Happy Days in the Sun

Palolem Beach in a quarter of its glory.

Our India experience has begun in probably the most un-Indian town in all of India: The lovely town of Palolem, home of the ridiculously perfect Palolem Beach. We arrived here at 5 am on New Year's Eve and let our taxi driver find us an open and available guest house. We booked a back street room for the first 2 (1 1/2) nights, but payed out of our noses for it. Palolem is extremely seasonal, and most rooms are just simple beach huts that are torn down every year. Christmas and New Year is the peak season, and prices bounce unpredictably up and down. Already the town is less crowded than when we arrived, and prices are going back to normal.

Outside our first lodgings in India, Pradnev's Guest House.

Pradnev basically spent the days patrolling this alley.

We spent the first day looking around town, enjoying the beach, and marvelling at the fireworks, which were suspiciously absent the whole evening, before erupting all at once at midnight. We also got us a hut on the beach for the next 5 nights. The night itself ended early as we didn't really meet any particularly cool people, and had promised our new landlord to check in before 11 am the next day. However, when we got there he was still asleep, and when we got ahold of him, heavily hung over from the night before, he asked "Why so early?!"

View from our porch. Yeah, that's the beach right there.

After a flipflop-paced stroll to the neighboring town of Patnem (quieter but less picture-perfect), we met our new neighbors on the porch, a British/Swedish couple who invited us to join them and some friends for dinner. It was a lovely evening, a yummy Goan style dinner on the beach followed by a cup of masala chai at a rooftop restaurant in the main street. The gang was great, consisting mostly of Swedes, but with the odd German, Canadian and Australian. We also spent most of the next day with them, playing volleyball on the beach and such, but sadly most of them were leaving that evening. It is a strange feeling to suddenly say goodbye to such instant friends, but probably one we'll need to get used to. We received tips on places to go and vague hopes of meeting up again at this and that place.

More panorama fun in Coconut Cove, south of Palolem Beach.

                                        

A British, Swedish, German and Norwegian enjoying a cup of chai on the rooftops of Palolem