Goa – day 15

Thursday, 13th April 2023

We had an alarm set, but we didn’t get up anyway. Jozef doesn’t even know there was an alarm. The plan was to go for a run or at least to the beach, but I have some stomach issues, and Jozef has two bumps on his hand from yesterday’s fall. We decide to at least go eat at a nearby place. Jozef orders an omelet with onions, and I have a pancake with Nutella and banana, thinking that some non-Indian food might make me feel better. I can’t really tell if it helped, as I took a black carbon afterward. At 11 AM, we had booked a cooking class, but we arrived at 11:02 AM, and the chef, Rahul, was already explaining. So we linger at the entrance until he notices us. He comes out and asks who we are and what we’re doing there. We explain that we booked the class. He’s flustered, and after showing him the conversation on our phone, he realizes he forgot about us. With a quiet “shit,” he begins apologizing and offers us to come back in the evening, but we reschedule it for tomorrow at lunch.

Now, we don’t have a plan, and it’s over 35°C outside. We decide to rest in our air-conditioned room. It’s perfect today, given our diseases. We watch a series and eat watermelon. After three, we head out. We go to check out the northern beach, which is 28 km long (each section has a different name, but it’s a continuous, very long stretch of sand). At first, we drive along the main road, which is quite dangerous. People are overtaking on blind curves like crazy, and they’re laying down new asphalt at the same time.

There’s a guy driving ahead of us. Policemen are standing by the road, and the guy has a helmet on. After 300 meters, he takes off his helmet and starts fixing his hair in the mirror. This is totally normal here. People know where the police are stationed, so they wear their helmets for those few hundred meters and then take them off. Once we turn onto a side road, it’s much calmer.

Too calm, actually. We wanted to eat, but it’s hard to find a restaurant. We eventually find a vegetarian one. We don’t quite understand what they have, so Jozef goes to the kitchen and asks for small portions of everything. It turns out to be the best vegetarian meal we’ve had so far. Afterward, we head to the beach and are amazed to see that 90% of the businesses are already closed (the season is ending). Our area is still lively, but here it’s completely deserted. We reach the beach, where the sand is as fine as flour and crunches underfoot like snow. We’ve never experienced anything like it.

We walk a bit further to a quieter spot (not that there are many people here), but after about 800 meters, a soldier turns us back, saying we can’t go any further because there’s shooting practice. Also, part of the beach is off-limits for swimming due to strong currents. So, we just dip our feet in the water and head back. We take a side road along the coast, and the journey is much nicer. The surroundings are beautiful, there are few cars, and lots of cows.

In the evening, we head to our beach with a beer. It’s quite lively there. We drink our beer and take a quick swim. Since we’re in a bay, the waves are smaller, and we can go quite far out from the shore, where I can still touch the bottom. Afterward, we shower and head to the nearest restaurant for dinner because we discovered it has really good reviews and isn’t too touristy. Jozef orders fish thali for the third day in a row, and I have fried noodles with chicken and vegetables. We also order the local rum, Old Monk, and the waiter is surprised that I ordered it too.

In the evening, when it finally cools down outside, it becomes unbearable indoors, and you start sweating profusely. And if you’re drinking as well, you’ll be done quickly. So, we finished eating and decided to drink the rest of drink outside.