Travelogue Goa: Getting Prepped up

Like I said in the previous Goa travelogue post, I had the challenge of making a family trip to Goa a great success. The preparations that I had to do was a lot and I will cover it in this post. The three main challenges that I had to crease out were

1. Make the trip religious as well as fun filled for everyone - when we travel with our family to Goa, the primary goal will be to visit our temples, secondary will be to taste goan cuisine (Booze included of course) and sight seeing is tertiary. Temples and sight seeing would keep our family happy, but booze and goan cuisine would keep me and my brother-in-law completely satisfied :)
2. Don't bore everybody by taking them to the same places - AGAIN! - We visit Goa almost once in two years, and everybody had seen the churches and beaches of Goa. Going to the same places again would have made the trip boring and I needed to find out some other places of interests for us to visit.
3. Stay and Accommodation - The challenge here was not to find one, but to find it in the right place, so that South, North and East Goa would be easily accessible and took less time to travel. To add to this, when we go to Goa with our family, everybody prefers to stay in a temple accommodation (since they are cheaper than hotels).

Point number (1) was easily solved through a compromise (of course a secret between me and my brother in law) that we will be going out to visit our Addas only during dinner.

Coming to point number (2), since we had four full days at our disposal I had to plan in such a way that all the four days were full, but relaxing. I went through the following steps

1. Assign a theme for each day - this is something I learnt at work - start with a theme and plan around the theme. So I assigned a theme for each day as Day 1 - Old Goa + 1 new place, Day 2 - Forts and  beaches, Day 3 - Religious, Day 4 - South Goa.
2. I then went ahead and started to expand each day with the following travel schedule
3. Day 1 - Old Goa and 1 new place - Tambdi Surla Mahadev Temple, Old Goa including Basilica of Bom Jesus+Museum, Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Chapel of St. Catherine, and Archeological Museum.
4. Day 2 - Forts and beaches - Fort Aguada, Miramar, Dona Paula, Calangute
5. Day 3 - Religious - Madkai, Mardol, Marcel, Shiroda and any other temples (which I will cover separately)
6. Day 4 - South Goa - Ancestral  Goa, Colva, pack up for return journey at night.

Now coming to point number (3), I ultimately chose a stay at Ponda over Panjim because our travel schedule did not going above the Calangute area. Now for those who don't have the compulsion to stay at temples, It is better if you can stay at Panajim, since it is almost equidistant from South, North and East Goa.

Having laid out my plan, there was a lot of work around reservations, journey and the likes, which will be completely useless to mention since it was through a lot of personal (direct and indirect) contacts.

Some tips that I followed for the journey

• Travel Light - My first and foremost necessity. Just include some key items for travel including shirts, trousers, inner wear, toiletries, one umbrella, one pair of chappals and one pair of shoes. For journeying on train, it is better if you include a light bed sheet / shawl to cover you. Maximum of two bath towels and one mosquito repellent.
• Snacks and Meals - the food on train from Bengaluru to Goa is not that good. It is better if you pack some snacks like muruku, vada etc., but not packaged fast food like chips which you will readily get on the train. Have a bottle of water ready.
• Camera equipment - your camera, one wide angle, one prime and one telephoto lens, tripod, spare batteries (fully charged), memory cards, remote release chord, neutral density and polarizer filters.
• Always keep some space In your airbag / Suitcase - since you are travelling to a destination, it is highly probable that you will buy something or the other like souvenirs, local speciality, clothes or other items which, if you don't account for in your bag will make you buy / carry one additional bag on the return journey.
• Important numbers and print out of your travel plan - Since you don't want to waste all the prep that you have done and can follow the schedule or adjust the schedule based on your needs.

One more tip I would like to add if you are traveling with older people - especially women is that you have to somehow influence their luggage. Otherwise they will tend to pack everything from their wardrobe to chappals in multiple large bags and you will look like the beast of burden in a Caravan carrying their bags. Also, the lesser they carry, the lesser are the chances of them bugging you to find something that they have lost or have misplaced and ruining your otherwise enjoyable trip. In this case, it is better to engage the services of coolies at the train station to carry your family's luggage instead of carrying it yourself - saves you a lot of breath and unnecessary cardio exercises.

I have done a lot more other things like shopping and the like for the trip, but I think I have covered the most important items that I wanted to share with you. Now that I have finished the preparations the next post will cover the details of the travel from Day 1.

Enjoy!

The Photograchar.