Travelogue Goa: Day 1 - Tamdbi Surla

Finally, we were in Goa and were ready to venture out and visit some good places in Goa. As I mentioned in Getting prepped up, I had created a theme for each day and had come up with the places to visit for each day based on the theme. So the theme for Day 1 was

• Visit one new location - which was Mahadev temple at Tambdi Surla
• Visit Old Goa Churches and Museums.

Alas, what I did was only a travel schedule and executing it was more difficult than I had thought. Everybody started complaining that the schedule was hectic and they wanted to rest. So to suit everybody, the schedule was modified to include only one new location - Mahadev temple at Tambdi surla and rest was to be postponed to the next day and adjusted there of.

About Tambdi Surla

Tambdi Surla is a little known place that consists of a twelfth century temple of lord shiva. This temple is the oldest temple in Goa and is little disturbed by the various conquests and destruction of portuguese and muslim invasions. The temple is nestled between mountains and has a clear stream of water flowing alongside. The site, even thought not visited as other places in Goa, has been well maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. The temple was built by the Goa-Kadamba dynasty rulers and is constructed in the Jain architectural style. for more information on this temple visit this link.

Getting there

Tambdi Surla is approximately 65 kilometers from the capital city Panaji and about 32 kilometers from Ponda. The easiest landmark for Tambdi Surla is Bhagwan Mahaveer sanctuary and Mollem National Park. You can get there by following NH4A which ultimately connects Goa to Belgaum, Karnataka.

The ride to Tambdi Surla is as scenic as the temple itself. You will have to pass through deep goan lands full of fields and forests and you can witness the traditional houses and lifestyle of the Goans. Being the monsoon season, the entire way was covered with a green blanket with the rains adding the grandeur.

It took us about one hour to reach Tambdi Surla due to the winding and narrow roads. But once you get there it is a totally different experience. Even though this place seems far away and having only one temple to visit, it is worth it and a trip has to be made by travelers atleast once in their life time. Below are some of the photos at Tambdi surla

The Cobbled way to the temple

The Mahaveer Temple

Stones with writings on it

Wet stone corrupted with beer bottles

The pristine stream

The Way back from the temple

The temple contains a shiva lingam and is worshiped on a daily basis. We spent about half an hour at the temple and headed back from Tambdi Surla to Ponda for rest.

On the way back, we had lunch in one of the Goan house cum restaurant type hotels which was run by a old man, his wife and his daughter. The food was traditional goan fish curry rice with a fish fry, cocum soup, cabbage baji and was splendid. The refill of the fish curry and fish fry was unlimited for a cost of just Rs. 45. If you want to taste the traditional food of Goa at very very reasonable prices then it is good to visit these home run restaurants rather than going to the costly ones which don't even come close to the taste that the home run restaurants provide.

After lunch, we headed back to our accommodation and hardly did anything for the rest of the day except have a good sleep and another splendid dinner in the night at a traditional goan restaurant.

Enjoy!

the Photograchar

Travelogue Goa: Day 0, the travel day.

The day of complete excitement!!! I was traveling on the train after a very long time and had completely forgotten the experience of the Indian railways. The last time I had journeyed on the train was twice in the same year to Delhi, once in an A/C Coach and once in a sleeper. Both the times the experience was excellent and had quite made some good friends with people of different states and walks of life. I had expected the same to happen with this journey.

The reality of the journey started to hit when our in between transit - a tempo traveller arrived at our house. There were 12 members - five old, five young and two kids. A lot of ideas started to come out with each member giving their own views of how we should be sitting in the tempo traveller and how the luggage should be arranged. The luggage consisted of around sixteen bags for clothes, snacks, water, back packs, camera etc. To add to all these the two kids were restless and were trying to convey their own message which any of us seemed not to get.

Anyways,  once the transport to the railway station arrived, we loaded up our luggage and ourselves and started the journey towards the railway station. The mid-day traffic made it difficult to cross every signal junction, but somehow the driver of the transport managed to get into the service roads and got us to the railway station.

And then, a new set of decisions had to be made - which platform, what train, where will it arrive, which bogie number for our coach, how to carry the luggage and so on and so forth. Somehow we carried the luggage to the right platform which as completely on the other side of the railway station. This was a mood killer since you had to carry the luggage - one back pack, one on each shoulder and one in each hand and run across the elevated pedestrian walkway. Finally we reached the train, boarded our luggage and settled down. For the first time since morning everybody seemed to getting back to their own characters and relaxation seeped in.

The journey to Goa as such was uneventful, and I wished that I had packed my laptop along with my camera to pass a good amount of time by watching movies or using the internet. But alas.. that did not happen and I had to pass the time by standing at the doorway of the coach and walking around. I did manage to get some shots of hills and stones from inside the train, but was too tired carrying all the luggage to hang out of the coach door and get some dynamic shots. So here goes...

A Bunch of Trees

A Stone Formation

Fields Ploughed

Some kind of domestic vine...

Some kind of a stone formation

Frankly speaking, there were a lot of other pretty sights of interest which I should have captured but I did not.  I don't know why.

Some things that you ought to know when you travel from Yeshwanthpur to Goa on a train

• Food - Not Nice - bland biriyanis, oily vadas and pakoras and spiced up fluffed rice. Better to carry something good on your own to eat on the train.
• No entertainment - since the journey will be overnight, it is better to have a laptop / ipod or any other entertainment device, fully charged so that you can use it at your leisure.
• Tea / Coffee - "Thermossed" - a term I refer to tea or coffee which are left to heat in thermos type flasks and carriers which will give a very distinct aroma to the tea / coffee - surely not good.
• For Smokers - It is banned, but a lot of people smoke in the toilet when the train is on full speed. There was a waiting list of young people waiting for their turn to get into the toilet to smoke...
• For non smokers - It is literally a pain in the neck when you smell the typical toilet smell on the train interspersed with the cigarette smoke...but no one seemed to be complaining - Strange!

We reached Goa the next day morning at around 5:45 AM. The train stops for about 5 minutes within which you have to haul all your luggage and yourself out of the train. Luckily transportation from the railway station to accommodation was prearranged so that was a relief. The weather was cloudy with a drizzle...

The next post will be on Day 1 of the journey which I will be posting shortly.

Enjoy!
the Photograchar.

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.

Travelogue Goa: - more than beaches and booze...

When someone says "I am going to Goa" the immediate reaction for most of us will be to congratulate the person on his turn to drink a lot of booze at cheap prices and roam around the beaches of Goa. That is what Goa was and is to all of us - a land of beaches, cheap booze, chicks and if time permits, old churches. Well, all this works out when you go out with friends on an unruly vacation or a sponsored company trip for all the hard and not so hard work you all have done.

What if you get stuck up with one of those rare times where you need to go to Goa with your family? It is most likely that you either will not go on the trip, or will completely ruin the trip with your family, or you will make the trip completely fruitless by visiting the common sites at Goa. How do I know? well I was in the same situation some days back and had to do something to make the vacation in Goa acceptable to us boozers and also the remaining 10 members of our family - that too in the rainy season.

My schedule for the Goa trip had to cover a lot of temples as some good places to visit. I had to do a lot of research and come up with a travel plan for each of the four days which I would like to share with all of you. I will be posting the travel program for each day as a separate travelogue post with a lot of travel tips to Goa.

Before I finish up, I would like to mention about visiting Goa during the monsoon. Goa is good during the dry season (summer and winter), but awesome during the rains. Some of the reasons are

• Being on the western ghat section of India, Goa offers a lot of variety of trees, birds and animals. You can see a lot of "Clean Green" environment with rain clouds that transform the state into a different light.
• Being a non-peak season, accommodation, travel, food are readily available and are lot cheaper!
• You get the space to visit anything in Goa at your own time without rushing through the streams of tourists and shutter happy crowd.
• The time taken to travel from destination to destination is very less when compared to the peak season because of lower traffic on the roads - you can cover more destinations per day, or can have the luxury of spending more time per destination without hassle and rush.
• You get to see various festivals and feasts that traditional Goa has to offer during the monsoon.
• The whole atmosphere is highly relaxed and better suited for travel due to the absence of tropical heat.

It has been my first time to Goa in the monsoons and even though the weather ruined some of my photographic adventures, it did present me with a totally different view of Goa.

Enjoy!
The Photograchar

Cloudscapes

It was one of those days where you really want to do some disciplined and scientific photography, but all you find is a peanut to take snaps of. Fortunately for me I came across a seed of a jackfruit lying around basking in the glory of the afternoon sun. Thinking something is better than nothing, I got hold of a close up shot of the jackfruit seed - of course this was before the clouds had built up and I had an opportunity to take some good first time exposures of those. The Jackfruit seed turned out as the image below in the CCD of the camera.

Close up of a Jack fruit Seed

I had bought a new Nikkor 55-300 mm VR lens, and was disappointed for just finding the jackfruit seed to take shots of. Then as if to answer my prayers, the skies went beautifully gloomy and majestic clouds started to form with a bladder full of water to sprinkle on the earth. After waiting for about two and half hours, I was able to take the following exposures -

A Random Cloud Formation

What does this look like? Is there a UFO?

Reminds me of Snow lifting of the Himalayas

Dumbfounded!!!

Looks like a Snow Mountain

A Small strip of rainbow can be seen in this exposure

A Heavenly Avalanche

Windswept clouds

Most of the need I felt when I was taking the exposure was of a Neutral Density filter which would have deepened the colors of the sky and improved the contrast of the image. Alas, I am yet to buy one and will have to go with what I've got.

Hope you enjoyed... More to come...