Office trip to Holiday Inn, Goa: Day 3

Date: Monday, 2/25/2013

Location: Cavelossim, Goa

 

Day 3 began with a phone-call at 8 am from Kamal inviting me to come play volleyball. I had barely gotten 3 hours of sleep since the previous night. I was groggy all the way to the beach. We played volleyball till around 9:30. Everyone went to the pool after that. I took a detour and left went for the hotel's gym instead. The Holiday Inn gym isn't very well equipped. A couple of threadmills, exercise bikes and jogging machines. Some free weights and gym equipment. They don't have a gym instructor and exercising is at your own risk. Breakfast would finish by 10:30 which meant I didn't have the time for a full workout. I did a subset of the usual bunch. While I was there, I met Pratap, a guy fresh out of college who was in charge of the gym. He said his brother works in Pune so he'd been to places such as Shivajinagar. He told me that this was peak season for Russians to come visit Goa. Most of the book in advance for the next year as they leave. So there was always a predictable number of them swarming in every year. While the staff doesn't get any explicit Russian language training, many of them will learn it through books and the internet. Hailing from South Goa himself, he kept praising the natural beauty of Palolem beach.

The entrance of the Wharf.

The Mobor peninsula.

Goa - the few places in India where you'll find a McDowell's whisky on sale in a general store.

I had breakfast and then relaxed in my room for a while. Our checkout was at 11 a.m., but me and Kishore only checked out by 12:30. We relaxed on the beach for some more time. Lunch was at the Fisherman's Wharf, which was walking distance from the hotel. There are two Fisherman's Wharfs in India. This was one of them, and the other is in Bangalore. The Wharf in Goa is situated by the river Sal, giving a spectacular view of the peninsular region of Mobor.  They offer a good variety of local cuisine and are well known for their sea food. We had fish curry (king fish) with rice and crab. Our buses were set to arrive at 4 pm. We finished lunch by around 3:40 and walked back to the hotel. After dumping my stuff into to bus, I was quick to slouch into my seat. We stopped for dinner at the Red Chillies in Konkan, a local roadside restaurant. Food wasn't great and was expensive by Konkan standards. The bus arrived back at Pune at 3:40 a.m. the next morning.