Goa Trip

    I love Goa and have visited it almost every year since last 8 years. This time again in April 2010, 4 of us planned to goto Goa on a long weekend of Good Friday. We started driving from my BTM layout house in Bangalore at 4:00 am in the morning and reached Goa at around 7:30 PM. It was a long drive but we had also taken break of around 3 hours and also got lost on NH4 near Bidi only to find mud road for around 18 kms to Khanapur. Apart from this the drive was wonderful specially around the ghats.

    Since it was off season we could find AC rooms for a rent of Rs 750 on the road connecting Calangute and Baga beach. At night after dinner we went for a stroll on Calangute beach and came back early to get some sleep after a long day behind the wheel.

    Though we had planned to watch sunrise but no body could get up early enough. After breakfast at the hotel we all went to Baga beach and enjoyed water sports like banana ride, bumpy ride, motor bike ride for around 3 hours. Baga and Calangute beaches are full of mostly Indian crowd with little less foreigners so typically you won't feel out of place if visiting with family.

    After enjoying the water rides we came back to our hotel for shower. We were planning to visit the famous "Dil Chahta hai" fort and visited fort Aguda. It was really hot and sunny afternoon. Aguda fort overlooks sea on one side and is a good place for taking photogaphs.

    We were just inquiring with hotel reception about casinos and markets that's when we heard about "Saturday Night Bazar". It's an amazing place. I visited it for the first time during my engineering days at MIT, Maniapl and had always gone there whenever I got a chance. It's mostly a market of handicraft materials and a lot of crowd is there. They also have karaoke and live band playing which is watched by large crowd in the market. I found the musical quotient better than the market ;)

    We also thought to visit the Riviera casino. Though it's not as big as the casinos in US but a good place with good facilities. I did not get my hands dirty at black jack or poker and thought to save my precious money. There are also quite a few good places like Cub Cubana, Tito's, Mambo's etc.

    On Sunday morning we had a choice between South Anjuna and Candolim beach and finally went to Candolim beach as it was on our way back to Bangalore. I have always found this beach full of old crowd whereas South Anjuna has young crowd.

    We started around 10:30 AM from Goa after refueling. Petrol was much cheaper in Goa than Bangalore. This time we took a different route and was mostly on state highway till we reached Dharwad and then to our previous route on NH4. We reached our home at 1:00 AM in the morning. My 1 year old Hyundai i10 was driven for around 1350 kilometers in 3 days and gave a mileage of 15.2 kms/liter with air-conditioner on for the entire trip. In all it was a great trip for 4 of us adults and the 1 year old baby.