GOA trip 1st and 2nd July 2006

Hey am back again to describe my experiences of GOA trip. We had a GOA team offsite as part of our 5.0 release celebrations and to relax from the tension everyone had undergone in the days before.

We started from Pune on 30th July Friday 10.00pm after a hearty meal of pizza's which was arranged by our team organizers Devdas, Amol, Sumeet, Chaitali, Mandar, Khushboo, Meenal and other people. I really appreciate the responsibility undertaken by these people to arrange the whole of the trip right from hotel bookings to bus to games to all.

We had 2 volvos for our trip 1 was a sleeper and one was a semi-sleeper. I was on the semi-sleeper with Mak as my seat companion. First of all volvos are terrific beasts.. thats what I think about them. The amount of comfort you get in a volvo is second only to an airplane or a merc I guess. The bulk of the bus and the speed leaves me awestruck at the wonder made by man... Well for those who dont know Volvo is a auto-company who make heavy duty automobiles like trucks and buses.

Coming back to 30th Night... football fever was prevlant all over and that day was the match between Argentina and Germany. Two tough teams but well we couldnt watch the match as we had to leave.

The buses then started at 10.00pm and we were airborne... well airborne would be the right word used here.... . I started by taking photos from a digi-cam of all people in the bus. The cam is my friend rahul's and he was very kind to lend it to me for the trip. We started to sing songs in the bus and suddenly the co-driver shouted that he needed sleep , well that was the end of our singing. Well the bus had a TV and a Cd player. The bus cleaner put a hindi movie "Malamaal Weekly". I should say it was the worst movie i had ever seen in my life and that too on a trip like this.. well neways the guys didnt have another cd so had to bear the bore for 2-3 hrs more.

I finally moved into a trance like state after 11.30 my sleeping time. So i tried to sleep. But as usual I dont sleep in journeys so I couldnt put myself to sleep so was awake and so were some of my friends and we kept talking to each other in low tones so as not to disturb others.

Finally we reached Kolhapur at around 2.30am 1st July morning. And from there we started towards the most exciting part of the journey. Exciting because the part is the most isolated in the whole leg of the journey and it passed through jungles. It was raining cats and dogs at this time and i have never seen such rains anywhere. But we being in a volvo didnt feel anything not even the bumps and stuff. The jungle was so isolated that I even shuddered to think what would happen if i were to go on that road alone and god forbid some thing happens to my vehicle. Not a soul in around 50km either side... man wat a situation but anyways things are not so bad and i wont try such stunts alone.

we reached Fonda ghat at 4am in the morning. The ghat is truly dangerous and it requires great skill to drive a bus esp a Volvo at that there. On top of that the visibility was so poor due to fog that you could hardly see 5m in front but the driver was the best I had ever seen in my whole life and he drove on expertly. We stopped at a roadside hotel in the morning at 5am and had tea... it was somewat refreshing... Now we were in Konkan area after descending the ghat section and it was raining heavily as usual as konkan is more towards the coast. .. We reached Kankavli at 6.30am where we joined the NH-17 popularly known as Mumbai-Goa highway... I wonder how has it been given a national highway status because the road width is so less that two buses coming in opp direction can hardly pass without stopping to make sure they dont clash... well neways it connect two states so the NH status maybe....

We reached the GOA border at 6.55am and drove on.... stopped in the middle for a refuel and man the Volvo has 2 tanks of 300l capacity each... phew 600l for the beast as a whole .... well I asked the driver what was the average and from that I understood anything less than 600l is a no-no for this bus as the average is hardly 2.5km/l of diesel.

We drove on and reached panaji at 8am. From there we went to Margao (Madgaon) and reached at 9.15am... We had the hotel's bus there to take us to the hotel from Margao...

The hotel was in Canacona which is 40km from Margao and is the southern most in GOA.
Well we reached the hotel at around 10.15am. The hotel is the Grand Resort Intercontinental and belongs to the Grand Mariott group. It is a 5 star and is spread over 86 acres of land phew.....
The reception was fabulosus with the hotel crew entertaining us with Goan music and welcome drinks....... I got my room key, had my break fast and checked in my room.. room number 1030...... well it was an awesome room , I had one more partner with me to share the room. The room was tastefully done and why not they charge 5000/- per day for the room in off-season and we had gone in off season.......

They served us with port wine and complimentary kaju and banana chips. Port wine was yuck i took some of it but it was not good.

Then I took a good bath and had a nap for 2 hrs before going for lunch at 1.00pm. Lunch was fabulous and they had a buffet style lunch. Met many of our people there who were in an enjoying mood and having lunch. One guy was doing some magic and he was doing it awesomely. It was good. Lunch was good and had some ice-cream as dessert there. Took some snaps in lunch room and went back to room for a nap.

In the evening went out to watch the sea. The sea was very rough due to the monsoons and was very dangerous. I took photos of the Resort and things around it. I met Anup who suggested we hire bikes and go somewhere. Myself,Anup,Sheetal,Chaitali,Poornima,Santosh,Sunanda,Jai and Mandar went out to see if we could get some bikes on hire.We got the bikes at 300/- each and then decided that we go to Margao (Madgaon) to do some shopping and tp. Margao is 40 km from Canacona. The bike ride was cool and we reached Madgaon in 45 minutes. The best thing I found in GOA is that the roads are tooooo good. It rains so heavily there but not a pothole man...... and pune sucks in that regard as some rain falls and the roads get potholes.....

In Madgaon we went to the local market and bought Kaju and other stuff. It was getting dark and we thought we better return back again to the resort as it was raining and we didnt want to drive in the dark. So we left for Canacona this time Anup taking the bike... I drove from Canacona to Margao and Anup was sitting behind me there now it was his turn. The ride back was too good but i was sitting behind holding two large packs of kaju and other stuff which was a pain but anyways it was worth it.

We reached the hotel at around 7.00pm and then went to our respective rooms.
I went to dinner at 8pm with Mayuresh and we had a good dinner. After dinner I went with Dev,Sethu, Jai, Preetdeep and Rishi to Dev's room to watch England vs Portugal and Brazil vs France.

The matches were good and both England and Brazil losing their resp matches and out of the tournament.....

I slept at Dev's room itself that day. Morning woke up at 9 and went for breakfast. Came back had a nice bath and slept for 2-3 hrs before going back to lunch.... after lunch took many snaps of the gardens , flowers etc came back to room and slept.

We were leaving today (sunday 2nd July) so woke up at 4.00pm and packed my stuff. Man my bag was heavy due to kaju and other stuff. We sat in a bus which was to take us to margao. The bus started finally at 5.45pm thanks to some team members who were lost and others we finding them as to where they where......

We reached margao at 6.30pm and our volvos were ready there..... Finally we left at 7.00pm for Pune. We reached Panaji at 8.15pm and were searching for a good hotel till 10.00pm when we found one at Mapusa thanks to Pankaj and others.

We had dinner and came back. Started for Pune at 11.00pm from there. Once again the route was the same and we had the same exp in the ghats although it was raining more heavily...... We finally reached Pune around 9.30am Monday......... with good memories of our trip........... So this was the trip details wanted to share with u all .......