See all the Goa photos here
My first introduction to Goa was the famous Anjuna Beach. I was met by great sunny weather, the Arabian Sea, and a bunch of men in g strings! The first two of the above mentioned were just what I was looking for. I noticed this place was one of the infamous hippie beaches which meant that a few Westerners were running around the beaches singing and dancing in the middle of the day on their hippie high and that there were a number of overweight Germans in gstrings that could easily have placed records in my personal Guinness record book.
 Nevertheless, Anjuna Beach was a pleasant place with a nice beach and the obligatory beach cows. I decided to move on after a day in this hippie paradise. (I am told however that Arambol is the main hippie hang out, which includes stories of a man walking around the beach with a crystal ball on his head!).
I ended up at Calanguete which apparently is the center for European package tourists in their mid fifties. If it were not for the number of palm trees, I might have mistaken myself for being in Southern Spain or Greece. The people here were very friendly and there was a typically European vacation atmosphere over the place.
 Here I stayed at a guesthouse with a very caring family especially the mother/wife (Santana). I was lucky to meet a friendly Korean who I talked into going for a night out to the best nightclub in town and it did indeed turn out to be a great night out. This nightclub was basically a rebuilt villa in the hills. Club Cubanna, as it was called, had a view over the Goan coast and the Arabian Sea, while there was a swimming pool and Jacuzzi, inside you could find a large indoor dance floor. To top it all off this place was littered with beautiful Russian women.
I decided to head down south as I would also be meeting my
flat-mate from Delhi there in a few days. On the way I stopped at a quiet beach (Behnaulim) where a friend of a friend was staying. So I had dinner with them that night after some sunbathing. It turned out that these two girls were both extrovert and interesting. One of them was writing a novel about the New India with a focus on Delhi while the other was a poet and Princeton Professor in the US.
 Finally, the last stop was Palolem. A so called backpacker place. This was a long beach with a large number of palm trees tilting peacefully over the beach. That said, the significant number of visitors and beach shacks did give a crowded feeling to the beach especially at high tide. As my
flat-mate eventually came we went for a boat trip where we got to see numerous dolphins, but we stayed at a secluded beach with tree jumping monkeys and a crew of event managers who just had arranged Nelly Furtados concert in Bombay last week.
The last day was spent by myself driving around the nearby beaches with a rented scooter. I stopped at the Intercontinental and politely borrowed their five star facilities with the many rich Russians. The latter half of the day before going to the airport I stopped by a town where a
Muslim festival was taking place, they offered me all sorts of drinks, which I managed to avoid. See my photos for more on this.
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