Christmas in the sun; Goa

South Goa

The Landy

Night train to Goa. It was a bit different from the last night train – I slept for 7 hours and we had virtually the whole carriage to ourselves. And there was my old school friend Danielle and her partner in crime, Rich, there to pick us up at Madgaon Station when we arrived. 

We were staying at Nana’s Nook in Agonda, South Goa. Danielle and Rich had been living in a land rover for six months having driven to India from London at the beginning of July via Western Europe, Russia, Mongolia, the ‘stans’, China and Pakistan. Rich had converted the landy and it had a bed which pulled out for storage and a table, fridge freezer and a fresh water supply. I am not doing it justice at all. It was great to be driven round in it for a couple of weeks!

Agonda Beach sunset

We spent 3 nights in a beach hut in Agonda. Our accommodation was fairly basic but we had everything we needed and we were pretty much right on the beach which was gorgeous, and more or less deserted.

North Goa

Candolim Beach

Just before Christmas we drove up North to Candolim where Baby D and I had been on holiday six years before. It had changed quite a bit since we were there, it was even more touristy if that’s possible, especially on the beach which was covered in parasols and sun loungers. But we had been hard pushed to find cheap accommodation round Christmas and New Year so it suited us. We also wanted something easy and holiday-ish for the festive season, and Danielle and Rich needed a laidback holiday by then too.

Our hotel was in a great spot; 50m from the beach, but adjoined to a karaoke bar/night club which stayed open until 3am, and opposite another karaoke place also stayed open until 3am. Most of the time the bars were empty but that didn’t stop them banging out ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘Jolene’ till the early hours. The noise was unreal. After getting up at 2am to complain (we’d asked for a quiet room) we were offered a matchbox to move to which we declined. Danielle gave me some wax earplugs and I was out like a light every night after that. DO NOT GO TO INDIA WITHOUT THEM!

 We spent Christmas day on the beach, and Rich had the bright idea of building a snowman in the sand. Our snowman turned out to be about 5 metres tall and we got half the beach involved in building it. We had a pretty decent version of traditional Christmas dinner at good old Bobby’s Shack, one of the better known beach shacks. 

Our snowman!

One of Candolim's many shacks

One day we went down the beach for a couple of sundowners and ended up staying out until silly o’clock, drunk and embarrassing ourselves – well Danielle and Baby D were embarrassed when I showed them the video of their dancing. New Year’s was Bobby’s Shack again with fireworks and dancing on the beach.

Baby D and I planned a day away from our usual plot on the beach so we went on a boat trip which included dolphin spotting, snorkelling off Grand Island and having a barbecue on Monkey Beach. We met an Aussie called Dan who was travelling alone after his friend had to go home. Dan joined us on a few occasions after that, including on New Year when he went home BEFORE 1am. He’s 23. That is unacceptable. 

The boat trip was, shall we say, interesting. We saw several dolphins from a distance of about 500m but we had quite a few free beers. Apart from that…we saw no fish during the snorkelling, and the beach where we had the barbecue was about 200m long and had about 2000 people on it. Not exactly idyllic. The ladies toilet after all that free beer was a clearing up the hill where we all made friends as we peed together! Pretty disgusting actually.

After spending a fun packed couple of weeks with our mates, mooching round Anjuna flea market, hiking to the fort in flipflops, chilling on Mandrem Beach, watching Rich devour dish after dish of paneer and anything sweet (but nothing green), building sand snowmen, watching Danielle try to say no to red wine and failing miserably, laughing at Baby D doing charades, me becoming best friends with the hotel manager who didn’t like anyone else, singing karaoke (‘You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling’), dancing, swimming, playing bat & ball and frisbee and Baby D getting stung by a jellyfish, it was time to say goodbye.

South Goa again

Baby D and I set off to Palolem where we were staying in a beach hut again for a few nights before our flight to Mumbai. Palolem is in the South of Goa, next to Patnem beach and about 10km from Agonda where we’d stayed just before Christmas. If anyone is thinking of going to Goa, I would definitely recommend the South. Up North is more lively, with more bars and big beach shacks, but Candolim is for people of a certain age (60s+ generally) and it is busy. I can’t speak for Calangute or Baga but we did drive through and they were just as busy. Further North in Mandrem was lovely and quieter, but the South did it for us. It was quiet, relaxed, with enough shacks and restaurants to keep you from getting bored, and a nice mix of age groups.

Patnem Beach

Our beach shack in Palolem was not on the beach, but was on the main road through the village, a few hundred metres away from the beach. The noise from about 5am was mental. Agonda had also been noisy – crows cawing, the breadman honking his horn as he went through on his push bike, dogs barking, waves crashing, cockerels crowing, but Palolem was something else. Indians seem to be used to noise, I guess with 1.2 billion people in this country they need to shout to make themselves heard! They are probably used to the noise of the temples and mosques, car horns and dogs barking. 

All too soon it was goodbye to Goa, reluctantly, and onto Mumbai.

#goa #candolim #agonda #patnem #palolem #anjuna