Goa, India (By Mel)

Namaskar (Hello in Konkani, the language of Goa),
Our last blog, we were about to leave Udupi. Our last day there was Kev’s birthday. I didn’t plan that very well! In the morning the kids had drawings, poems and power point presentation for him. It was adorable! We had our train in the afternoon, so we pilled up in a tuktuk with all our bags (we managed to fit everything in, but it was a bit tight!) and took off for the train station. We waited there a long time! Our train kept being delayed and delayed and delayed. The kids did great, they read their kindle, Emma did some drawing, we chatted, not too much complaint, they are amazing. After more than 2 hours, our train finally arrived. We got in all good, but it kept stopping at more stops than planned, we think to let other train pass, as most of the place, there is only one line. Anyway, we arrive around 9.30pm instead of 7pm, so my plan of finding a nice restaurant for Kev’s birthday got thrown out and we went straight to the hotel and got to sleep!
The next day, we slept in a bit and then went to discover our surrounding. We are in Benaulin, in the state of Goa. It is very nice here. There is lots of trees and it doesn’t feel city or even town at all. We around 20 minutes walking from the beach and when walking around, there is houses in the middle of what is left of the jungle. I like the feeling. We walked to a busy intersection as we were looking for shops to buy a bit of food. We are staying in a 2-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen, which is nice as we can cook and keep food. We found a shop which sell pretty much anything you need. I like those small shops as I never enjoyed massive supermarkets as we have in Australia (probably from my Parisian upbringing). After shopping and lunch, we went back to the room to settle in and Kev and I did some planning for the next week and also for our next big part of our trip in Africa (planning takes a lot of time and energy!) The kids enjoyed their big rooms and played board games and did some drawing and juggling. I love the fact that they are so good with each other, even after more than 2 months being with each other all the time!
In the evening, we find a nice restaurant to celebrate Kev’s birthday one day late. We enjoyed some good food and the local beer, called People; this is only sold in Goa and is really not bad. We also tried the local spirit, called Feni, made of cashew apple (If you don’t know what it looks like, check it out!). For me it tasted a bit like Calvados (for those who tried it): I liked it! I’m not sure Kev liked it too much.
The next day was waterfall day. I saw pictures of this beautiful waterfall and thought it will be nice to spend the afternoon there. Yeaaaah, I forgot that we are in India and nothing is that easy! The waterfall is called Dudhsagar falls. It is one hour and a half driving from where we are, so we booked a taxi online (uber doesn’t work here). We booked the taxi for 9am as I wanted to get some work done in the morning, but it arrived at 8.20am: great!!! We rushed outside and got going. When we arrived 12km before the fall, we got stopped as apparently only Jeeps can take us there (the taxi booking system did made me pay all the way to the waterfall but ok!). The fall is in a national park and you need to pay to get in. Fair enough. The taxi park somewhere, where we got asked to pay for that, Ok fine. Then we go to the ticket office, except that you can only book ticket online: Ok, but online you need an Indian phone number to receive a one time password: well, we don’t have one! Ok, got to the ticket office, someone will help. The guy at the office book us online with the taxi driver’s phone number and we pay the entrance, plus the mandatory life jacket: I’m sorry what? Yes it is mandatory, even if you can swim… ok…. Then you go to the next office type thing, where surprise.. you need to pay for the jeep to take you up there….. It is getting pricy to just swim in a bloody waterfall! We pay that, getting “slightly” annoyed. Got into a jeep, and stop one last stop, at the entrance of the park to pay for good knows what! By that point as was very over it and ready to go back to the hotel, but well, we paid so let see this bloody waterfall. We drove a very bumpy track and arrive in the middle of a lot of other jeep and the driver tell us to come back in 1 hour and 15 minutes. Sorry what?: yes you only get a limited amount of time as there is not a lot of space for all those jeeps, so you can only stay one hour at the waterfall!!! We got all that way, so we went to the waterfall, which is beautiful. There was a huge amount of people there floating around with their life jacket (we left ours in the jeep, nobody said anything to us). We did some splashing around; the water is not that cold once you are in it! I do enjoy swimming, so it was nice. Emma did a bit of swimming too and she is getting better at it. Andrew doesn’t do cold: he tried to get in, he really did, but no. So he did one of his favourite thing, watching and trying to catch fish! There was a fair bit of them in the water and they were pretty big and colourful. If you stay to still, they nibble on your legs. Also, there are monkeys around. Despite signs everywhere that say, “do not feed the monkeys”, near the ticket office, there a fair few people selling bananas to feed the monkeys. The monkeys know and they are around. But to be honest, they are not aggressive and just look around for whoever have food to give them. We were a bit worried at first, as we have seen aggressive monkeys, but those were ok. We obviously had no food for them, as we never feed wild animals, so they left us alone and they had plenty other people to check! On our way back, we saw our jeep driver looking for us, as we were 5 minutes late! We drove the bumpy track back down, find our taxi driver who waited for us and drove back to the hotel.
The waterfall was very pretty, it was nice to swim in, but have I known the price and time it costs us for only one hour in it, I might not have gone there.
I have been craving live music for a while, so I investigated it and lucky me, there was a rock ‘festival’ in a bar near us. That evening, we went to the beach to the Tikibab bar to have a few drinks (unfortunately no local beer on the menu) and listen to some rock band. On the poster I saw, it said ‘start at 7pm’, so we went there at 7pm (a bit earlier, to find a good table), but they only started their warmup and testing at 7pm. They actually started playing properly around 9pm! We still got to listen to some music. The kids love playing on the beach and did just that. Around 10pm, we could tell they were getting pretty tired, so we got back to our rooms and went for a good sleep. It was a very lovely evening.
Sunday is the day we tried to call people (when we remember it is Sunday!), so we did that. We video called some of our best friends. The kids are missing their friends a lot sometimes and they were very happy. It is nice to have internet for that: being able to see familiar and loved faces. After that, we were off for another museum, that is a 3 in one museum, The Goa Chitra museum is a private museum: it has 3 parts to it: one part was dedicated to the traditional tools and utensils used in Goa, one part was dedicated to the Portuguese influence in Goa and one was a lot of different carriage and coaches. It was interesting. We had a guide (mandatory) who gave us some good information, but we did feel rush a few times. We are the kind of people who like to take our time in museum: hence why we normally do not take guide or tours. But it was interesting nonetheless. We saw some artefacts that we never saw before like coconut grater, a coconut press to get some coconut oil, some musical instruments (one drum type one made of monitor lizard skin). In every museum, there is always something new and interesting. We love when we can make connection with something else similar that we saw somewhere else. After the museum, we went to a small street restaurant which was not bad. But for me, what made the experience was a woman who was cooking there. She was watching us a lot with a big genuine smile on her face. I’m not sure if it was because we are white people in her restaurant or because, we tried to eat with our hand like most of the Indians do (we are getting better at it), or because she could see we were enjoying her food… I’m not sure but she had a beautiful smile and it made my day. I wish we could have talk together but we didn’t speak the same language.
After that we went back to the appartement as the kids needed to do some schoolwork and some blogging (this is their English assessment this year! You are, by the way, really welcome to mark them in a comment under this blog!) Then easy evening, cooking pasta and watching a movie.
As we are world schooling the kids, we try to find places where they can learn things. That is why the next day, we went to the science museum in Goa. It was amazing. There was a lot of hand on learning, with object or visual that the kids could interact with and the explanation on the scientific concept. There was a lot to do. It is not a super new museum, but almost everything was in working order, well explained and interesting. There was also a planetarium with a movie about the sun, which was relatively well done. I asked the kids to find one science concept to really learn about, so they can explain it in their blog, and they will have to do extra research later on.
After that, I had a list of churches and temples I wanted to go see, but I forgot how everything is far in India. We walked a lot longer that expected to find the first temple on the list and it was hot. Like sweat running down your face and neck and back and everywhere hot! When we arrived at the temple, it was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be and not really exciting. We took off for another stop I had on my list: the immaculate conception church, which is a beautiful big white church build by the Portuguese (like most of the old church around here). The only thing is, when we got there, we couldn’t get in, and not just that, we couldn’t get close to it! The church is roped of, so you can only see it from down the big stairs at the front of it… We were a bit dishearten by then! It was getting late in the afternoon, we were tired (did I mention hot too!), so we called our taxi (we finally find a taxi: it has been more complicated than we thought too) and went back to the hotel.
Next day, we decided to try visiting churches again and this time we could go in! With our lovely taxi driver, Raza (when we got one, we don’t let him go!), we went to Basilica Bom Jesus, built at the end of the 16th century and is the only church in Goa to have the original stone unplastered which give it a distinctive look in Goa. It is a massive church with impressive art inside. We then went across the street to visit the Se Cathedrale. Yep across the street: for some reason in a that small area called Old Goa, there are a lot of massive churches or cathedrals. The Se cathedral is one of the biggest one in Asia, built in the 16th century. This is another massive, white cathedral: it is very impressive walking inside those gigantic building with such high ceilings. I am not religious, but I am always amazed by the religious sites and the effort human put into them. Next to that cathedral is a small museum where there are a bunch a portrait of all the Portuguese governors and viceroys, that we went to see. Not the most interesting museum, but it fun to look at the evolution of the fashion. After that, one more church (they are all next to each other for once!), but this one is in ruin, called St Augustine tower, as it is pretty much the only thing left from this church. Andrew said it was his favourite! The boy loves his ruins! And I have to admit, it was pretty cool: as you walked into the ruins, you can let your imagination run wild and build the place in your head. After churches, we went to see the Aguada fort, built by the Portuguese in 1612. The name come from a freshwater spring within the fort providing water supply to the ships that used to stop by, as Aguada means watery in Portuguese. After all that learning, we decided to take a dolphin tour. We took a small boat to go around the coast and try to spot some dolphins. We were lucky as we spotted a few, but Kev and I kept wondering how stressful it was for the dolphin as every time they were coming out, several boats zoomed towards them to see them closer. We are trying to be as conscious as we can with animal but sometimes, we are not quite sure what is ok or not. I might have to do more research on that. It was nonetheless a good moment for us (Andrew was a bit disappointed as the dolphin kept coming on Emma and Kev’s side of the boat, so they saw more. He did handle it very well though).
Wednesday was cooking class day. After Cambodia and Laos cooking classes, we wanted to try Indian cuisine class! It was a great day. Except that when we arrive, they were surprised to see us. I said that we exchanged by email a few days ago to book the class: Yes the lovely Rita said (the owner of the place), but you booked for April not March! And yes, I checked my emails and I did write April!!!! Anyway, they were super nice and ask for 30 minutes to prepare, while providing us with snacks, tea and coffee. We received a short lesson about spices (there are soooo many!) and how to prepare a masala tea, which I was very happy about as I developed a taste for it since we arrived in India. We then started cooking: we prepared a mint and coriander chutney sauce to eat with samosas. We learnt how to do the dough for the samosa, for the paratha and the poori (2 types of flat bread) and how to cook them. We cooked butter chicken and tofu chicken for me. We did a desert named Kheer, a type of Indian rice pudding. It was fun, delicious, interesting. The kids love this kind of hand on experience and are more and more keen to do things by themselves. Cooking classes are becoming one of my favourite things to do when traveling: not because I like cooking (because it is not really my thing) but because the kids love them and really get into it and learn from it. We obviously ate after cooking, and it was delicious! We are pretty good cooks when we are told what to do!!!
On the way back, our lovely taxi driver told us about this new Indu temple completely made of marble which was on the way back. We stopped there and it was worth it! It was a beautiful white temple, with a ceiling in shape of a flower and beautiful latticed walls. Then back to our rooms for a bit of blogging and rest.
Today is packing day again. We are leaving on a night train tonight to go to Mumbai. We are going to spend the day finishing our blog and play games while we are waiting to go the train station this afternoon. See you all in Mumbai.
MelRead more