Zoom Zoom in the Green

We spent the bulk of our day yesterday exploring the area on (gasp!) a scooter! As most may know I'm really not keen on two wheeled transport. I'm also not very keen on Indian roads. However, getting around here without a scooter is super expensive (one taxi ride is the cost of the scooter for the day) and walking long distance in this heat is not really an option.

Thus we decided that we would safely-as-possible ride around and see Goa off the tourist strip.

We rented a Honda Activa (100cc) for 200INR a day (about $5) from our hotel. Quite a steal!

To those safety-minded (especially my parents! :) the roads we are on are all small country roads with little traffic. The fastest we got was 45kph (28 mph) and most of the time we are going about 20kph (12.5mph) so we're not talking about rocket speeds here.

After a bit of teaching on the road next to our hotel we were off! It is really hard to describe the beauty of this area (pictures to follow). The country lanes are narrow and filled with the old moss-covered Portuguese houses Alicia already described. Everything is utterly saturated green. Yards are giant overgrown fields of lushness. The areas next to the water are either filled with giant skinny palm trees or strange waterways covered in rice patties.

Nearly everyone we encountered gave us a smile (after first waving a smiling at them for a moment). Alicia had excellent luck giving people the Indian 'head bobble' (a bizarre custom here of moving your head from side-to-side without moving your shoulders. I still can't do it, but Alicia has it down) which elicited a bright smile and head bobble back.

There were quite a few other Westerners riding around, but since it is off-season here we suspect the numbers we saw were a fraction of what this place is like in Oct-March.

We rode from Anjuna up through the neighboring villages of Vagator and Chapora (both almost closed down in terms of bars/restaurants, etc... due to the season). Then we rode up to Majorim via the larger town of Solim (not shown on the link below).

Map of the area.

All in all we were gone for about three hours. The time spent really was magical as we both felt we really saw the "true" coastal Goa, as opposed to the strange hippie/trance music traveller creation that this place turns into during the winter. For example, the sleepy village of Chapora is apparently quite popular which hard drinking Muscovites during the 'season', and Vagator is supposedly overrun with stoned Israelis (both men and women, fresh out of their conscripted army service). To us these towns were sleepy and beautiful with almost all the hotels and guesthouses closed down.

After avoiding cows and giant scary water buffalo we headed back to Anjuna for a delightful dinner and a bottle of what turned out to be terrible Indian wine.

-Jonathan