More Goa

Wake me up before you Goa

It was still dark at 6am when we arrived Dabolim airport in Goa. Another driver met us to shoo away people and drive us to the Park Hyatt Resort.

The resort is located in South Goa near Cansaulim about 45 minute to an hour from all the action in town. The beach in front of the Park Hyatt is white and pristine. It’s dotted with beach shacks serving fresh seafood. We frequented one named Zeebop several times to sample local lobster.

We were upgraded to a lovely suite with a living area and a wrap around balcony facing the ocean. Most days were spent lounging at the resort pool which is famous for being India’s largest. We ate Curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner and didn’t regret it, although we had antacids ready at hand. I had us booked to get Ayurvedic massages based on our body types, fat and skinny. Mine turned out to be a no nonsense wham bam thank you man meat tenderizing massage which was fine by me. Much better than that willy-nilly massage I got at the Four Season’s in Hawaii for 3 times the price. In, fact, I liked it so much that I booked myself a second massage with Veejay on the last day.

We ventured into town on our second to last day to do some shopping. We were surprised at how much Panaji looked like Mexico. Tijuana to be specific. We bought beautiful fabrics at FabIndia and gorgeous fashions at Barefoot. Had a traditional lunch at Mum’s Kitchen in Miramar where we sampled Xce Xce curry with prawns.

Goa had its share of poverty, in fact the sight that will haunt me for a while took place there. On one of my treks into town, I saw an old man standing in the middle of the road, wearing nothing but a shirt. He was so weak and desperate that he couldn’t even beg.

On our last day at the resort, as we mingled with Bollywood royalty and Russian mafia at the pool, the gardeners caught a 5 foot snake. They paraded the writhing reptile in front of us as if to remind us that we were in the middle of Indian wilderness, the Russians weren’t even fazed.

We spent our last night in India at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai. Our room faced the local slum.

You’re going to India?

India? Why are you going to India? Said my hairstylist when I told him I was going there for the New Year. I asked myself the same question as many colleagues who had been there before me had warned me of the poverty and filth.

We still had enough miles left over from the United Airlines contest we had won to fly anywhere in the world and Mr. M had accumulated enough Hyatt points for a week at any of their properties. My criteria were to pick a warm destination that we hadn’t been to before and it had to be as far away as possible. So I came up with Goa! I always wanted to go to India and my travel agent cousin assured me that Goa was “India Light.”

We had to transit through Mumbai to get to get there. We arrived after a 7-hour flight from Munich where we had stopped over for a lovely Christmas visit with my family. Nothing could have prepared us for Mumbai. The smell of burning garbage and incense hits you the minute you exit the airport. We were greeted by entire families camping out at the airport in anticipation of visiting relatives. Others were there to make money off visiting foreigners like us. The one person I was happy to see was our driver from the Hyatt Regency who took our luggage cart and shooed away anyone who was grabbing at us.

Once at the hotel, we had 4 hours to nap, shower and change before our transfer to the domestic airport where we would board our Kingfisher flight to Goa. We couldn’t sleep so we watched Bollywood gossip shows and skin lightening commercials on TV.

The domestic airport was void of all the maddening crowds, and check-in was a breeze. Security, on the other hand, was an elaborate procedure. Men were separated from women and everyone got frisked. Our Carry-on luggage had to be scanned, tagged and stamped along with our boarding pass before we were allowed to board.

Our 40-minute flight came with individual screens playing the latest Bollywood hits and a swarm of mosquitoes. I nervously took my seat as I was wearing short-sleeved shirt and had not sprayed myself with bug repellent. Once everyone was on board the purser announced that the flight attendants were going to spray bug killer and that we should all cover our noses and mouths. As soon as we took off, we were fed a delicious Indian breakfast. I was halfway through “Love Aaj Kal” starring Saif Ali Khan when we landed in Goa. I will never know how it ends.