Stop 5 - Anjuna, North Goa

The bus journey...
Was an experience. Here we are setting off with high hopes on the way to the train station, to catch the 11:05pm train to Goa:

With a 74% chance of us getting a train ticket (trains book out very fast in India, and waitlists are then made in case of cancellations), we thought we'd have a decent chance of making our train from Mumbai to Goa. No such luck, so after asking every ticket desk available about our options and accepting defeat (look at us there, all glum)

We headed on to get the last sleeper bus available that night to Goa departing at 1:30am. We'd read plenty of warnings online about the sleeper buses (apparently roads are terrible throughout most of India, and the drivers are mental), so we expected the worst. I still don't think our expectations were low enough for the "bus stop" we got to. Rats and tuk-tuks galore, on a poorly lit, eerie street in a part of Mumbai we'd never heard of, nor been to. The "stop" was a closed travel agency shop, with nothing nearby open. We spotted some golden arches in the distance and headed to our safe haven of a McDonald's to keep us off the streets, open until 1a.m.

After the security staff kindly let us stay a bit longer, we set off again, hoping the bus would be stopping by any minute. Again, no such luck, as we found out the bus was delayed by "45 mins" according to the driver. We did thankfully have some luck at the bus stop however, as a young local lad with good English, Murtaza (our guardian angel), was waiting on the same bus as us, and he was able to keep in touch with the bus driver and let us know what the situation with the bus was. It turned out to be two hours late. Great. Even worse though in all of this, it was the dead of night. So we were left on this unknown street in the middle of the night, in a place we didn't know, for two hours. Everything you're not supposed to do travelling? Seems like that's what we did. Dani (not meaning to point fingers!) wasn't too happy with this, and felt we should go back to the hostel. With the bus nearby, and it already booked, Stu felt we could stick it out. Things did get a little scarier, with it seeming like a few more people were looking at us than earlier on in the night, so we made the decision to run into a taxi and do a few laps of the nearby roads, until the bus was at the stop, and keeping ourselves off the road. Murtaza kindly jumped in with us, to explain the situation to the driver, and keep us all in the loop on where the bus was. Murtaza also kindly (you might see this will be a recurring theme in this post), did his best to keep the situation calm, explaining that it was safe, getting a friend on the phone to echo that sentiment, playing us music, and even getting us pizza while in the taxi. Legend.
I could keep going on and on about how well he looked after us (and I will further on in this), but I'll keep it at that, as that covers most of us waiting for the bus - we finally got on at 3:30a.m., and the journey itself actually wasn't too bad. A little bumpy, but the roads between Mumbai and Goa must be quite good, the ~15 hour journey didn't feel that long at all.

Getting to Goa was quite the relief (to say the least), and our hostel The Funky Monkey Hostel is another on the "recommended" list - the grounds are very spacious, bar area was always loads of fun, and a great crowd of staff there and backpackers alike. Anjuna was the location in north Goa that we set up base in, but went to see some of the other parts during our stay.

Day one, and a hostel family trip to Arambol beach was on the cards. Murtaza kindly (told you) rented a car, so we were able to hop in and not worry about renting a scooter (a form of transport like this is pretty essential in Goa, taxis can be costly). Arambol was beautiful: chilled out markets, lovely sand + sea breeze and the beach was not too packed.

To finish the day, the lot of us headed off to Chapora Fort for another sunset, and back to Anjuna for a dinner in the famous beach shack Curlie's, before returning to our hostel for the night.

We didn't know an awful lot about Goa beforehand, it's worth checking some of the history out. We knew it was formerly under Portuguese control, and a bit of a holiday destination, but that was about it. Turns out there's a big psychedelic/hippie culture around the place, and a lot (lot) of beach parties. Very different to other parts of India, to say the least.

So day two we dived into the deep end of the psychedelic culture, as there was a psytrance festival/rave on, being headlined by none other than 77 year old DJ Raja Ram. Doesn't get much trippier than that. We don't think words can explain at all what the night was like, hopefully the pics do it some justice:

Our good friends Ross & Chris (previously seen in our Mumbai group photo) had the right idea to make sure none of us got lost/separated:

Just before we all set off on our night out, we also had to bid a teary-eyed farewell to our guardian angel, Murtaza. An absolute gentleman from start to finish, we don't think we'd have made it to Goa without him, so we owe him one for sure. Hopefully we'll be seeing him at his wedding next year! ❤

(Please picture a halo above Murtaza's head 😇)

Day three, and the morning after the night before meant there were some very, very sore heads in the hostel. We tried our best to get on with our usual shenanigans, so that morning meant a visit to the German Bakery - a lovely space to chill out, and they serve local Goan craft beer, so take a wild guess at who got this pint:

 Another day chilling at our local beach shack, with our new pal - the friendly giant we named Lenny (pictured), wrapped it up for day three.

A quick look at our travel plans also gave us a shock, as we realised our train to our next destination actually left from central Goa - a mere three hours away (making it prohibitively expensive to get to) from where we were staying. Oops. We had to cancel our train and accept that another sleeper bus was on the cards - also making us leave Goa a day earlier than anticipated. Not ideal, but these things happen when travelling.

Day four now became our last full day, so we wanted to explore a bit more, and make sure to have a meal in a nice restaurant before we left. Calangute beach was our last in Goa, a bit more popular/crowded, but still had everything you need to spend a day chilling in the sun, sand, waves, and of course, beach shacks. After the sun was setting, and a few card games of Cabo, we set off for our meal in Gunpowder, highly recommended by a staff member at our hostel. Great food, even better company (and more games of Cabo).

Day five was our last day, with us running our last few errands, before making our way a day early towards Hampi on our favourite method of transport, the sleeper bus. We finally made our way to Artjuna cafe, highly recommended by our hostel as having the best coffee around. Also now highly recommended by us, as we got the best breakfast of the trip, and lamented why we hadn't come here days earlier.

The Anjuna flea market was on that day too, so while Stu went off to get his hair cut (the excitement!), Dani & Fionnuala went back towards the hostel to have a look at the wares, and pick up anything needed for their cases they hadn't packed on the way over.

Speaking of cases, it was time for ours to be packed, as we had to hop in a taxi and make our way to the bus. We're on the way to Hampi, which is supposed to be full of old temples, ruins, boulders, and is apparently a site not to miss. Our bus journey experience can't be as bad as our last one....right?

Big love, Dani & Stu.

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