Trip To Goa..(Part 1)

The title would have given an indication where I was this long weekend. Me and family along with some of my friends from engineering college decided to go to Goa. So here goes the story, but before that; a quick cycling update;

22nd Jan; 10 kms to office; work at office; 10 kms back home

Total Distance Cycled So Far: 213 kms

Ok so back to the story. Got back home on the 22nd and decided to take a day off on Friday. Had a horrid time in office on thursday since we were discussing recession and it’s impact on business. It wasn’t convincing, but essentially we were told that we could not encash leaves (PL) for the year 2009 and that only 6 out of the 12 would be accrued. Here lies the problem for some of us who have served more than 6+ years at this company, we were already maxed out with the PL, which essentially meant that for the year 2009 (and who knows for how long) we could not accrue leaves and could not even encash leaves. Think abt. it, the more you have worked hard for the company and given the best years of your life, here’s the prized returns that you get. Mind you, it’s not that the company is suffering as such, on one side there are these “cost-cutting” measures being taken whereas on the other hand we continue to “hire”..and the term used is “selective hiring”, oh yes, that makes fair sense. In any case, so my mood wasn’t that great. One silver lining though, I would have to take all of my PL (12) for the year 2009 as leaves. So decided to skip office for the 23rd, that would mean a 4 day weekend and plan an outing with the family. So, on the 23rd while we were thinking about where to head, Yercaud was one, I just chatted up with my college buddy (Nitin) as to what their plans were for the long weekend. My college friends are all either in Pune or Mumbai area. They mentioned that they (4 families) were planning on taking a trip to either Kolhapur (about 3 hours drive from Pune on the now superfast 4 lane expressway (Mumbai – Bangalore NH4) or some winery in Nashik or Ranjangaon. One of my friends, Vikram preferred Koyna. They had already booked a mini-bus for their sojourn. Quite a bit of discussion happened, with folks asking me to drive up to Kohapur (550 kms from Bangalore). So I mentioned to them, instead of Kolhapur, why not Goa ?  You folks can drive down to Goa and I will drive upto Goa from Bangalore. It meant that the distance and the travel time had increased for all of us, but who could resist the temptation of Goa. Finally all agreed that it would be Goa. Sankya who had arranged for the mini-bus got down to making the needed permits to visit Goa/Karnataka. This is needed for a public transport bus. The plan was to start from Mumbai. Vikram & Nital would catchup with Sankya’s family and they will drive down to Thane to pick-up Mayur and family and Andu Chaudhari and then they would head to Pune to pickup Nitin and family; from there they would head to Kolhapur-Amboli-Sawantwadi-Goa. Plan was they would start at 7pm on Saturday, travel all-night and be at Goa on Sunday morning/afternoon. For us the plan was to start from Bangalore and be in Goa by that time frame.

We decided to have lunch at a new restaurant that has opened up right next to our home. It had a buffet system (Rs 275/- per head, unlimited food). There was one complimentary drink as well, Sawani had a Strawberry Soda and I decided to have a Carlsberg beer. Food was pretty good and we came back impressed.

Once back home, got down to planning. We decided that we would travel by car (there was no question of travelling otherwise), and then started thinking about the best time to leave and the path to take. There are 3 main ways one can reach Goa from Bangalore, one is via Bangalore-Tumkur-Shimoga-Karwar-Goa, (Bangalore-Tumkur is on the NH-4 from where you bypass onto State Highway (SH 708) towards Karwar via Shimoga. SH’s typically are 2 lane roads, making the drive a bit slower, typically shorter routes though. The other is via Tumkur-Rannebennur-Haveri-Sirsi-Karwar-Goa. There’s one more where you drive further from Haveri-Hubli-Belgaum-Amboli-Sawantwadi-Goa. I was familiar with the 2nd and 3rd route but was not familiar with the first. So we thought about a good time to leave, finally we decided we would leave at 3:00 am early morning on Sunday. Since it was early morning and dark, i decided to take a partially familiar route 2, wanted to drive through the night on the road I knew and then by daylight I could then take the unknown road (ie. Sirisi-Karwar-Goa). So we all (Sawani, Arjun and I) packed up and retired for the night early by around 9:30 pm with the alarm set for 2:15 am. I was too excited to sleep and kept on waking up every couple of hours. Finally at around 2ish in the night, I decided that’s enough and got up. I let Sawani and Arjun sleep for a while, while I finished making up the last minute packing, maps, torches etc. I woke up Arjun at about 2:30 am, and he was up on my first call, fresh as a daisy. Try the same on a school day with Arjun and it’s a totally different story. But that’s for another post. All of us got ready sharp at 3:00 am, and we were out on the road by 3:15 am. Traffic was light and we were able to reach NH4 (Bangalore-Mumbai) by about 4:00 am. From there on the journey was pretty uneventful, other than the general banter of the 3 of us. Sawani had packed nice breakfast for all of us, and so we could continue driving all throughout without taking any halts (other than loo breaks). We reached Haveri by 9:30 and then got off the NH4 and took the State Highway to Sirsi. The road wasn’t that great, and that slowed us down a bit and we reached Sirsi (distance of about 60kms) by 11:00 am. We continued on towards Karwar via Kumtha, the road was much better on this stretch, and we were able to reach Karwar by 12:00 in the afternoon. Karwar is on NH17 (Mumbai – Goa) National Highway. We were on NH17 and then headed towards Gokarna and reached Gokarna by 12:30. I decided it would be worthwhile to visit Gokarna Mahabaleshwar temple, since it was only 10km off the highway and I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t be able to make it on the drive back home. Sawani was preferring to head straight to Goa. But I persisted and took the detour and reached Gokarna by 1:00 pm. Gokarna is beautiful place (although crowded) with an excellent beach. The lanes are extremely narrow, and there is no clear indication of parking. We passed through so many narrow lanes (barely a car could pass through) and reached the beach for the parking. Guess what, the parking area had a huge pile of sand and I didn’t notice it, and my car got stuck in the sand. There we were at 1:15 pm, with the sun blazing down on us pretty bad, with our car stuck in sand. I tried my best at revving it out of the sand, but the more I tried, the more the wheel stuck. The engine started over-heating as well and we could see smoke bellowing out from the engine bay and the smell of heavy burnt rubber. I was tensed and a bit clueless. Sawani was fuming mad. We had a small fight (tempers flared really), We tried reaching out to the localites in Gokarna who had setup shops nearby to help us, but no one did. The entire localites seem to be so unhelpful, it was disappointing. Rickshaw, auto, taxi drivers everyone just looked the other way or enjoyed our predicament. Luckily I was able to catch hold of 3 very good samaritans (they were drivers from the other visitor vehicles parked by) who decided to help. I wasn’t able to get the car out, so asked one of the driver to take control of my car, and me and the other 2 pushed the car. Couple of failed attempts, but later we were through. I couldn’t thank the 3 enough, and they were really god’s own souls for they neither asked for money and were more than gracious that they could help. God bless them.

So on we went to the famous Gokarna Mahabaleshwar temple. It’s an extremely crowded place with devotees thronging the main shrine. The men have to remove their shirts and only then can they enter the shrine. We all met with a very nice young “guruji” who explained to us the history of the temple and asked us to perform a small pooja (abhishek). We were able to gain access to the main shrine (although extremely crowded) all of us were able to make it and perform the pooja at the shrine. At Gokarna Mahabaleshwar, the main deity “Shiva” is in the form of Jyotirling. It is only the second place in India, that has the Jyotirlinga. Also it’s the only place in India which has Shiva and Vishnu shrines at the same temple. Hence it’s very pious and we can do the full pradakshina at the temple. Other Shiva temples, you do only a half pradakshina. We were blessed. We came out of the temple, and walked towards the beach, where our car was parked, and guess what, some other cars were parked right in front of our car making our exit almost impossible. No drivers in sight to move their vehicle out, it felt terrible. Luckily enough, one of the car driver was sleeping and we were able to wake him up and asked him to move his car, which would give us a way to get out. Sawani got barefoot on the hot tarmac + sand and helped me guide the car out. Somehow we were able to scrape through,and Sawani was so fuming mad. The people in Gokarna have become extremely “majorde” (A marathi word for “I don’t care a damn”) due to the continous flow of tourists (foreigners in plenty) that provides them steady and healthy income. Sawani actually almost burnt the bottom of her feet, that’s how hot it was. Anyways we were in our car and on our way out, with the AC slowly but surely reducing the heat between our ears. We reached NH17 by around 2:30/3 pm and found a nice Kamat hotel on the highway. We were in regular touch with the folks driving down from Pune, and came to know that they also had their fare share of issues. It seems at the Karnataka checkpost they were not allowed to enter Karnataka, since they didn’t have a permit, so they had to travel back all the way, find alternate route (much slower) from Maharashtra directly into Goa, without getting into Karnataka. Finally they were able to make it to Sawantwadi and they had decided to stop for lunch there. So we also decided to stop and have lunch ourselves. At kamat’s the food was all vegetarian and Sawani ordered simple Idli-Sambar for herself and Arjun, while I ordered a rice plate. The food was excellent and hygienic. At the cash counter, I saw “pan” and we decided to have pan’s as well. To our surprise the pan tasted too good. Sawani actually ordered 4 more and we had them as we headed towards Goa. Goa was still about 150 kms and the road narrows considerably, so the going was much slower. We passed through beautiful small villages that adorned the road and finally were into Goa. The original plan was to stay at Sankya’s relatives in Ponda (pronounced Fonda). But it seems there was a change in plan, and Vikram asked us to drive all the way upto Panjim and then onto Miramar beach.He had a friend who had a bungalow just 5 mins walk from Miramar beach. So we had to drive further up for about 50 kms. Came to know that Sanket and family would head for their home in Ponda, and join us the next day. So we wouldn’t be meeting them till the next day. We headed towards Panjim and although tired (it was nearly 13+ hrs of driving for me) the sights and scenes of Goa filled us with amazement. The place is so laid back and the people seemed so nice. The traffic was well managed with not many people honking, it was pleasure.

On the way, I had this thought, what if I could setup a company (Internet based) in Goa. All one really needs to be online is internet which Goa has. But it comes with so many more advantages:- Beautiful weather, and beautiful city, nice network of roads, no taxes, less costs, the beach. Imagine informing clients to drop by your office, they ask where is it, and you say Goa and guess their reactions. Good for business, I definitely think so.

Anycase, we headed via Panjim towards Miramar beach and reached “Panchavati” the bungalow that Vikram had booked for us, exactly at 5:00 pm. Vikram guided me to the point, and we met the gang. It felt awesome…

GOA with FRIENDS…Coming soon in Part 2

Cheers,
YVR