Goa - Last Stop India

Goa was to be our last stop in India. Although my original plan had been to look for work in India I reached the conclusion after travelling there for nigh on 3 months that there were other places in the world that I (and Gwen) would prefer to work and live in.

I had a great time in India, meeting some excellent people, both Indians and travellers, but the hassles experienced anytime you walked down the street and some of the environmental factors discouraged me from wanting to set-up there.

So it was nice to finish in the sunny state of Goa with a bit of relaxing beach time.

Important to keep the fluid levels up whilst in the warm sun, purely for health and well- being reasons of course.
While the town of Pondicherry town was pretty, the coastline there wasn't particularly appealing as a spot for swimming. On the other hand Goa had nice sand, great seafood and plenty of bars along the waterfront. I would have to say that as a picturesque destination there are more beautiful coastlines and locations, but then again most of those would be far more expensive to visit then Goa.

By this time we were both keen to avoid crowds so we headed further down south to a town called Benalium. In the Lonely Planet guide this was mentioned as a very small, quiet location - a mere year after that had been written and the signs of development were already very visible in Benalium - such is the pace of change in India.

Grabbing a scooter again we were lucky enough to chance across a place called Splash!, set about 50 metres back from the beach and run by Priti and her family who were all good fun and great to spend time with.

It was one of those rare places where trust is freely given to strangers and returned in kind, highly recommended. Basically you simply helped yourself to the fridge whenever you wanted and filled in as barman when needed. The food was also home cooked, locally sourced and delicious and during our stay Gwen got in on the Saree biz.

Longtime Goa resident and Splash! patriarch, Jerry, had found himself a real-live genuine Hindu cat complete with bindi...

As you can see, being the workhorse I am, apart from propping up the bar on occasion, I also took on the taxing role of doing quality assurance for the local beer "Belo". The conclusion, after much non-pseudo scientific stringent testing, was that this was indeed India's tastiest beer.

Splash! was a collection of huts, tied together nicely by a bar - and to be honest there's nothing much more to say about our time there. We did some last bits of shopping, and then pretty much ate, drank and slept our way through the days leading up to our flight from China.... every bit as tough as it sounds.

From Goa we passed through Mumbai, long enough to see some dodgy suburbs but not long enough to actually get a feel for the place - although fortunately it seemed marginally less mental then Delhi.