a big fan of drinkin, donno why. I have never found it exciting. Me had beer, and of course i freaked out on the breezers!! I like the bacardi breezers a lot :) lol... My friends still pull my leg for that! 'Comin all the way to Goa and havin breezer, duh!' - was a sentence that my ears got accustomed to! :)
This was a pic my friend took, outside a church at night. Yes thats me standing next to the cross :)

The second day, we went on a 'churches' trip, visiting a number of the famous churches in Goa. Some of them were fabulous! Especially the St. Francis Cathedral.. Had lunch at one of the roadside hotels, and the one thing that we freaked out on, throughout our stay at Goa was the Sea food. It's truly awesome! Fish and prawns were alwez on our table, no matter where we had food!! And a breezer to go with it, yummmmm !!! :) Towards the evening, we were taken to the Colva beach.. And boy, this turned out to be the most exciting part of the trip! Little did we know that on the way back from Colva, we would be discussing about our para-sailing experiences!! Yeah, all of us went parasailing at Colva beach, for the first time in our lives.. It was some experience! The best thing, we got some awesome discounts for the parasailing trips. Indians had special prices and foreigners had to pay some 50% extra! Ridiculous, but then thats the way tourism works in our country.. :P Bargaining is the name of the game, no matter what you do in Goa. We went in pairs of 2, uppp into the sky and over the seas in the parachute pulled by a speedboat!! Awesome the view was.. That was not the end of it. After the parasailing experience, all of us got bolder and we were not in the mood to go home without a water jet-scooter ride! :) I found this much more thrilling (scary) than the parasailing thing! We were taken one by one, for a 400 feet ride deep into the sea along with a rider. He controlled the bike while all we had to do, was sit. This in itself was such a task! He rode the water-jet as rough as he possibly could, and on purpose he attacked every wave that came our way! Man, i really thought i would not make it to the shores!! Everytime the machine went up in the air and landed in the water with a jerk, my groin went for a 6 thanks to my sitting posture!! :P lol.. And in the middle of the sea, zipping at speeds of 80kmph, I had no option but to control my emotions and sit 'chup chaap se' :)
Thats my friend and I, suspended high in the air!! The View from there was awesome!! I liked the background of this snap too.
What an eventful day... With fantastic memories, we retired to our rooms and slept like logs. The next day, we went to a few more beaches - Calangute and Aguada... Some of the beaches were real naughty ;) Gave us a feeling of walking down the miami beach!! :) We went on a dolphin cruise too, on a speedboat at the Aguada beach! It was an hour long cruise right at noon, cos that was the time the dolphins surfaced.. Sighting the dolphins was a tough task, cos dolphins are really shy creatures! But for all our efforts, we did manage to sight a few dolphins within 10 feet from us! And one of them did a splash dive too, right in front of us!! So sweet of them! :) In the evening, we decided to go on the 'Santa Monica' cruise, which is a famous attration in Goa. This is a cruise, where they take you out into the sea in a small ship, with games, dance and traditional Goan stuff onboard! It was fun.. After returning from the cruise, we decided that we wernt jus gonna go and crash into bed, no matter how tiring the day had been, already! So what do we do - we book tickets at the INOX theatres, and watched the 23:15hrs show. The movie was 'Karam'.. Movie was only ok ok, but then, we had our own fun.. Very rarely were we actually watching the movie :P
The Goan folk dance being performed by artists, on board the Cruise! It was time to say Good bye to Goa as we were scheduled to leave the city the next morning.. Sad part was that we did not get direct return tickets by train, from Goa to Chennai. We had to come to Londa to catch the 12:30 train to Bangalore! What we did, we came from Goa to Londa by the same Sumo we had hired.. It was a 4hr drive but like I said, the journey was a nice one!

The wait, at Londa Railway Station, on the way back..

We reached Londa station on time for the train, reached Bangalore by 21:00, then took another train and reached Chennai the next day early morning! End of a wondeful trip!! Each one of us, still carry some lovely memories from the vacation!!