A Holiday in Goa

My trip to Goa turned out to be this horrifying comedy of errors. It was definitely not the kind of relaxing getaway you'd expect from a weekend trip to a tropical state. Goa is definitely gorgeous, but Kelli and Priyanka and I had some phenomenally bad luck. We only got two days in of quality Goa time, and even those... not so quality.

First, let me explain our fun with the hotel:

We arrived at 8 am on Friday morning and it was pouring rain. When we got to the hotel, they said we'd have to go up and see the room before we booked it. It was very nice- the bed was really comfy and there was a TV and stuff. There were two doors on the opposite wall. The guy opened up one and said "Aaaaand this is the balcony! :D :D :D" Then he said, "And this one is the bathroom." DOES NOT open the door, but merely gestures to it.

We decide that we like the hotel, so we go down and pay. We come back to the room and collapse onto the bed- it's a long-ass busride to Goa and it's nice to take a load off.



Priyanka

 We have, however, been in transit for several hours and thus really have to pee. Kelli opens the bathroom door... and finds this:

Okay, so you can't see it well, but basically... the bathtub faucet was exploding. The entire room was drenched; you could hardly open the damn door without getting wet. The water was really warm, too. When the guy from the hotel came up to look at it, it was almost like a routine from a Marx Brothers' movie.
So they move to another room which is not nearly as nice. for one thing, the door to the balcony would not close. When we went down to the desk to ask if someone could fix it, they decided the most helpful thing to do was...

To take the FRONT door off its hinges. Yeah, I didn't get it either.

Next, the beach:

Around three or four on Friday it finally cleared up enough to head down to the beach. It was gorgeous, and we pretty much had the beach to ourself (for a while, anyway, but we'll come back to in a moment). So we enjoyed swimming (or rather sitting and soaking) in the Arabian Sea.

But then we got swarmed by guys. They kept asking if they could take our pictures (which they would probably cut-and-paste onto nude models) and saying nasty things to us in Hindi. This really freaked me and Priyanka out (Kelli not so much), so we moved up onto the rocks.

But after fifteen minutes, we got pounced on by a gang of hawkers, who kept trying to sell us stuff and would not leave us alone. We got so frustrated that we ended up leaving the beach entirely. (We did end up going back later that night, but it was still very frustrating.
Okay, now onto the parts that didn't suck:

THE FOOD. OH GOD THE FOOD. Goa has amazing seafood, which is my favorite thing ever. (Prawns, people, prawns! No lobster, because it was too expensive, but still.) We were particularly in love with a restaurant called Top Nosh. We ended up going three times because they were never busy and the food was awesome.

I rest my case.

Also, on Saturday, we went to Old Goa, back from the days when the state was a Portuguese colony. For a hardcore Art History slash general-cathedral-geekery nerd, this was hardcore awesome!

And here's an awesome statue of Gandhiji from Old Goa as well.

Then we went to three Hindu temples.



A detail from the bottom of that column.



We left Sunday around 11 am. However, since we took an overnight bus on the way there, I don't think we realized what an insanely long trip it was. We didn't get back to Pune until midnight, at which point I just crawled into bed and crashed.

Last week was kind of nuts as far as school goes. I had two papers due on the same day. Then I had a Contemporary India exam and a presentation for FSS assigned for the other. (Turns out we ran out of time in FSS, so I didn't go until Monday, which was the same day that our last paper for the seminar portion of the class was due and our very last session.

Tomorrow we leave for a three-day trip to Mumbai. Next week we get the menus for our internship options (as well as a whole bunch of other assignments) and we start writing our research proposal. And then the week after that the internships start!

G'night everybody! I'll be reporting back in when I get back from Mumbai.