A Road Trip to Goa - Part 2

Days 2 and 3 - September 1, 2011 and September 2, 2011

After our long drive the previous day, none of us were in a mood to do anything other than laze around and relax amidst the facilities that the Leela had to offer us. Our room was adjacent to a lagoon, with a number of lotus flowers blooming in it. The lobby area was beautifully done, shaped a little bit like an old South Indian palace. Parts of the lobby (and if I am not mistaken, the usual location of the Coffee Shop) were boarded off, due to the ongoing renovation - and breakfast was served in a restaurant that seemed as if it had been located in one of the conference halls.



Given the extent of rain the previous day, the grounds of the Leela were rather water-logged - very oddly, we had to wade through ankle deep water on the path heading towards the beach. The beach itself was fairly broad and clean, albeit with black traces on the sand. (I was unclear if that was natural or arising from oil spills). The sea was extremely rough, and there was no scope for any of us to venture near it.

Leisurely meals, lazing by or in the pool, long walks on the grounds, reading novels, Ayurvedic massages - what more can you ask for while in Goa?

Day 4 - September 3, 2011

After 2 days of lazing around at the Leela, we decided to visit Colva Beach on Day 4 of our holiday. The drive to Colva took a bit, and frankly the beach was rather disappointing. It was much smaller, and narrower than the quasi private beach near the Leela, and there was not much to do either (at least in the afternoon). After looking around to try and find a place to have lunch, we gave up, and headed for the Taj Exotica, which was on the way back to the Leela for lunch. After a nice buffet lunch at the Exotica, and some time spent walking around on its grounds, we headed back to our hotel, where we spent some time walking down the banks of the Sal river.

Day 5 - September 4, 2011 - The Journey Home

Before we knew it, our brief vacation was over, and we now had to drive back home. Given that the last leg of our journey would be in Bombay (with street lights et al), the imperative to make a very early start did not exist. We got some breakfast packed for us from room service, and headed out by 7:30 am. This time, we did not have lunch with us, and I decided that we should aim to hit the Kolhapur McDonalds in time for lunch. It being early on a Sunday morning, traffic was light (except around Churches, where a number of people had come for early morning mass), and we were able to maintain a good speed through the Goa section. We refueled at a petrol pump a little ahead of Madgaon (I had not bothered to identify "reliable" pumps in Goa, and chose one that looked better than the rest). The journey from our hotel to the Goa border took just 1 hour 45 minutes, as opposed to almost two and a half hours while going the other way. 

Despite bad roads, the section to Sawantwadi was covered in a little less than half an hour, and in the absence of a slow Alto blocking us, we made it to Amboli in a further 45 minutes, reaching at about 10:30. The Goa - Amboli run thus took us almost an hour less than the running time on the Amboli Goa run while going the other way. Just off the main road at Amboli, there is a Vithal Kamath restaurant, and we decided to stop there for some snacks. Amboli was shrouded in mist, and there was a light drizzle - perfect weather for some Batata Vadas and Poha. After a 45 minute break, we headed off again. The drive was amazing - one moment, we had thick fog around us, and the next the mist would lift and we had fantastic visibility. After crossing Ajara, we decided that since the so called quality road through Gadhinglaj had not been that great, we might as well try the Uttur route.

A relatively small pothole

NH4 near Tawandi Ghat

The road towards Uttur was incredibly scenic, with undulating landscapes, and pretty yellow flowers along the way. The road quality also seemed to be much better than the road we had driven on while coming from Sankeshwar. This seemed like a very good decision for us to have taken, and I was mentally passing remarks on how web-sites are not completely trust-worthy. And then, we crossed the state border in Karnataka, and the road disappeared. It was like crossing a minefield or a lunar landscape - with potholes big enough to swallow a small car, and where even SUV drivers have to crawl at under 5 kmph for fear of bottoming out. As I understand it, the stretch of road from the Tawandi Ghat turnoff (which is in Karnataka) to Uttur (which is in Maharashtra) is mostly used by Maharashtra State transport vehicles and people traveling from Kolhapur - hence the Karnataka government does not bother to maintain it. Clearly, we need to work on a better system of dealing with road maintenance. Fortunately, this stretch lasted just 4 km (which took about 20 minutes to cover), and on a net basis, the time from Amboli to Tawandi Ghat was more or less as the time going the other way (even if the distance was 20 km less).

We reached Kolhapur by about 1:20, and after spending 40 minutes at McDonalds, set off towards Pune. The journey back towards Pune was terrible - incredibly heavy traffic, with rows of ST buses traveling at 40 kmph arranged in a mobile chicane,  which in turn were slowed by idiot truckers trying to overtake each other at 25 kmph. My lack of experience in highway driving shone through - and I often ended up getting stuck behind someone or the other for long stretches of time.

Nevertheless, we made it to Pune by about 5:45, and took our final break at a Cafe Coffee Day just off the bypass.

We restarted from Pune at 6:30 - fortunately Sunday evening traffic on the bypass was not too bad, and we hit the Expressway fairly quickly. Traffic on the Expressway itself was very heavy - and made worse by heavy rain. I tend to drive relatively slowly at night, and kept top speeds down below 120 kph (and speeds on the ghat at much lower than that). Nevertheless, the 120 km Pune to Panvel stretch took just 1 hour 40 minutes, and shortly before 8 PM, we thought we were nearly home. As soon as we exited the Expressway, we hit a wall of traffic. We crawled till Belapur, and fortunately for us, most of the traffic continued along Thane Belapur road while we diverted onto Palm Beach Road, which allowed us to drive a bit faster. Neverthless, the  20 km to Vashi had taken us over 40 minutes. After Vashi, we made relatively quick progress till Chembur, which we reached before 9 pm. We were just 6 km from home, and I commented that we should be home by 9:20 or so.

But just after Suman Nagar, we were faced with the worst that Bombay can throw at us, with a massive traffic jam heading towards Sion (at 9 PM on a Sunday night). The next 2 kms took us over an hour, and finally we reached home at about 10:15. It did seem a little surreal - we had covered almost 600 kms in a bit over 10 hours, and then taken almost two and a half hours to do the last 40 km.

Including local travel in Goa, we had covered 1350 km. The NH4 sections were by and large fabulous - and would probably be a lot better if a little bit of driving discipline were inculcated in the heads of our truck drivers. One did also feel that a better system of toll collection, a la the EZ Pass systems we had come across in the US or ERP in Singapore is needed - on the NH 4 stretch between Pune and Kolhapur, toll payment time of 45 minutes (in total) was a ridiculously high part of the total drive time of 3 hours 45 minutes. But all in all, it was a great vacation - and certainly one that has inspired me to consider more driving holidays in future.

A Roadtrip to Goa

Planning

"Drive down to Goa and back? With Radhika and Avinash? Without a driver? In a single day each way? You must be crazy." That was the first reaction of most of my friends when I told them that the three of us intended to drive down to Goa and back during the 5 day break that most Bombayites managed at the end of August / beginning of September this year. The 5 day break was of course made possible due to Ramzan and Ganesh Chaturthi falling on consecutive days (Wednesday and Thursday - hooray for Indian secularism!!), implying that a 5 day break was possible by just taking Friday off. The moribund condition of markets also made it possible to actually disappear for 5 days, without impacting business too much.

As all of you know, I am extremely fond of driving. Ever since I got my Skoda Superb in May 2010, I have been itching to take it on a long road trip. The fun I had driving long distances in Scotland during our holiday in 2010 only whetted my appetite for more driving holidays. When we started planning our US holiday in June this year, I had originally penciled in State Route 1 in California as a must do - only to postpone that once we decided to stick to the East Coast. The fact that Avinash and Radhika also seem to enjoy road trips encouraged me. However, driving on Indian roads is not always pleasurable or safe. The longest distance I had ever driven in India was just 325 km, from Bangalore to Coonoor in Amma and Appa's Santro, back in 2004. And driving to Goa (over 600 kms) would be more than 50% longer than the longest I had ever driven on a single day - 250 miles, or 400 km from Inverness to Edinburgh via the Great Glen, Fort William, Loch Lomond and the outskirts of Glasgow. Hence, before setting off, I started doing detailed research on what a drive to Goa would entail.

My first port of call was a car crazy friend, Ghanashyam, who has done several trips to Goa (and even a couple to Mangalore, his home town). "Driving to Goa. Its a breeze.", he said. "Just start at 5 am, and you should make it there by 330 or 4 PM". Ghanashyam of course is the kind of guy who can take the CR2 parking lot ramp at 40 kmph, do 180 kmph on the Bombay Pune expressway, and slice through traffic like Vettel passing Karun Chandok. So his time estimates had to be taken with a pinch of salt. But clearly if he could make it by 330 or 4, I should be able to make it by 7 pm, I thought. Further research was done on an Indian car freak web-site, team-bhp.com. There was a detailed thread on the Goa route, and it very quickly emerged that the best route to Goa was to take the Bangalore highway (NH 4) till somewhere between Kolhapur and Belgaum, and then divert via Amboli Ghat to Sawantwadi on the Maharashtra Goa border. The direct Bombay Goa road is shorter, but has just a single carriageway, and monsoon road conditions could be quite unpredictable.
View Larger Map

The next question was where to stay. The last time we went to Goa, we stayed at the Taj Holiday Village, in North Goa. But Bombayites plan their long weekends well in advance, and the Holiday Village did not have rooms at anything resembling a reasonable cost. The other major North Goa resort, the Fort Aguada was fully booked as was the Park Hyatt in South Goa. But surprisingly, there were relatively cheap rooms available at the Leela in South Goa (which is usually the costliest resort in Goa) - mainly because the resort is undergoing a renovation. A few quick checks revealed that the renovation was not really intrusive, and hence I made our bookings there. Booking at the Leela when you fly to Goa is a no brainer... Dabolim Airport is in South Goa, and just about an hour from the Leela. But while driving from Bombay, this meant that I would need to drive about 70 kms more than the distance to the North Goa resorts.

The final step in the planning phase was to prepare for the journey. My role was limited to getting the car ready, which involved checking that the tires (including the spare) were okay and inflated, that coolant and brake fluid levels were fine, and that I was stocked with a 1 litre can of Shell Helix Ultra. (The Volkswagen Group's ultra modern, turbo charged, direct injection petrol engines tend to drink oil like old Morris Minors). Radhika as usual had the tougher job, packing for the three of us, visiting Chedda Stores at Matunga to buy snacks for the journey, and with Amma's help, getting hot food (rotis and idlis) prepared for the journey.We set a hard deadline of 5 am for us to leave for Goa, knowing that with Avinash around, we would need to take more than our fair share of breaks, and that we would have to travel a long way through Goa to reach our hotel. My objective was to complete the NH 4 stretch till Kolhapur by 1130 or 12 noon, which would ensure that we had sufficient time to drive through the narrow ghat road from Sankeshwar through Amboli to Sawantwadi, and reach our hotel by 7PM or so.

August 31, 2011 - Bombay to Goa

About to leave

We woke up as per plan at 345 am, and started getting ready to leave. However, despite our best efforts, by the time we were all in the car, it was 520 am. As we exited our building, Radhika realized that we had forgotten our packet of rotis - hence, we had to return to the building to pick them up. Our departure time was thus effective 5:30 am - we had lost 30 minutes even before we started. Long weekends tend to be terrible from a traffic perspective, and this day was no exception. Even at 530 in the morning, there was a lot of traffic on the road from Parel towards Chembur.

We made slow but steady progress (avg 45 kmph) till we reached Vashi, but the drive down Palm Beach Road was a relief. Soon, we reached the expressway, and made extremely rapid progress till the first toll booth at Khalapur. There was a massive crowd at the toll booth, which was a precursor for things to come. The next section of the Bombay Pune expressway along Khandala Ghat follows the same alignment as the old Bombay Pune road. Truck and car traffic was heavy, with trucks trying to overtake each other at under 25 or 30 kph, and blocking faster traffic. Where I got the space, driving was a pleasure - with my car climbing the ghat at 120 kph with the engine gently ambling along at 3000 rpm in D6. But the overall section till Karla was extremely crowded, and we could average only 45 kph on this stretch.

Khandala Ghat - a rare clear stretch

Beyond Karla, the proper expressway resumes, and we once again made rapid progress. It took just 15 minutes to cover the next 30 kms to the Talegaon exit, where we took our first break to eat the breakfast of Idlis that Amma had packed for us at about 725 am. We managed to keep this break down to 20 minutes, and shortly thereafter, we exited the Expressway - at this stage we had managed to get our average speed up to almost 70 kmph, which was the highest that it would touch. Despite the traffic, our Bombay Pune time had not been worse than what we had anticipated.


Even though it was just before 8 am when we hit the Pune bypass, it seemed as if the entire town was out on the streets. The two lane bypass section was extremely crowded. After a quick tank up near Pune, we continued on our way, and it took 45 minutes to cover the 32 km Pune urban section.

Once we crossed Pune, the road was less crowded, but overall traffic was still high between Pune and Satara. The other big issue is the toll booths, which do not have enough lanes, often witness negotiations between MUV drivers and the toll attendants (fortunately, no shootings as witnessed in Gurgaon yesterday), and result in a dramatic loss of time. Between Pune and Kolhapur, there were 5 toll booths, and we lost an average of about 7-8 minutes in each of them. In the second toll booth we came to, at Anewadi, there was a traffic warden directing cars into an extra South bound toll lane (which had been opened by converting one of the North bound lanes). As I tried to get into that lane, a truck tried to close the gap down, and I swerved , ending inches from an ST bus. I stopped, but at that instant, the bus tried to start, and rolled back a few inches, knocking my LHS rear view mirror off. Avinash was distraught at seeing the damage caused to the car - I would have been upset too, but realized that we probably got away lightly - a few inches one way or the other and the car body could have been damaged.  After Karad, the road opened out, and we managed to average 70 kph on the last 80 kms to Kolhapur. We reached Kolhapur at about 1230 pm, more or less on time given that we had started 30 minutes late. We had taken 3 hours 40 minutes to cover 220 kms between Pune and Kolhapur, and at least 40 minutes of that time was wasted at toll booths.

There is a McDonalds and Cafe Coffee Day just off the highway on the Kolhapur bypass, and this is the suggested lunch halt for all people traveling towards Bangalore from Bombay. We, of course, had our lunch - but used the parking lot of the McDonalds to eat it. Since we wanted to use the facilities there, we also ended up ordering some Ice Cream at the McDs, and before we realized it, we had spent almost one hour stationary there. About 2 kms from the McDonalds, we reached the famous Konduskar Petrol Pump, and refueled there. (Given the extent of adulterated fuel found on Indian highways, people driving modern petrol cars in particular are well advised to make note of all reliable petrol pumps on their route, and refuel only at those locations.) About 8 kms from Kolhapur, we crossed in Karnataka, and immediately, the road quality improved dramatically.

Our speed picked up, and the distance to Tawandi Ghat (about 10 km from the town of Nipani), which is the location of the first turn off towards Amboli was covered in short order. We skipped this turnoff (which leads towards a town called Uttur) since the web-site that we had looked at advised against it, and proceeded a further 20 kms to a town called Sankeshwar, from where we turned off towards another small town called Gadhinglaj. The stretch from the Karnataka border to Sankeshwar was probably the nicest stretch of the entire journey - a combination of superb roads and beautiful undulating, green landscape, which inspired Radhika to pick up her EOS 550D and shoot a few snaps. We probably covered this 40 km stretch in about 20 minutes.

Misty Amboli

The web-site we had checked had told us that the Sankeshwar Gadhinglaj Ajra route was the best way to Amboli from Kolhapur, even though it is 20 km longer than the alternate Nipani Uttur Ajra route. (In case anyone uses the map shown above as a reference point, it shows the Nipani Uttur Ajra route).  But the road we were driving on certainly did not feel that way. It was narrow, with plenty of Maharashtra State Transport bus traffic, and had a very rough surface (even if deep potholes were few and far between). The road also runs through the heart of Gadhinglaj town, and progress was pretty slow. After Gadhinglaj, the road quality improved, and we were able to pick our speed up to about 60 or even 70 kmph in parts. Nevertheless by the time we reached Amboli, it was almost 3:45 pm - we had taken over two hours from the Karnataka border to cover 110 km - or 1 hour 40 minutes to do the 70 km Sankeshwar Amboli stretch.

Amboli is one of the many fabulously beautiful but virtually unknown monsoon destinations that abound in Maharashtra. It is famous for its waterfalls - on our way back, Avi counted 15 falls by the road before getting bored. We stopped briefly to see the falls, but there was a large holiday crowd of mostly drunk folks around, and we left after a very short break. There had been a major landslide at Amboli in late June, and shortly after the waterfall, there was a 500 metre stretch where the road was just mud and gravel. But after that, the rest of Amboli ghat was really nice, and oncoming traffic had reduced considerably. The only issue was that I was stuck behind an Alto that was driving along at 25 kph and on the twisty ghat section, I did not dare overtake, even if I could have driven about 15 kph faster. It therefore took an hour to cover the 30 kms from Amboli to Sawantwadi. A combination of the twisty ghat roads, and the long, virtually non stop drive since Kolhapur made Radhika feel extremely queasy, and we therefore stopped at Sawantwadi for some tea even though it was already 4:45 PM and I was not keen on driving for too long beyond sunset. We ended up spending about 45 minutes on this break.

After Sawantwadi, we were on NH 17, the Bombay Goa road. A bypass of Sawantwadi town is currently being constructed, and hence the existing road is heavily neglected. The roads near Sawantwadi were extremely narrow, and filled with deep craters. After about 10 km of this, we reached the point where the bypass construction was on - and to our amazement, the road quality became even worse. The 16 km from Sawantwadi to the Goa border took over 30 minutes. We crossed into Goa at 6 PM. Once we entered Goa, the road surface was super smooth, but the road remained a single carriageway for most part. Further, it had been raining very heavily for 3 days prior to our departure from Bombay, and once we entered Goa, the rain returned with a vengeance. Finally, after over 12 hours on the road, I was tired, and hence chose to stick behind slow moving buses and trucks, overtaking only on double carriageway sections or where the driver ahead took pity on me and slowed down to let me pass.

The sun set shortly after we passed Panjim, and the high beam lights of oncoming traffic made driving even tougher. Further, I was not exactly sure of how we should get from Madgaon to our hotel - hence about 10 km from Madgaon, I interrupted Radhika who was on a long call with Vidu, and asked her to call the hotel for directions instead. The hotel told us to take a turnoff from the highway towards Colva Beach, and that the rest of the way was posted. By the time we reached this turn-off, it was 7:30 PM. We made the turn, and kept going towards Colva, until we realized that we were almost at the Beach. It was pouring, and there was not a soul on the road. Fortunately, there was a lone shop open, and we managed to get directions from the shopkeeper, we had to travel back about 200 metres, and go through a series of narrow roads, before getting to the road heading for the Leela.

I had managed to borrow an old Garmin India map from a friend - but it was clearly useless - it was not aware of even sections of the National Highway, much less these narrow streets. At this point, we turned to the Google maps on my  Samsung Galaxy S, which turned out to be far more accurate, and with Radhika navigating, we got onto the long straight road that leads to the Leela. While it was pitch dark and pouring, someone (I presume the hotels on the road including the Taj Exotica, Holiday Inn, Radisson Blu and the Leela) had ensured that there were reflectors on both sides of the road, and driving was therefore not difficult. Finally, at 8:23, having covered 655 kms in a little less than 15 hours door to door (with about 2 hours 15 minutes of halts on the way), we were at the Leela. It was an exhilarating journey, and I was glad that we had made it with only a minor mishap. 

Our room itself was fantastic - it had two sections, one with a master bed, and a small sitting area where a smaller bed (perfect for Avi) had been laid out. Best of all, there were separate TVs for Avi and us - and Cartoon Network was available.

It would be extremely wrong of me to end the narrative of this day without commenting on Avi's exemplary behavior during our journey. Barring the halts at  Talegaon, Kolhapur and Sawantwadi, he asked for only one other break, and kept himself and us amused with his comments throughout the journey. Clearly, this is one kid who loves the long road trip. 

For those interested in road trip speed stats, one final picture.

Avinash’s Goa Trip - November 2008 (with Radhika and Raj for company)

We just returned to Bombay from Goa, having completed Avinash’s first holiday, (our trip to the South was more pilgrimage than holiday - :)) and hence we decided to immortalize it on this blog.

Our vacation planning started in advance of Avinash’s first birthday, back in early September. Initially we were quite aggressive in our plans, thinking of a two week trip to Singapore and Bali. But then wisdom dawned on us, driven by both the downturn in the markets post the Lehman collapse (increasing the value of “conserving cash”) and the realization that we had never travelled out of town with Avinash without support from Amma, Appa and Dad before – and that a two week overseas trip where food even for Radhika and myself would be a challenge was not the best way to test our ability to manage him sans support. The other constraint was the need to avoid missing too many of Radhika’s German classes, and that implied a strong preference for the period between Diwali and November 14 – since her classes were off for the weekends of Nov 1 and Nov 8. We therefore decided to go for a three night trip to Goa, and originally scheduled it for just after Diwali from Nov 2^nd to Nov 5^th.

I finally got around to making our bookings on October 15^th, deciding to stay at the Taj Holiday Village, in North Goa. But two days later, disaster struck – a business trip to Hong Kong got scheduled for Nov 3^rd. Fortunately, both airline tickets and hotel reservations were easily adjusted for the following weekend – and the trip got scheduled for Nov 9^th to Nov 12^th.

We were booked to travel by the 1235 PM Jet Airways flight. Avinash was extremely excited by all the packing that was going on – he seemed to realize that this was a bigger occasion than the routine trips to his Thatha and Amamma’s place. Radhika carted along everything but the kitchen sink – packing a rice cooker, rice, dal et al in addition to large quantities of baby food, medicines, and toys (including Avi’s basket ball) – but managed to somehow fit it all into two normal sized suitcases. Radhika also managed to convince me to purchase a (somewhat) lighter travel stroller for Avi – I was initially reluctant to buy the same, but finally gave in deciding that discretion was the better part of valour. Surprisingly, all the packing got done on the night of the 8^th itself, and we were ready relatively comfortably on the 9^th morning.

A minor hiccup arose when Meru Cabs sent us an Esteem instead of the Marina we had requested for – however, the driver was quite efficient in packing our suitcases into the tiny boot (which is compromised by the CNG cylinder) and was able to place the stroller on the front seat. We reached the airport quite early – by 11 am, and barged into the lounge. It being a Sunday, the usual business traveller crowd was not around – and Avi had plenty of space to “lounge” about. He was not fazed by the sight of planes taking off – and was more interested in attacking the flowers and flower vases that were kept there. Around 12, Avi had his lunch and we were all set for the flight.

The flight was quite empty and Avi took it quite well, working his charm on the cabin crew. We managed to keep him entertained with his “Animals” book and by playing with the overhead reading lights. Avi seemed thrilled when we landed in Goa, settling into his new stroller with ease. The coach from the Taj was waiting for us – the driver indicated that some other passengers would be joining us and that we would have to wait for a while, but after 10 minutes, gave up on them and set off for the resort.

The drive to the resort took ~ 1 hour and Avi and Radhika slept through most of it. The resort lobby was beautiful, with high wooden ceilings, and old fashioned ceiling fans. Avi displayed a remarkable appreciation for beauty, and gave both me and Radhika a number of hugs and kisses, as if in gratitude for having brought him there. We were then driven to our room using an electric golf cart. A room was one of four in a cottage, with a small lawn in front, and shielded from prying eyes with thick foliage. There was a huge bed (a double king size, if I am not mistaken), a stone sofa built into one of the walls and in general gave an impression of space. Avi was delighted (as can be seen from the attached photos).

After unpacking, we set out to explore the resort. The resort is beautifully done, with a long frontage abutting the beach. However, the beach itself is very severely eroded, and parts of the resort have been cordoned off due to the risk of landslides. The beach slopes steeply, and given the strength of the waves, it was clearly not advisable to even wade in knee deep water. Having visited this beach about 20 years ago, my first impression was that it had shrunk very significantly – I recall a reasonably broad expanse (albeit not as wide as Calangute or even Juhu) with a large number of beach chairs laid along it – what we saw instead was a beach barely 10 feet wide, with a severely eroded resort wall abutting it. The sight made even a confirmed Green Sceptic like me worry about sea level rise and made me somewhat willing to concede the wisdom of CRZ type laws at least in beach resorts. After a brief walk along the beach, we returned to the resort, and had an evening snack at the Caravela restaurant which is gloriously perched above the sea.

The next morning, after breakfast, we set out for the pool. We had purchased a bunch of swim diapers for Avi, and also bought a baby float for him. The kiddie pool was ideally designed for Avi, with a depth of just 1.1 feet – on entering the pool with the float, Avi promptly started walking around it, and chasing the various balls and other floating toys that had been placed by the hotel staff in the pool. Avi had a real ball of a time in the pool, and after 30 minutes (by which time it was past 11) when we forced him out of it, he registered his protest in the strongest possible terms. Nevertheless, we managed to pacify him and get him back to the room.

We had decided to avoid lunch at the resort, but it was almost 245 by the time we got ready to leave for lunch. The Concierge suggested a vegetarian restaurant in Calangute that we could go to (albeit somewhat disapprovingly) and was kind enough to call them and ask them to keep the kitchen open for us. We then hired a taxi (for a ridiculous round trip cost of Rs. 450 – I think we got gypped badly), and set out for the restaurant. We had a good Punjabi style meal, and Avi seemed very happy with the Khichdi they prepared for him. After a good meal, we set out for Calangute beach, reaching it around 445. Radhika and Avi went to the edge of the water. Avi loved it, and was extremely keen on heading out to where others were standing, in much deeper water with large waves breaking around them. With considerable difficulty, Radhika managed to drag him away from the sea, and got him focussed on the sand instead.

Avi really enjoyed himself. He attacked the sand castles that we attempted to build, dug deep into the sand, and even created some patterns on the sand by “swimming” on it. Within a few minutes, he was covered with sand all over. In keeping with his “mastery of misdirection”, he also made several attempts to walk into the sea, while pretending to be playing with the sand. He saw people parasailing and jet-skiing, and seemed keen to get started with these adventure sports. After about 30 minutes at the beach, we set off for the hotel. After showering in the room, and refusing to eat dinner, Avi pointed us to his stroller, indicating he wanted to go for a walk. We went back to one of the restaurants, where Avi went to sleep listening to the live band. Given that we were out of the room, and that Avi was asleep in his stroller, we went across to the Thai restaurant, Banyan Tree, and had a delicious dinner of Thai Red Curry and Rice.

Day 3 started with us waking extremely late. By the time we returned to the room post breakfast, Avi was sleepy, and not in state to hit the pool. For lunch, we decided to try out vegetarian Goan food at the Beach Café. Given our experience at Calangute, we also ordered Khichdi for Avi. This turned out to be a complete disaster. The Goan dish was ok, but they served relatively undercooked long grain rice with it, which Radhika just could not eat. The Baby Khichdi was salt-less, bland, and completely tasteless. In an attempt to spice it up, I added too much pepper, with the result that Avi flatly refused to eat. After this decidedly mediocre lunch, we headed back to the room, gave Avi some fruit, and then headed for the pool. Avi had a blast once again, this time attempting to swim. The evening was spent lazily, strolling around the resort, with Avi plucking the grass (Radhika’s calls it “Yaaru Picchha” or Who Tore This?), and playing football.

Before we knew it, the day was out, and it was time for us to return to Bombay. We spent the morning packing – Avi soon realized that we were about to leave his new and nice home, and started to protest vehemently. He kept trying to prevent us from packing, moving all the stuff out of the bags. Finally, I had to take him for a walk to let Radhika pack. We left the Taj Holiday Village with nice memories, and a real admiration for the degree of observation and consciousness that our 14 month old has. We were also relieved that we had made it through our first vacation with Avi, without any mishaps.

When we got back, Avi seemed decidedly disappointed – when asked where is Goa, he responds with a sad look, and a quizzical expression meaning “Kaanamme” or “Its missing”. Guess that’s the way life is.