Colva Beach

 We got into goa from pune since that was our first stop on the vacation. Took an overnight sleeper bus and were near colva by about 6 in the morning. Hired a Taxi (they are expensive, please dont hesitate to bargain) and after a 40 odd minuted drive were at our hotel.

We stayed in a place called the Amigo Plaza, for 900 Rs a night we were given a ground floor double ac room, with a private porch and all amenities possible. The resort is literally 2 minutes away from the beach…can hear the sea at night!! I ofcourse could not wait to get into my shorts, sandals, trunks and head out but ended up having a rushed breaskfast and then go out. The hotel is located in a small fishing village kind of a location admist lush green palms and is truly a walkers delight.

We made our way to the beach and i was almost blinded we we scaled a small dune and saw the beach for the first time. The sand is white and soft and the sea a light blue. Mother nature at its best with her palate of colours.

We quickly found a shack where we settled ourselves in for the day. Got sleeper chairs and cold beers and cocktails. The rest of the day was spent in taking ocassional dips in the sea asnd then back on the chair for another beer. The food was lovely. We had freshly caught lobster and prawns. My wife is a sea food maniac so she had been drooling pretty much when we left delhi. The food is excellent though some items are expensive. The lobster was for about 900 but the prawns a measely 120. In delhi tese same items would have cost about 1500 and 500 respectively. Dont expect to get too many choices for beer there. Alcohol is pretty cheap as well and some of their wines must be tasted.

Tarkali Beach

The Place: 550 odd kms from Mumbai this is a lovely beach with clean sand and sparkling waters – and barely a soul around. On the whole, the MTDC resort is good, accomodation is in cute Konkani huts with sloping roofs! They can get you any kind of seafood as long as you given them a few hours notice. Beer is available, but comes wrapped in newspaper in Bisleri cartons and can be had in the dining area.

 Getting There: If you are planning to take a bus from Pune/Mumbai, Pune is definately the better option – during the day only state transport buses run from Mumbai and apart from the fact that they are not the most comfortable, they take ages to get anywhere.

Things To Do: Nothing beats being on the beach. But there is a backwater cruise you can do – go early in the morning if you want to see the dolphins (we didn’t see any tho). Be careful when going from the backwaters into the open sea – the waves are huge and can turn your boat over if you’re not careful. If you want to see a fort, to uptil Malvan, 6 kms, and take a ferry to the Sindhudurg fort out at sea. There is not much there tho – a few dhabas inside, a few temples and a crumbling outer wall – nothing to match the grandeur of the Janjira for

Low point of the visit : Arrival of the Deccan Odyssey : Our bags were taken out of our rooms, in our absence, at 9 a.m., when it had been agreed that we could keep the room till 10:30 a.m. The reason – the Deccan group was arriving in 3 hours and all rooms had to be cleaned out so that they could use them to wash up! And, in any case, which decent resort/hotel throws you out one minute after your check-out time??

At lunch time, every single table had a card on it saying ’reserved’ and the tables had been set with fine bone china crockery and good cutlery and roses. We were told to sit on the most uncomforable wooden benches under some trees and had the constant fear of having bird droppings land in our food.