Goa – day 18

Sunday, 16th April 2023

We woke up at seven today, as Jozef had set an alarm. We packed our things, had some coffee, ate some watermelon, and set off north. First, we needed to refuel, so we had to get on the highway. We barely made it with the fuel we had left. We continued on the highway for a bit, but it was pretty wild, so we switched to a side road. We ate at a vegetarian restaurant we had been to before, took a selfie with an Indian man, and kept going. The ride with backpacks was quite uncomfortable. I wanted to check out the cashew festival, so I navigated Jozef to where it was supposed to take place. When we got there, it was empty and very tacky.

We walked around a bit, but we saw on a banner that it didn’t start until 6 PM. So, we took a few photos and headed to our accommodation. It was already getting extremely hot. We didn’t want to return to the highway, so we crossed the river by ferry. After that, it was a crazy ride through tourist towns. At least we got to have some sugarcane juice.

We arrived in Vagator at 1 PM. When I checked the weather, it was 35°C, but the feels-like temperature was 53°C. On top of that, we had trouble finding our accommodation. We asked an Indian man for directions, and he said it was on the other side and that we had to go around. We did that and still couldn’t find it, so I called the owner, who said he’d come to the main road. It turned out the place was right where we had been the first time; we just needed to turn down a small access road. We should have realized that the man didn’t know what he was talking about—it’s just in their nature to always “know” everything. Once we got to our air-conditioned room, everything felt fine. At 3 PM, we went out to eat. I wanted fish, but they only had shrimp and calamari, so I ordered vegetarian thali, and Jozef got shrimp thali. I didn’t really like mine and wasn’t very hungry, but I ate most of it. Jozef’s shrimp were breaded, but they hadn’t been cleaned, so he had to remove all the breading when peeling off the shells. Afterward, we went back to the room. I found the 7th Harry Potter book, and Jozef fell asleep.

At 5:30 PM, we went to watch the sunset and planned to swim as well. We arrived at the first beach, and there were a million people and loud music.

We didn’t even make it to the second beach—just heard the music and turned back. We reached the third beach and gave up. Same situation. We didn’t expect to see something so bizarre. Bars lined up one after another on the beach, each blasting different techno music, with an unbelievable number of people. In the distance, we saw a huge crowd and went to check it out, only to find nothing. They were just clustered together because they didn’t want to walk 30 meters farther, where there were fewer people. Our theory is that a bus dropped them off there, and they were drunk, so they stayed. We didn’t go into the water either because the waves were too big. So, that was our evening experience.

After that, we went to withdraw some money, and I wanted to buy a dress or top. We went through three shops, and in the last one, the lady convinced me to buy a blouse. She asked for 700 INR, and I bargained it down to 450 INR. Jozef said I could have gotten it for less, but he didn’t help me at all. The lady also spoke Russian, so she understood us a bit. We didn’t go for dinner, but we wanted a mango ice cream, which took us a while to find, and then we bought some beer for our last night. Tomorrow evening, we fly to Bengaluru and then to Sharjah in the morning.