North Goa

Hi blog checkers,

After our first week of relaxing in beautiful Goa. We decided to hire out a motorbike to travel around to the north of Goa. After a little bartering we managed to get a pretty much brand new bike out for Rs260 per day (3 pounds roughly). It was a Pulsar 180cc, Indian brand, never heard of it before this trip, but they handle pretty well and they are all the rage over here, so we looked as cool as a pair of cucumbers on a motorbike!! We set off into the north early Monday morning, after a 1 and a half hour ride we reached our destination, Vagator. We found a nice guesthouse by the beach, hidden away from the road in a valley, so it was nice and cool in the evening. From the word go, we could tell that the whole area of the north was more tourist driven, as there were loads of tourists on rented motorbikes and cars - and loads more harassment from shop owners to look at their shops, "just have a look, it costs nothing to look" is what they always say! The beach wasn't as nice as Benaulim beach in the south, much shorter and more rocky in both Anjuna and Vagator beach, although the waves were much more powerful and a little more fun. On the second day at the beach we had a really wired experience, there were loads of Indian tourists/college students on the beach, must have been a national holiday or something. We had a group of say 15 young college students approach us asking for photos with both Simone and I and both separately. They must have taken over 20 pictures, we thought they may be trying to divert our attention away to steal something from us, but that was never the case. In fact we haven't felt threatened once in India, people here are very genuine. The first evening we went to a bar with really cool UV painting on the walls and roof. We listened to some Goan and Psy-trance while sipping a beer. After some dancing we decided to get another beer and have a sit down, we started talking to this funny German hippy guy called Harold. He was a bit weird but interesting to talk to, he had been coming to Goa for 25 years, and he told he us all about how the place had changed so much. The next night, we went to an outdoor bar, with very cool trance music, including some of my favorite Psy-trance Dj's including, infected mushroom and astral projection!! There were lights up the palm trees, the DJ stand was centrally lit up and the dance area over looked the beach. Only problem was with the place that it shuts at 10pm :( . It had a very good party feel to it, but shut too early for our liking. The next day in the afternoon, we decided to head down to the Anjuna Flea market. It was very hot with a lot of hustle and bustle that we had seen in the big cities. It was a little disappointing because the stuff they sold was just about the same thing we had seen everywhere else in India, nothing that fresh to buy, apart from a Prem Joshua album.
The ride back down wasn't too bad with little more traffic than on the way up. On our way down we realised that the guy we rented the bike from tried to screw us over by saying we would require a full tank of petrol for our trip, so we filled it up to the top at the start of our journey, but only ended up only using a couple of litres. We think he had a plan in mind, to sell the petrol he got back, doubling his money. We saw straight through his master plan, so we drained out the petrol when we had finished with the bike, and sold it off to people in the complex. Ha ha, not fooling us, mister motorbike rental man.!! Until the next blog my friends and Family members. Peace out :D

xxx

PS please check out the earlier blog as we have published a post dated photo.