After a very long time, we decided to visit goa.
The rainy season didnt hinder us and we were all set to go.
Booked the dona sylvia resort for a stay of 3 nights and 4 days. This resort in mobor-margoa in south goa.
Opted for 2nd-5th July as I had optional holiday on 5th july.
We planned to take the pune-kolhapur-nipani-amboli-sawantwadi-panji-margao route.
Pre-week situation:
Our trustworthy 2 year old wagonR was running into lot of deep water. Had AC failure, non-functioning horn, frequent typre punctures and wipers out of shape.
We did try the local MASS in baner, but it was of no good.
All these issues had to be sorted out before the travel.
So was looking out for some MASS on par with Bimal of bangalore.
One of my relative suggested the chougule MASS near katraj.
Dropped the car on tuesday and got it on back in wednesday with all the problems rectified.
Went there personally to check the service center and it turned out to be very good.
Now my wife, manisha informed that she might not get the leave sanctioned and was tense
about the trip. So we decided that lets try to start on friday night or even drop the whole plan.
The resort cancellation policy was very strict and we were suppose to hardly get 10% of amount in case of cancellation. But we have no choice.
So we were ready for any consequences that may be.
The Pre-Start Situation:
Manisha had a very busy day ahead. She had to start early for office.
She had conf calls till 11:30pm and even my 2 yr old kid uditanshu was awake.
Had to take him in car for a drive at 11pm so that he doesnt disturb his mom!
Finally we came back home just when the conf call was over. By the time we had dinner and udi fell asleep, it was already 12am. So we postponed the idea of packing and took the chance of waking up at 3:30am.
The early-morning:
Woke up around 3:30-4am and did the packing till 5am.
Started the journey around 5:30am.
The plan was to reach the resort in south goa by 1-2pm.
Was cruising at around 100-120km and reached satara around 7:30am.
It was drizzling occasionally as seen from this pic [1027].
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| From Goa Trip |
So it was fun to drive in the cloudy weather near the khambatki ghat .
Here are some snaps from this section :
Here are some snaps from this section :
Manisha wanted to have the break-fast at Mirch-masala, which is 3km before satara.
We normally stop there on our pune-bangalore trips.
Unfortunately the restaurant was not yet open and we had to have the breakfast in the adjacent hotel.
But by the time we finished the tea, the mirch-masala center were accepting orders :(
so we thought that its just one thing down from the list and were hoping for good time ahead.
Wanted to take pictures of the road, but the uniross cells were completely discharged.
So had to hold on clicking pictures.
The drive from kolhapur to nipani was really amazing and were cruising around 100kms.
Just after nipani , there is a small ghat section. When you reach some high ground,
there are few hotels on turn. For ajara/amboli, one has to take right turn just opposite the hotel.
I dont remember the name of hotel, but one cannot miss this place.
The sign-board is onto the right corner on the other side of road. Its definitely not easy to spot the sign board.
I have been so many times on this road, but never spotted the board!
I had doubts regarding this stretch upto ajara and then upto amboli.
But the road to ajara was pretty decent. however note that this is very narrow and twisty one.
So was to hang around 40-60km speed.
Here is how the road to ajara/amboli looks like. [1063-1071]
Reached ajara and enquired in couple of general stores for the duracells.
All pointed to central market, which was bang opposite to the bus stand.
Got 2 sets duracells from a medical store. One set was very old but had no choice.
These cells didnt last long as my kid was always busy clicking pics.
Fortunately the other pair was fresh one and lasted for quite a long time.
On reaching the start of amboli ghat, there are 2 big tourist spots to hang around.
The first one is a temple as seen in [1089].
There is provision of benches and walk-by near this temple.
Do note that there are a good number of monkeys around this place. Although i didnt see
them harassing tourists, its always good to keep the eatables out of your kids hands.
There were few shops near this temple selling pakodas, bhtuttas and other eatable.
As it was 1pm, we decide to do some munching. Took some bhuttas, pakodas and cold-drinks.
The pakodas were very tasty and yummy. But we had taken very less fearing the quality of oil
being used.
From this place , one can view the amazing valley as seen in 1078
Just when you leave this place and move further 2-3 mins, you can view many a water-falls.
There are few more shops here selling the same stuff like previous ones.
The waterfalls are right adjacent to the road and many tourists were seen stopping here instead of the first spot. But we just watched it from the car as we didnt want to get wet. Also the place was very crowded with people and lots of cars.
Here are some pics of them:[1092 1095]
The amboli ghat was not very huge and we were reached down in no time although now we were enjoying the greenary around the turns. The road is pretty decent with occasional potholes.
But the traffic was pretty much heavy on this stretch.
As soon as we reached down, it started raining heavily. Maybe it must have been already raining before reached there.
The saving grace was that we had replaced the faulty wipers just before the trip.
The visibility was extremely poor and it looked like the wipers are too slow to take on the
showers.
The ground water was hitting hard on the bottom of the car.
As my kid was constantly taking pictures, the batteries drained quickly.
This continued till we reached sawantwadi.
We lost on the directions when we reached the main circle.
Now the rains were not that heavy. That helped in getting out and checking with local
people for directions.
Again, no sooner we left sawantwadi, it started raining heavily.
As I was not able to see any sign boards, we were just heading blindly straight.
Had couple of cars ahead and we opted to just follow them.
Here are some snaps:[1097] 1100]
After some 30mins, the rains had stopped. Now it was pretty easy to drive and was enjoying the weather again. The drive till panjim was very smooth.
We reached around 3pm in panjim. we were not sure whether the resort is in margao.
We were wondering whether we need to cross margao to reach the place or maybe the resort is much earlier.
I had not taken the print-out of directions assuming it would be very easy to locate the place :(
So manisha called up the reception for directions to the resort from panjim.
The lady was just transferring the call to someone else who was not responding at all.
This happened for 4-5 times and that angered us a lot.
After some time, requested manisha to call them again and this time i did the talking part.The second lady informed that the resort is in mobor. To reach mobor, one has to first come to margao and continue going straight.
But that was not true !
After reaching the margao central area (there is some garden-circle at central location), you need to
keep going straight until you reach one flyover. This is above some railway-track.
Then when you reach the other end of flyover, there is small circle. Now there are 4 roads here. Thats where you need to take left.
Now this essential part was not informed by the lady. We took the right side road.
Going a bit further, we thought of cross-checking the directions with some local.
So we stopped near one pedestrian. As luck might have, he was not familiar with english, hindi, marathi! All he could understand was the 'beach' word:)
He pointed in the opposite direction and then you can imagine the situation.
We took the u-turn and moved ahead.
This road again takes you beneath the flyover that was crossed earlier.
Again asked for directions, and the local confirmed to just go straight.
We drove on the suggested path for some 5km and then we saw the board of dona sylia, which informed to take left turn. Also we came to know that the resort is some 15km from margao.
The good thing was that we have to just keep on taking left turn whenever one hits a junction to reach the resort.
We reached the resort at around 4:30pm.
The check-in was done in no time. The reception just took the ids for confirmation and handed some
papers which had detailed information of the resort. It also had the schedule for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The schedule mentioned that we were suppose to go for half-day sightseeing on the next day, which happened to be saturday.
As we had checked-in well passed the lunch time, they were gracious enough to allow an extra lunch for all of us on the last day.
Was wondering if we could get the suite just close to the sea.
Luckily we got the 82B suite, which is closest to the sea. One can clearly hear the roaring sea from here!
We quickly went to the suite and got freshened up in no time. The place looked to be pretty decent.
The room had small fridge, AC, TV, Coffee maker, security locker and host of other things.
here are the snaps of the place:
[1139 1158 1308 1200 1101 1102]
We headed back to have some snacks as we had no time for lunch earlier.
There were pakodas along with the cake. The cake as awesome and we feasted on it :)
Here is the snap of the dining place:[1262]
It was drizzling all the time and we were not able to find the spare umbrella that was kept in the car.
The reception gave us a nice big umbrella.
My kid liked the umbrella and was not allowing us to even touch it!
The place was crowded by some gujju group. This group had booked almost the whole of resort!
So you can imagine the noise-levels. We decided not to bother about it and planned to stay away
from any crowded place in the resort. That meant no use of any recreational amenities.
I was wondering whether there are any exclusive family resorts!
We were all eager to visit the sea. Although it was high tide time and the security had advised against it, we still went ahead with the visit. Uditanshu is absolute fish
Here are the very first of snaps of the roaring sea. [1144 1145 1146]
The security insisted that we avoid going near to the sea. So we came back to the room.
As we all were too tired to check out the place, we decided to take a nap till dinner time.
Atleast i was asleep in no time. Woke up at around 9pm and got ready for the dinner.
Was expecting some good amount of fish. Luckily the menu had goan prawns curry.
So we all enjoyed the dinner and dessert.
The next day we were looking towards the schedules trip, which was to start at 2pm. we decided to have breakfast at 8am and lunch at 12:30 so that we could get ready by 2pm.
but we managed to finish breakfast at around 9:30am.
The breakfast had cakes, south indian varieties, omletes, chicken lever, juices, tea, coffee, chocos, bread-butter-jam and other likewise items.
you cannot having heavy breakfast!
We finished lunch at 1:45. we were ready for the trip and was waiting for the bus at reception area. we were expecting many of other families to join the trip.
The bus came around 2:30pm and to our surprise , we were the only family who had opted for this tour! it was bit embarrassing and so we requested to either postpone or cancel it. but the people insisted to take up the tour.
So there we were just 3 of us in the 16-seater bus!
Here is the snap :[1193]
we reached shanta durga temple.
The temple was huge and looked beautiful.
Just outside the temple, a family was waiting for someone to take a snap.
we readily took a snap for them.
In return the wanted to help us by clicking a pic of ours.
I knew that the 2nd pair of cells were down but took the chance.
And embarrasingly the moment the photo was snapped, the display read "change your batteries". the family gave us lots of suggestions regarding use of chargeable cells etc etc.. We just smiled back :)
Now we looked around for umbrellas and cells.
Bought one umbrella for 160 bucks, which would have costed just 80-100 bucks at other places.
We were done with this place in hardly 15min.
So now we went to the bacilli church. Saw one kodak photo ad and went straight to the shop. Bought pair of sanyos eneloop cells for 450 bucks, which came half pre-charged. Bought a pair of duracells for backup.
here we also bought umbrella for my kid, seeing his yesterdays behaviour.
we just entered the main church and were out in 10 min. snapped some pics on the ground and came back to the bus. Clearly we had lost interest in the tour!
After this we were supposed to see old goa. We requested the drive skip it and take us to some shop where we can buy cashew nuts and dry fruits. we went to "kaju darbar" and bought roasted kajus , plain kajus and bebeenca.
We reached around 6pm back to the resort. had some snacks and visited the beach. It was again drizzling and so couldnt spend much time on beach.
There were quite few shops around this resort. we bought few shorts and eatables. Specifically, a shop named watson's has all the stuff that you might need during your stay.
so now we were all geared up for next day on beach, provided it didnt rain heavily.
Had dinner around 9:30pm. We had some goan chicken curry, which was really amazing. The desserts were too good and my kid had lots of ice-cream.
Watched some movies and went asleep.
My relatives informed that there is nation wide strike on monday.
At first we were worried about the strike but then we thought that the nation-wide strike would not be that effective. So we decided to stick to our plan of leaving on monday.
Now on sunday morning, it was still raining heavily. Was wondering if we can visit the beach in this situation. So instead we went for breakfast. By the time we finished it, the sky was clear and rains had stopped. It started getting better by the time we reached beach.
My Kid and wife spent lot of the time on beach.Had a blast there.
we came back full of sand and got cleaned up in the room. then we went to the swimming pool. there some water polo match being organised which was hijacked by the gujju people. we just spent some time in the pool, as there was not much space left in smaller pool. my kid enjoyed the swimming and was eager to stay there foreever.
The pool was not the cleanest one. Had lot of rubbish in it. we left the place disappointed and got cleaned up again.
It was already time for lunch. At the restaurant we saw that the gujju group was about to check-out. So we planned for visiting the swimming pool in afternoon.
we had nice lunch with lost of desserts.
During lunch time , when i was getting desserts, my kid was standing just next to me. An old man , heavily drunk, was passing by. He was more close to kid than me, as i couldnt figure out his state. he was asking the kid "are u having good time'. hearing no comments form kid, the man tried to get closer by leaning, and this is when he lost his balance and was falling on the kid. The kid got pushed onto the nearby table. Luckily he just banged on the inside of the table and so had bruise on his side of forehead. All of this happened in no time. The poor kid cried a lot and we somehow managed to calm him down.
We thought that this was very bad thing to happen on such a trip!
After lunch, we wanted to check the car. To our surprise, this is what we saw: [1264].
I had tried replacing the typre, unsuccessfully, a few earlier times.
Had broken wheel cap while trying so. Bbut as we had many flat typres in last couple of weeks, I had seen how to remove the wheel-cap.
So we had small discussion and decided to fix it up ourselves. By the time i was removing the spare tyre, my kid was trying this:[1266]
We somehow managed to inform him about the other tyre and then he was working on the right one. [1268]
Would recommend explaining flat tyre to a kid. beleive me its lots of fun :)
He then literally snatched the camera from my hand and started clicking.
Now i was happy that we had eneloop cells!
Got the tyre replaced in some 30-45mins while was kid was happily clicking pics.
Felt good for successfully replacing the flat tyre! I was all sweat now and decided to go for swimming.
We again had good time in swimming pool, as there was no one other than us in the pool.
After swimming, we had breakfast and quickly went off to the room.
As we were too tired, took a good short power nap till dinner.
Did all the packing of small items in the night after the dinner.
we planned to skip the lunch and start at around 12 so that we can reach pune by 8-10pm.
Woke up pretty early on the monday morning. Had breakfast around 8:30am and were done with the packing around 11am. Submitted the keys exactly at 12 and started off.
The car had just half of fuel that was required to reach kolhapur and a flat typre to take care of.
we wanted to visit the kaju darbar to buy some more stuff.
We tried the first garage on our way, but was informed that no flat typres are serviced there.
Then decided to take chance and hit the high-way.
We guessed that as its nation-wide strike, it would not be that successfull in tourist place like goa.
So we wanted to visit the kaju darbar to buy some more stuff. Also have lunch in panjim.
But on the way we saw that all shops, restaurants were closed.
So we then decided to have lunch in sawantwadi.
On the way, we saw one typre shop that was still open.
Got the typre repaired in no time.
On reaching sawantwadi, we found that all shops were closed down due to the bandh.
Enquired with the locals, which confirmed the reason for same.
We continued moving ahead and then we saw this ITDC approved resort cum restaurant.
It was very shabby place and when asked for menu, were told that they dont serve fish.
Without hesitation, we left the place at once.
We continued on the NH17 and were looking for any dhabas or restaurants along the way.
but for long time, we found that everything was closed down.
This was the first time that we saw such effective bandh!
Finally at 4pm we found one dhaba, somewhere before the village which is at the start of fonda ghat.
We first skipped it but as we were hungry, took u-turn and came back to the dhaba.
To our surprise the chicken hundy and rotis that we ordered was really delicious.
We ate a lot of rotis and the chicken, so much that we were ready to skip the dinner :)
for dessert, had a glass full of tea, which was very refreshing.
To top it there was this pan ki tapri alonside the dhaba.
Took 2 sweet pans and again started the journey.
after this place, on continuing on the NH17, one reached a y shaped juntion.
here for kolhapur one has to take left, which takes to fonda ghat.
The other one takes to mumbai.
We confirmed this with the locals and went for the fonda ghat route.
The fonda ghat was amazingly scenic with lots of fog and waterfalls.
I was most interested in capturing the beauty. My wife was worried about the time, so was not that keen on taking snaps.
here are the snaps:
[1333 1365].
here are few videos of the same:
[1362 1362 1367 1368 1369]
We reached kolhapur around 8pm. I was expecting to reach pune by 1-2pm.
But was able to maintain 100km speed and reached pune at 12 in the night.
In all a 378 songs were consumed during the travel!
Overall i felt that one has to spend atleast one week in goa to enjoy its beaches.
We didnt do any water sports or visit near by places during this stay.
Next time, will surely plan for atleast a weeks stay :)
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