Let me flow this to you slow and steady. What I am going to tell you about is my visit to a beach, unpolluted, scarcely populated and calm, where the sun is pretty happy to shine and where the waters are friendly. I don’t wish to sound like Alice in Wonderland here but this is my eyes talking to my mind talking to you.
Along the southern shores of Goa, in the small town of Cancona, is this gem of a beach called Palolem. This beach is the destination of a scenic 70 km drive from the city of Panjim. The 3 hours spent driving didn’t seem tiring at all when we reached Palolem. Oh sorry, I forgot to introduce to you, “We”. Clarence and Shobin, my school-hood friends and of course my partner in crime and my cousin, Balu. This was the first time Clari (as I nick-named him), Shobin and Balu were visiting Palolem and for yours truly this was the second time, a conscious effort to re-visit the happy memories I had the last time.
We reached at around 5 in the evening, and since we were already so late, decided to do an over-night at the beach. I’ve always envied the hippies (the foreigners – I don’t know, but I love calling them that) who stayed for days together on the same beach in little pretty beach shacks. That is what we had in our mind too, so we unpacked ourselves in 2 beach shacks, freshened up and let ourselves loose in the waters.
Once content with having salt in our mouths and sand in our underpants, we hit out shacks to clean up, dress up and hit the shores in search of the obvious. Nah, not that... I am talking about good, tasty, sea-food. Fish, prawns, crabs. And to our surprise, we were also offered a mint-flavoured high power hukka. Boy, what a time we had. When you’ve had exotic sea-food salads and crab sizzlers to your heart’s content and the hukka has given you a spinning head to the extent that you can’t see straight, Clari would only wanna crash.
We couldn't have missed the sunrise next morning at any cost, so we were up before the sun and waited to witness the one and only bless the shores with his brightness. We had booked a boat trip to the butterfly island from Palolem the previous evenin and as assured had our guide ready early. The island is about an hour’s boat ride from the beach. The guide had promised to show us dolphins on the way. Here I remember a scene from the bollywood movie "Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd." where in the newlywed couples take a similar boat ride. Mid sea, their guide goes "Woh dekho dolphin".. and as they turn around to see, there is nothing but an endless stretch of waving blue. Similar was our case... "Woh dekho dolphin".. and whoa.... NOTHIN... But lady luck wasn't so pissed with us. We eventually got the sight of one before we reached the island.
The butterfly island was a paradise, not much for us, but for another couple who had joined us in the boat trip. I wouldn't want to get into the details of what they were upto over there, but to tell u that the lady was Srilankan (Clari's wild guess) and that she was HOT would suffice..!! ;)
Back from the boat trip, we were hungry and it was time for the grand beach-side breakfast. By grand, I mean of course the presence of hippies in the restaurant and not-to-mention the breads and the coffees costing 10 times more than usual. But what the hell, we weren't in Goa on a budget trip, so the breakfast didn’t disappoint and neither did my camera which for a change, was Shobin responsibility, and man, did he do a good job with that. The morning silent beach, jobless hippies loitering around the beach as if in search of moksha (I seem to have a weakness for hippies).
Well, having done most of what we had come to Palolem for, it was time to leave. Sad that we were to leave, happy were we to take back with us memories that would last long. Of course we had the moments captured in our cameras and now this thrash-bag blog of mine, but then, these are nothing compared to what we put our eyes and minds to witness at the "Golden Shores of Palolem".
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