Celias View....

South Goa, India, New years Eve, 2006

After a week of slacking at the beach which had followed on from another week of slacking at the beach we decided to head off one night earlier than planned for Goa so we could meet up with my old manager from STA, Sam.

She had been spending most of the month of December at Palolem in South Goa and although we had plans to actually travel further north we ended up falling under Palolems rather sleepy spell and have now spent almost 8 nights here the longest of anywhere in India!

So what have we been doing?

We spent the second day here doing the most active thing we would achieve in South Goa by renting out mopeds and driving several beaches north. Netty and Curt managed to navigate their way through treacherous Indian driving but we were perhaps a little over ambitious to go so far as we managed three stacks ( none serious) and some mild arguments before we finally made it back just in time to return the bikes.

It was a really lovely way to get around Goa though and

South Goa is gorgeous, slightly reminiscent of Greece or Turkey with really high barren red mountains that drop into palm filled beaches.

It was also pretty much empty which really surprised us as not that much is empty in India, let alone in high season.

We drove around to a abandoned Portuguese fort and a very empty beach called Agonda before heading back to Palolem.

We have also managed to eat our way from one end of the beach to the other. It was a real shock after Gokarna to be in a place with so many restaurants and bars ( Alcohol making an appearance back into our lives after being banned in all the other states we have been too!) as well as far too many shops!.

We spent large amounts of time sunbathing, small amounts of time swimming ( the sea is actually quite murky and horrible after Varkala and certainly after the crystal clear water of Thailand.

We did have one slightly weird overlying cloud which was of a supposed Terrorist threat for Goa on New Years Eve. We had met a steady trickle of people in Gokarna who had left Goa due to a terrorist warning that had been released on the Israeli FCO website quickly followed by the British and the Australian websites and then the International press. We had heard from fellow travellers that Palolem was pretty much dead but when we arrived we found it kicking along nicely. The threat was fairly specific , centred on four of Goa's beaches and thought to be aimed at clubs on New Years Eve , in a sort of Bali Style bombing.

So what to do? At first we weren't overly concerned but a last minute raise in the level of warning by both the UK and Aus websites coupled with India's complete denial of any such threat only then to put over 2000 armed guards on Goan Beaches ( there were only about 50 on ours but still....large army presence does slightly change a party vibe and for more than one reason :-)

So we elected to keep it simple and party on the beach, with firesticks and vodka and a ever changing gang of people walking past and give the big clubs a miss anyway since they were mainly trance style things anyway............

An excellent New Years only marred by the two groups of Indians who got into a physical fight over who got to talk to us and now we are finally, post new years, ready to get up and move on to the next place.

We are finally leaving the beach and heading inland . Our time in India is getting dangerously short.........

Happy New Years everyone ...Hope you had a amazing time where ever you are....

Ps Helly ..You and Juan are in our thoughts xx