From Alleppey we caught an overnight train all the way up to Goa's central station Madgaon. Although Su & I have traveled on a tight, shoestring budget through Brazil, this was many years ago and, although exciting, in our older age the thought of an overnight train in India did give us slight goosebumps! In the end it turned out to be quite a pleasant experience!!
We had pre-booked tickets and the only availability was in first class (a real shame!), for £30 each. We were welcomed aboard the Rajdhani Express and into our private 2 person cabin, air conditioned cabin. We were very spoiled!! Even the toilets were much better than anticipated! We settled in for a good nights sleep, and were awoken by a loud "BANG BANG BANG" on our door at 6.30am, we nearly jumped out of the train window we got such a fright! Luckily it was only the morning tea - despite us saying we did not want it on boarding, and them making a note of this. Oh well! It was beautiful watching the scenery roll by being bathed in the Indian rising sun.
View from the train
If you are planning to travel by rail in India, I highly recommend signing up for a Clear Trip account. Reserving tickets on Indian trains is quite a complicated process, with a very complex system - Clear trip hugely simplifies the process for you for a very small fee (about 30p per ticket). Many trains will sell out as soon as tickets are released (normally 90 days in advance), and you are then put on a waitlist for tickets. Normally as long as you are under 20 on the waiting list you should be fine! Also, be prepared for everyone to ask you for a tip, even people you have never seen and some people will ask you twice!
From Madgoan we jumped on an hour long bus (for 30p!) to the southern beaches. The first thing we noticed on the bus was how much more colourful the saris are here than in Kerla - so many fluorescent colours! Goa is much drier and dustier than Kerla, but there was still some lush jungle along the way.
We arrived in Patnem, and (still not having learnt our lesson) based on a Lonely Planet recommendation we went to 'SeaView Rooms'. The place was a dive and definitely didn't have seaviews, but we decided to stay anyway as we had been basically travelling since getting off the house boat the day before and were in desperate need of a shower! After checking in & paying for the night we almost skipped back to the room to have a shower. Guess what?? Water doesn't work!! And we have a HUGE cockroach in the room too. We tell the lady downstairs who promises us it will be fixed so in the meantime we went for some lunch & a swim in the sea - next best thing to a shower! We returned 3 hours later to find the water still not working and the cockroach still there too. All we want to do is have a shower now, so we politely explain the situation to the lady and say we would like to leave as we have not spent more than 5 mins in the room. Her answer "No". To put this lady into context, she could easily have been Miss Trunchball's twin in Matilda. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of her, but I'm sure you can imagine! We ask to speak to the manager, she says she is the manager but the man next door tells us she isn't, and she then concedes that she isn't the manager and he will be back later. We leave again, and go looking for a better place to stay, we found some lovely little huts which are 100 times nicer, and 100roupees cheaper. Winning! Returning to "Seaview" the manager is still not there and Miss Trunchball is refusing to give us even half of our money back so we went to get our bags from the room and leave. Seeing as they would not give us any refund we decided to keep the room key for the night we had paid for so that nobody else could be ripped off that night. Miss Trunchball then started screaming at us "NO, YOU CAN'T GO, I AM CALLING THE POLICE", excuse me?! After we have paid full price for a room where the water doesn't work and you have done nothing and we are now criminals?! We finally spoke to the manager on the phone who happened to be Miss Trunchball's brother and was just as helpful as she was and actually hung up on us! So we walked out with the key, at this point Miss Trunchball finally managed to get off her behind and come running after us into the street telling us to wait while she called the police, anything we tried to say she just replied "SHUT UP", the icing on the cake was when she screamed "SHUT UP, I DON'T LIKE YOU" whilst trying to grab my suitcase whilst the whole street was watching! We kept walking and she told her restaurant boys to follow us, but they were secretly giving us the thumbs up whenever she wasn't looking, so didn't really pay her much attention! All the tuk tuk drivers said "nasty woman", but we were still on the run!
We checked into Casa Fiesta (which is a delight, if you happen to be going to Patnem), and explained the situation to the owner just in case the police did turn up and then we headed for some cocktails on the run (yogis like cocktails too sometimes)!
Criminal cocktails on the run!
Of course, no police turned up, and we got to watch this magical sunset which made everything ok again!
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As promised to Miss Trunchball, we diligently went to "check out" of Seaview Rooms the next morning, to which we received no more than a grunt from the ever delightful Miss T herself. Definitely give this one a miss, unless you enjoy the comedy of such situations!!
Aside from Seaview, Patnem is a lovely little beach full of beach bars & restaurants, and lots of puppies too! After the eventful arrival, we spent a quiet few days relaxing here in the sunshine - there is a very shanti (peaceful) vibe, lots of yogis and families too, no crazy wild parties (that we saw anyway). Once again, were joined by Lexy, & Tommy too, for a few days before they headed off on their North Indian adventures.
Susan almost adopted a few puppies!
Beach-side yoga challenge!
Tough life!
Next stop, Palolem
xx
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