Day three in Goa and we find ourselves sitting in a
roadside shack of a local tea stall in a quiet corner across Baga River, where
we stop for a quick breakfast of fresh and warm vada pao’s and tiny plastic cups
of milky and sweet chai. Being the middle of the monsoons it suddenly comes
down to rain and soon a couple of more people scurry into the tea stall, for
shelter, a hot cup of tea and conversation. People on their Activa’s zoom past
us, covered in navy blue rain coats shaking off droplets of rain water, while I
bite into my still warm vada pao, savouring the perfect crustiness of the
bread, along with the mildly spiced vada in the middle. The owner of the tea
stall breaks pieces of pao and scatters them on a patch of ground outside his
shack, a cue for a noisy gang of crows to swoop down and peck vigorously at the
ground while fighting each other off the crumbs. I sip at my syrupy and sticky
cup of tea and wish all Monday mornings were to be this way!
Goa in the monsoon is when Goa
takes a vacation from the crazy tourist season and when the locals take an
opportunity to relax in their shorts, taking lengthy siestas and sitting in
their verandah’s, surrounded by tangles of leaves, grass, weeds and flowers and
watching the occasional tourist zoom past them on their bikes. Goa is beautiful all through the year, but there’s
something about the monsoons that brings out a wonderful earthiness in her, making you want to stand and stare in awe. Tall and graceful coconut palms
rising up from crimson soil, swaying to the breeze and delicately showering you
with raindrops as you walk past, grey skies rolling with monsoon clouds, a
moody ocean crashing surf upon the shore and throwing up spirals of spray as
angry waves hurl themselves vigorously against jagged and mossy rocks and strong
gusts of wind weaving through your hair as they whistle past your ears.
The monsoon season or the “off season” as it’s called,
also means that Goa is cheaper, ensuring not a lot of time is spent haggling
for a good deal. We stayed at Reliance House, a guest house in Calangute which
provides entire apartments for rent with a bedroom, a large and airy living
room which opens up to a spacious balcony, kitchen and two washrooms, which is
just perfect if you’re a large group of friends (the living room had extra
mattresses and pillows stacked up against the wall ensuring sleeping
arrangements for a group), or even a couple. The guest house also has a kitchen
from where you can order your meals (lunch and dinner need to be requested for
in advance).
Reliance House is tucked away in a quiet corner, a
short walk from Calangute Beach and a five minute scooty ride away from the
tourist-y Baga Beach and is managed by the always eager to help Girish
Kalgutkar (and his team of young boys who he laughing refers to as “Baccha
Log”), always spotted in his under shirt and a pair of shorts, he runs a small
departmental store in the guest house, where he stocks soft drinks, bottled
water, soap, biscuits and other knick knacks. Each time I would look at Girish
running down the stairs towards us with a big umbrella held high over his head
and a bigger smile on his face, to come and open the gate for us it would make
me smile, because for some reason he had vaguely begun to remind me of the
slightly eccentric yet very likeable Babu Rao Apte from Hera Pheri!
A Nano hired, we drove to our hearts content down
narrow roads, the tires of our tiny car crunching red earth as we went along-
roads flanked by an abundant cover of green, which sometimes curved into
nowhere or at times surprisingly led to a tucked away little patch of beach. We
drove along narrow streets lined by white washed churches stretching up towards
dark hovering monsoon clouds and green fields that had turned into small lakes
because of the monsoon. It took a while for my eyes to get used to the fact
that the horizon wasn’t interrupted by gloomy, grey concrete, or the zigzag of
tangled black wires running over head.
Monsoons in Goa are a
riot of colour- from the rich shade of burgundy of the soil to the hundred hues
of green foliage entangled with each other, dotted with tiny beads of rain
water to grey skies and a dark, moody ocean tossing giant waves against the
shore.
Usually dismissed by tourists as too sticky or too wet
with nothing much to see or do, monsoons in Goa
are a perfect excuse for doing
nothing at all- a setting for just the right kind of vacation. Be prepared to
spend time indoors given the rains and while you’re in what better to do than read,
eat, nap, day dream and read some more with time drifting by at a leisurely
pace; just being relaxed and content with life in the moment, or susegad, as laid back Goans would say.
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