The Goa Diaries - Day 1

This trip has been a decade long in the making. Vidyuth and I had made an official trip by road in 2012-13 to watch some Vijay Hazare matches in Goa and spent a week there. It was a funfilled week apart from the games - we went to some very interesting places he knew, visited Fort Aguada, watched a Zakir Hussain concert among other things - and hey, we drove up and down in my Santro! Ever since we've been planning to make another trip and it finally materialized (the stars aligned and the gods were willing).

We took V's car, a new Magnite that he swears by, fully automatic, and headed off from Sainikpuri at 645 am. By the time we got to Patancheru it was still 830 am and we were thinking - man, it will be a long journey. The traffic near Patancheru was bad mainly thanks to some road work - those flyovers have been in the making for several years now. Anyways once we got out of that it was smooth sailing. So smooth, that we were at Sholapur by 1115! Actually much credit to Vs driving skills at high speeds of 120 kmph and the new car. I hardly felt a thing.

Since V has a theory (correct one) that if we keep our breaks minimal and spend most time driving we will reach faster, he had packed sandwiches (tomato cheese and chicken for breakfast and chicken rolls for lunch). We snacked on the go, stopping only for a quick loo break or to fill in gas and munched the delicious sandwiches down. V is not a chai drinker and I can do very well without so that was fine too. Since we generally followed Google maps I don't remember the road, following it like a zombie. Vaguely though we turned towards Bijapur, hit the new highway NH 166 which seems headed to Ratnagiri. This was a brilliant stretch of some 120 kms, turned off into the state highways, bypassing most except Nipani, then Ajra, and then Amboli after which the ghat appeared.

Some where here it started pouring like crazy and stopped just before the ghat. The ghat was winding as we got off the plateau and I felt that familiar queasiness that winding roads bring on. On and on V drove until we reached Calangute at 540 pm which places Hyderabad -Goa at record time of under 11 hours. That was some driving! My job was to keep conversation interesting and play some 80s music on Spotify. I discovered that Spotify really selected some nice 80s songs that we had forgotten so the ride was that much nicer. V and I were music pals - we would speak a lot about music in our younger days - so we spoke about this song and that song and which party and which occasion or which tour. Like I remember listening to 'Tarzan Boy' for the first time at a party at his house!

We got into our stay in Calangute, a nice duplex owned by V's friend V, less than 100 metres from the beach and the Pine Tree  shack where we would spend a lot of our time. A drink or two and some dinner and we planned the next day. As always I had some sights and places to knock off and V was game enough to go with me so I was very happy.

While at dinner we witnessed some ceremonies on the beach in those temporary things they erect with whote cloth and flowers etc - one was a proposal (the couple was all dressed up, stage set, director, cameraman etc), another a first birthday (family and friends), one seemed like an anniversary celebration (just the couple gazing into each others eyes and eating and drinking). Very interesting. 

After a while we decided to get some rest. I plan to head to the beach for a walk.