Northern Goa

After a relaxing stay on the peaceful beaches of southern Goa, Jake and I made our way up the state via the Goa bus system. I will try to explain what it's like taking the bus in Goa.

Buses arrive very frequently; the longest we had to wait for any bus was 2-3 min, but usually it was an immediate transfer. As you approach a bus or as it pulls into a station, the "bus conductor" starts shouting in the most rapid fire indian you've ever heard the destination of the bus. Its actually really helpful in finding the right bus to get on, once you decypher what he is saying. The conductor then rounds up everyone that wants to take the bus and heards them into the bus as quickly as possible and packs everyone in as far back as they will go, and off you go. Usually as the bus progresses along the route more people get on, but nobody is getting off, so the bus just continues to get more crowded, thus the bus escalates in temperature, body odor, and physical contact with your neighbors. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that it takes forever to travel even short distances, which can be blamed mostly on the road infrastructure. Goa is a small state. The length of the state is only about 100km, which is about 60 miles. In the states, even at conservative highway speeds this is not much more than an hour's drive. However in Goa (along with many other parts of India), most of the roads only have one lane in each direction, which is shared by scooters, motorcycles, cars, buses, and industrial trucks. What results is excruciatingly slow travel punctuated by knuckle whitening passing in the face of oncoming traffic. At least its cheap. A single ride amounts to not more than 50 cents.

Our first destination using Goan PT was a spice plantation in central Goa called Tropical Spice Plantation. The plantation is 120 acres with a smaller demo area for tours. We got to see the various plants that produce spices such as pepper, clove, nutmeg, betel nut, tumeric, cardamom, vanilla, all spice, cinnamon, cashews, and bay leaf. Unfortunately, many of the plants were not flowering this time of year and so we only got to see the plant and not the spices. The tour wrapped up with a buffet, with many of the dishes using the spices grown on the plantation.

















After the spice plantation we slowly made our way to Calangute-Baga, once again using public transportation. Calangute and Baga deliver pretty much the opposite beach experience as the southern beaches. Where Palolem and Agonda are quiet and serene, Calangute and Baga are loud and crazy. These are the beaches most tourists and indians come to for vacation and it definitely shows through the order of magnitude in commercialization. There are plenty of restaurants, bars, clubs, and beach activities such as jet skiing, banana boating, and parasailing. The crowd here is split between the same english retired crowd and young russians on vacation here.

Jake and I started off our first full day in Baga by renting scooters. There is pretty much no regulation; they will rent it to anyone that has the money, even if you've never ridden a scooter before. The man who loaned us the scooters also advised us that if we had a run-in with the police, we should just start by offering him 100 rupees before he says anything and continue going higher until he is satisfied.
(btw, the dials on my scooter were broken if you were wondering about the picture)





We took the scooters first to Anjuna beach to the north to view some of the spectacular views of the beach from some higher cliffs. After climbing around and soaking in the views we headed further north to Vagator where we scaled an old fort to see some more amazing views of the coast and people paragliding off the hill opposite us. We capped off the day with some more joy riding on the scooters (seriously lots of fun), not one, but two dinners, and exploring some of the nightlife at Baga.