Unseen Goa In detail - Day 1

         YHI was always in my top list for it being very afforable and being different from any other travel groups. Its a great opportunity to seen the unseen through YHI. When I was plannin my shutdown, I came across Goa National trekking expedition for 9 days from their  website. Seemed okey for me to take 4 extra leaves. Informed frens and as expected only few could say yes. Till the last minute we dint have the list of those who would be going to goa. Finally, lucky ones made it - Me, Su, Suma, Sumanth and Adi. We booked the transport and the programme almost two months ahead of the date. Got our leaves approved and waited for the new year holiday.

We planned to start from bangalore on 27th evening. Suhas, Manu, Abhi, Manas had come to see us off from majestic at 8:30PM. Suhas knew what he was missing now. We reached Goa by 9AM to report in Campal base camp, panaji Gao. Panaji bus stand was crowded, weather was contrasting to that of bangalore showing 33 degrees. We were now sweating inside a local bus to reach campal, a 15mins ride from bus stand. The buses in panaji will not move out untill they are completely packed with passengers. The conductors job is to use his best skill to fill in as many people as possible. The fares are super cheap & the driver is kind enough to stop where ever you want. We least effort we reached the base camp. It was close to 10AM. We checked in, collected our IDs searched for our alloted tents. My first impression lookin at the tents was like - "Am I spending the rest of my 9 days here... ???" Well it was my own choice to come here. There were family camping, biking guys, sailing team and the huge trekking crowd. Easily more that 600 people. The frustration grew after we looked around the camp and esp the bathrooms. We were forced to digest it. We freshed up, planned to go around the city for the rest of the day, as there were no activities. We collected our knapsack, bedspreads and inner sleeping bag. These added to our assets till the end.

Shubha from bangalore who was in the same bus as ours also joined us. We took a short walk to find a small hotel to have puri and bhaaji. We started to calangotte beach around 15kms from the panaji bus stand. Ride was a long one in the local bus sitting in the last row enjoying the view of the city with every house decorated for chirstmas. Calangotte beach was crowded like mad. One could sight people every where enjoying a ride on motor boats, banana rides, bumper rides and the parachutes a lil far. For coming in the peak season, we managed to get a deal of Rs500 for all the sports. We enjoyed all the rides except me having a tough time in parasailing, not while in air but sailing. I could easily decide that sailing is not my cup of coffee.

We had late lunch in a hotel near the beach, we took a bus back to panjim bus stand and to the base camp. We took bath in cold water. Sipped in hot tea and ready for the dinner. Dinner had chappathis, aloo baaji, rice sambhar, kheer. pretty much the same all the days. We were informed to assemble for briefing about the programme by the camp leader SP Chauhan, a handsome man. He spoke about the rules, camp site and about the next day plan. Then another round of bournvita surved, lights off by 11:30PM.