Exploring Goa

Friday, January 17, 2014

The agreement we have while volunteering is to work six days on and have one off. Our first day off came on Friday, January 17. We decided to rent a scooter for 300 rupees a day so we could reclaim our freedom and expand the circumference of the place we called home.

James is driving and I’m the freaked out passenger hoping to Ganesh we arrive at our destination with all limbs and skin attached. While driving about 1 km, it is guaranteed you will see the following: five people with massive exposed road rash covering 25 percent of any one (or two) limbs, a scooter packed with five people, a scooter with one dog and a man also balancing something on his head, someone with a neck brace (and/or cast on an arm or leg) and for the grand finale, at least one bike accident.

So yeah, I would say I have every reason to be freaked out.

We cruised through thick jungle-like forests to get to Redi Fort. The 16th century fort is buried in the thick forest and crumbling gateways, but it’s incredible. You walk through the forest and immediately feel like you are on the set of Jungle Book or Jumanji. 

After an hour or two we wandered down the beach.

Redi Beach is incredible.

Besides a few flea-infested (but still cute) puppies, nobody bothers you. We ended up having a relaxing day at the beach before we got back on the scooter and headed back toward home.

We spent the night in Arambol.

Every night as the sun sets around 6:30 p.m. all of the creative, high, drunk, beautiful, entertaining, talented, not-talented, but momentarily believe they are, young, old but can’t accept it, colorful people gather around to create “The Drum Circle.” It happens every single night in Arambol. People play various instruments, all chiming in and contributing to the tropical sounds while collectively the audience creates a circular enclosed stage where the crazy people have epileptic seizures (aka dance).

It’s entertaining.

We had a great time, had some dinner on the beach and overall a beautiful day off!

January 18 – January 24, 2014

The next week was spent performing our usual routine. I taught yoga, we did handstands on the beach daily and we played in the kitchen and reception.

I created several new recipes and have updated all of our recipes pages – so check ’em out!

Especially the sweets one!

On our next day off on Friday, January 24, we got on our scooter and drove to Mapusa. 

This is a crazy city 13km north of the capital city, Panaji.

Luckily our day off corresponded perfectly with the Mapusa Friday Market. 

It’s absolute market chaos and I absolutely love it!

Spices, produce, underwear, watches, blankets, clothing, dynamite, scarves, cat food, whatever. Everything and anything was sold on blue tarps stretched over the hot cement.

It’s a riot of noise, colors, smells, people.

Basically it’s James worst nightmare.

He patiently haggled his way around the congested narrow pathways with me for several hours. I agreed that the market can be a bit exhausting, so by the early evening we returned to Mandrem beach where we happily gave up the scooter so we could erase the idea of losing a limb late in the evening when all of the already off-their-rocker individuals took things to a whole new level.

Like every night off, we spent the night hanging in Arambol.