Beaches of Goa - Palolem

Well, the ' luxurious Rajdhani Express' actually turned out to be exactly the same as all the other trains we've gotten in India, but of course they've all been great and so this was no different.

It was a late start (about 22:30 I think), so we both just got onboard, made our beds and pretty much went straight to sleep. Because this train was an Express it meant it made far fewer stops, and resulted in us overshooting our intended destination of Palolem. So when we arrived at Margao we needed to get local transport to backtrack south a little.

At first I was making my way to the pre-paid taxi rank to get a rickshaw to the bus station, when a couple of motorbike taxi touts approached us. I haven't seen too many of these guys in India, but I've used them quite a lot in Asia before, so I decided to give them a go (and they're much more fun than a taxi or rickshaw for short trips anyway). Sure enough the boys leave us on the side a fairly non-descript road telling us that buses to Palolem stop there, and after checking with a nearby traffic cop it turns out they weren't lying.

So a few minutes later the local bus arrives, and we luckily get seats and off we go to Palolem beach (the bus wasn't direct in fact, but the transfer at Chaudi was literally instantaneous, as usual!).

I was unsure about what to expect from the Goan beaches after the experiences of Kerala (which I thought weren't great). But immediately on arriving on Palolem beach it was clear that the Goan's have a much better idea of how to manage an idyllic beach. The locals have managed (by fighting hard apparently) to prevent any large-scale developments anywhere on the beach. It has resulted in only shacks and huts being built right on the beach, the tallest of which are only two stories, and none of which reach even half-way as high as the unbroken line of palm trees that lie just behind them.

The beach itself was spotlessly clean too and curves gently along it's 2km length, terminating at both ends in rocky headlands covered in forest. It really is a fantastic beach, and certainly ranks up there among the best I've ever seen. It is quite developed though, as the restaurants and huts cover almost the entire length of beach, but due to the lack of concrete and building height it really doesn't seem that developed at all.

Also, I think we timed our arrival really well (not that any thought went into it), as there really weren't many tourists around at all (it's still high-season, but right towards the end, and the Mumbai bombings probably have 'helped' in that regard too I suppose). That meant we had no trouble getting cheap-as-chips accommodation right on the beach itself, and everyday feeling like we had large swathes of beach just to ourselves. We stayed at Janisha, which is just a collection of shacks with a lovely restaurant where we ate regularly. They provided a few sun chairs and umbrellas in front, nestling amongst the many small outrigger fishing boats that would be parked up on the sand during the day. On the two occasions I managed to get out of bed early enough, I got to see those same fishermen unloading and sorting their nightly catches as I walked past them into the sea for my morning swim.

So the original plan was to settle in Palolem and then quickly rent a scooter and check out some of the other beaches in Goa to find the best place to settle down for a bit (I was also kinda waiting to see if a mate of mine, Emmet, would be able to fly over to Goa to meet up, as he was working in Bangalore for a couple of weeks - turned out his work went a bit pear-shaped and he couldn't make it). But I just relaxed so much, and so quickly, on Palolem that it was three days before I'd even walked the full length of the beach itself (Palolem actually bleeds over a headland into Patnem beach, which bleeds over another headland into Rajbag beach, so in total it's a few kilometers long).

On the fifth day on the beach I got word that Emmet wouldn't be making it, and so the following day I finally rented that scooter to check out the region a bit.