This was the most exciting and happening day of our trip...Early morning breakfast at Kamath Restaurant and we were at the Aguda fort... Everybody seemed to be DCH mood for obvious reasons (For people who don't know, Dil Chahta Hain movie was shot there). The pics would be perfect evidence of the same. I think, if you ask, none of us would able to answer what the fort was all about like when, why, who build it? Everyone was there to have a great time, who bothered about all this??
After some historical milieu, we decided to hit the beach as someone said, "Abey hum log Goa aaye hain, Khajuraho nahi..." The water sports at Calangoute beach were really exciting. Banana in particular was the most enthralling for me...The dip into the sea at the end of the ride spurs you up like anything. Parasailing was the most empressive of all; once you are up with the parachute, you feel like you are sailing on top of the world...what you see is only the blue seas below and the blue skies above...Fanatastic!! is the word.
After a nice north indian lunch along side the beach, it was time for a walk from Calangoute to Bagha beach. With so many desi and videsi titliyan around, I could have continued my walk till eternity... Here we got some time to collect some sea shells, look at lagoons if we could find and plan for the evening cruise and the South Goa trip the following day. The sunset from the shack at Bagha with Veg Cheese sandwich plus the Mo (bartender) factor, what else you could have asked for?? Mo was very happy to show some of his bartending skills like flipping the bottles as we usually see....I was lucky to pick up some of the skills...If someone thought this wasn’t enough, the evening cruise at Mandovi river was again an unforgettable experience.
Reaching the river for the cruise was not all that straight forward...First of all, we had asked our hotel reception to book the tickets for 2030 hrs, but getting people moving from the Bagha beach took a while and then a traffic jam ensured that we wouldn't have reached the hotel to collect the tickets in time for the cruise..Luckily, the guy at the reception called and informed that he couldn't get the tickets for the decided time and hence he had booked 2130 cruise...That was a huge relief. That meant I could meet Sushil, my childhood friend, who was already waiting for me at the hotel..While the others got ready for the cruise I was busy talking to him and at 2115 we all were geared up to move for the river...We were about to start when one of my friends asked this typical question, "Chetan, ticket tere pass hain na??" Guess what, I had no information about it. I remembered that I had handed over the tickets to someone but not sure whom..Panic spread and people started running to their rooms to check if they had ticktes..I was preparing for the worst and talking to the reception guys to check out if we could board the ship even if we had no tickets and if someone from reception could speak to the cruise owners or someone. Just then we found the tickets, hah!! Sushil said that he knew a short cut to the river, but it turned out that he had driven us into a one-way. This added to the so called nail biting quotient, and to take it to the climax, the security guard at the cruise entry said, we were already late for the cruise. But as it turned out he thought we were there for a 2115 ride, while we actually were targetting 2130...Finally we got on to the ship. I think we had to dance on the cruise deck, that was in our destiny.
Wait, this was not the end of the day...After the wonderful ride on Mandovi and an exhausting and exhilarating dance on the cruise, it was time for dinner. We reached near our hotel and then, on foot, checked out near by restaurants to see if we could get some north indian food...A 30 minute search led us to an eatery named 'Veg Baba'!! By the time we could finish our delectable dinner, it was mid-night...In comes Republic Day, 26th Jan 2009...
Phew, Too many things in a single day!!
