Goa - New Years 2010

This may be the n'th road trip to goa but then ... its GOA and who cares how many times I may have been there! But then, this time I made a resolution of not going to goa by road ...or may be!

The idea was to spend the new years in goa with a few friends and my best pal and I being absolute roadies decided to drive down...while the others took the option of the wings. Our folks dont allow us to drive at night...though little do they know that we generally do that only (dont ask me how...else this will be the last time we would be doing that) , so we decided to leave the morning of 31st at 6 am to be in goa by 6 pm latest. My pal reached my place at 6 am sharp but I being a typical libran .... aah 6 am looked a tad early. What the hell...why cant we reach goa by 8 pm instead of 6 :)

So here we depart at 8 am after my friend started giving me dirty...exasperated looks. Being 31st we thought the roads would be darn empty cuz people would have already reached goa ... and we were right ... an express drive to pune...a smooth sail to kolhapur (we were actually covering ground pretty fast). By the time we crossed kolhapur it was well past 1 pm. Though we had had a good breakfast, the sheer kick of going on a road trip keeps making you hungry and wanting to try local food. So here we were driving down under heavy sun and a cool wind blowing past, we reached a small hamlet called gandhej (well it may not be a hamlet per se but you know how we mumbaiites are!). There we saw a decent restaurant to satiate the beast within. While browsing through the menu card, I suddenly spotted something that I had heard is famous in this part of maharashtra - Kaju Masala (a spicy curry made solely of cashews). One word would describe its taste - Outstanding! Though it is not for those who get a heart ache even looking at chillies - cuz at the end of the meal nothing can help you ... neither litres of water...nor gallons of coke! But I can assure you one thing...the taste is something that will stay with you for a long time. I crave for another plate even today. Oh yeah and by the way, dont even think of having any north indian daal...we maharashtrians are pathetic at preparing it...period!

So, with the hunger taking a nap, we move on towards our destination with a keen eye on the sankeshwar turning that takes you to goa. Yes, we have been to goa a lot many times but this is one elusive turn...somehow we just miss it only to realize a few miles later that we are on our way to bangalore instead!

After turning at that pivotal junction, we are yet again sailing through towards goa. The roads aint as good as NH 4, but they aint that bad either. We keep cruising not realising even in our faintest of imaginations of what lies ahead. After some hours of driving, we change hands on the wheel and I start driving again. My friend played well saying that I have a knack for driving really well on bad roads and ghats. Yeah right!

At about 4 pm, we were just touching Amboli Ghat and were some 50 miles short of goa...with the expected time of arrival in goa to be 7 pm (considering we had to go all the way to south goa). So we had done pretty well - no rash driving.

Trouble started when at the beginning of Amboli ghat we saw cars in numbers returning back. We started joking what the heck...people are going off goa for new years?! All the incoming traffic was indicating something with their hands to us. Then at entry point a cop stopped us and said we would need to wait for 2 hours. Puzzled, we asked what for? We were told a dumper had gone down...down the ghats. We were like ok...but that would not affect traffic...right? So 2 adventurous souls laughing at the returning public went on only to be stopped by public saying there is a massive rescue operation happenning in front with 2 large cranes on the road. The traffic had been at standstill for the last 4 hours. Ahem...now the graveness of the situation struck us. We had one thought..are we going to reach goa in time? At first we thought we should wait for some time for the road ahead to get clear. Then the thought of how much time is some time started haunting us. What if it takes a lot of time for the road ahead to get clear...what if the road ahead doesnt get clear at all...WHAT IF WE DONT REACH GOA FOR NEW YEARS!

And then we decided what a good passer by suggested. We decided to take a different route to goa...obviously not knowing what or how that route looked like. So a family in toyota innova offered to help us as they too were going to goa and their driver knew this particular route. Well we didnt have any other option...so we decided to follow. We were told its just a small bypass through Karnataka not more than 30 miles extra. So we were ok...we atleast could have reached by 8 pm latest. Yes, it was just additional 30 miles but only to realize that it was through some forest area and the road did not belong to the government but was a private one. The condition of the road made my resolve to buy either an SUV or still better - a tank, stronger. It was getting dark...umm it already was dark and through the arduous twists & turns of this route, all we could see were the brake lights of the car we were following, there was not a soul in front of the lead car and not a soul behind us. Thoughts ran wild...what if our car breaks down, what if we miss the lead car. But then these thoughts didnt last long. They were taken over by the thirst to gulp down some kingfishers with our waiting friends who were getting worried. I dont blame them for not only they, but our respective folks, other peers all were worried. Well...we realized later that the entire patch of the forest DIDNT EVEN HAVE MOBILE FREQUENCY!
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......BLAH .......................BLAH.......................BLAH
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Its 11:45 pm on 31st and we reach the place we were supposed to reach greeted by our good friends. We head straight to a disc on the beach and enter 2010 with the most amazing memories, lots of laughter and kingfishers! Well I was on brandy!!!

Jaydeep Deshpande