India Part two - The South (finally!)

Holi Festival!

Hello everyone! Wow it's been forever since I last wrote a post on here which I'm sorry about. I haven't got a laptop so its pretty impossible to be able to write a post (that includes photographs) without one. So quick recap, a friend and I went to India in February/March of this year. I've split the experience into 2 blog posts, one is already posted & this is the second! I apologise in advance if this second post isn't as detailed as the first as my memory is a joke and I'll probably forget details, but I'll try my best! Again I'll divide this into sections so you can easily look at what you want to know. Enjoy!

 Goa - The South

So in my part one post we finished in Varanassi. From here we got an internal flight, with Spice Air, on a little propeller plane down to Goa. We'd researched how much a taxi down to Palolem should cost and haggled with a taxi driver outside to take us down. (It's details like the cost of this that I now can't remember, I'm sorry! But at a guess about 1,400 rupees for a hour or so journey?) Something my friend and I had said we wanted to do, before we even left for India, was to stay in a beach hut in Goa. We'd been told by friends that we could just rock up on the beach and find somewhere, so that's exactly what we did! It was a bit of a ball ache wandering up & down the beach with our backpacks, but we got a better deal than what was offered online and could see the place before we decided on one. We stayed in a hut at a place called Havana. The huts, on the beach, are only built every year and then taken down when monsoon season hits, so they're very basic but worth it for the 2 second stroll onto the beach! Also being able to hear the waves crashing while you snooze is just so nice. This was definitely my favourite accommodation of the whole trip!

View from our hut ... can you see the sea?!

Our little beach hut

As we arrived fairly late the first night we spent it just having a nice meal on the beach and a couple drinks while listening to live music. There was a silent disco happening that night at the far end of the beach, which we didn't make it to, but happens once a week if you fancy it! This part of our trip was just for chilling out so we didn't get up to much, just eating, drinking and sunbathing really! I can highly recommend a lovely little restaurant called Little World. It had such a cute decor and also really tasty organic meals, like feta and avocado on toast with poached eggs, shakshuka, and lots more! During this chill out time I also saw what I would honestly describe as the best sunset I've ever seen, on Palolem beach. Hopefully you'll see from the photograph but the colours were just insane!!

Inside Little World

The most beautiful Goan sunset

We did however hire some mopeds to have a look around the area. I would never, ever drive in the north of India where we'd come from but the south had much quieter roads, so after a small panic attack, I was happy to give it a go! All I can recommend is when you have WiFi, try google map places you want to drive to as we got lost quite a bit! However, saying that, the times we got lost we saw the best things, like tiny local villages, amazing views and empty beaches. We went down to the old hippy area of Agonda for lunch, which had a lovely beach and was just a very chilled, quiet area.

Some of the fnished dishes - yum!

One thing you must do at some stage in India is to do a cooking class! We stumbled upon a flyer on a lampost advertising Rahul's cooking class which we booked ourselves into. (Turns out its one of the top rated ones on Trip Advisor, so we did well!) Now unfortunately for me, the only time I got ill in India was during this cooking class! So I managed to stay for the first dish which was a delicious tomato based mushroom starter. However, by the time we started on the main, which was going to be tandoori chicken curry, I had to leave sadly. But my friend, Sam, stayed and said the food was really good. She even brought me back some which was so nice but I was in no place to be wanting to eat! You should definitely try this particular class, as there wasn't too many of us, and Rahul was very informative and lets you get really hands on with everything. He'll also email you all the recipes so you can try them at home which is brill.

Some of Pappi Chulo's graffiti

Goa - The north
So still feeling a bit ropey, we made our way via taxi to the north of Goa to our next stop, which was the Anjuna area. The hostel we stayed in was called Pappi Chulo & had been recommended to us. It had really cool graffiti art everywhere and a chilled vibe. However there were quite a few cool looking hostels in this area so have a look around. We had a little walk about and the hostel was quite near a beach, however I think we'd been spoiled with the beaches in Palolem as this one wasn't one we fancied sticking around in - lots of cows everywhere! We were a little out the way in our hostel, however we realised that everywhere was quite spread out up in this area so having a moped is a must! The next little bit along was Anjuna where we ended up having dinner. I think we ate in Cafe Lilliput which is also a partying spot but I couldn't tell you much about that as I had the most plain thing I could find on the menu & not even one drink after still feeling pretty crap! We did stumble upon the most random rave I've ever been to though! We heard it before we saw it and like little cartoon characters we followed the music. What we found was a predominantly over 50's crowd going mental to hardcore trance music! Being totally sober it was mad to watch, makes me wonder/realise what I must look like when I'm out on the sesh! (although I'm not over 50 just to clarify!)
We spent the next few days cruising around on the mopeds exploring and that night had, probably one of the best nights out abroad I've ever had! Big statement I know, but it was awesome! I'm pretty sure it was a Wednesday night we went, which was ladies night at Club Cubana. This was a result as we didn't have to pay entry (for men & other nights entry it's about 1125 rupees) and drinks are free for everyone anyway! The free drink 100% helped in me enjoying myself but what made this night so great for me was the location. Club Cubana is located atop Arpora hill & I would describe it like a huge old style villa, that's been turned into a club. It's mainly open air, with all these little stairways & bars as well as a swimming pool and a few people with flame throwers wandering around (who looked very Burning Man in style!) Then inside 'the house' party it was all hip hop & rnb music which I was loving! Now I love anyone that will get up, get involved and dance, but I've got to say it was something special to see quite traditional Indian style dance moves done to songs like Chris Brown & Lil Jon! A brilliant experience in itself! If you don't go here while you're in the north you will be missing out. FACT!

Making an actual effort for ladies night!

Walking into Thalassa

The next day was a rough one for us, shock, so very little was done! We did have an amazing Greek meal at a restaurant called Thalassa, just round the corner from the hostel, that has lovely views of the beach below. Having both lived in Greece before we can vouch for the food here too so I'd highly recommend if you want a change from Indian fare.

Just a decorated cow strolling through the market!

So before we came to India, we knew that we would be there for the Holi festival, which we were so excited about! If you haven't heard of it, Holi is a Hindu festival that marks the arrival of spring & is a celebration of fertility, colour, and love as well as good versus evil. Known by most as the festival of colour, due to all the powders and paints people throw everywhere in the celebrations. The day before the festival we wanted to go to Anjuna market,which is a huge flea market down the road, to get our Holi outfits. It has everything from jewellery and clothes to homemade herbs and spices. For Holi you should wear white so that your clothes can take on all the colours. This market is amazing and I could of bought so much if only I could of carried it all home! Haggling is king here. Now I'm not a natural haggler, always feel like I'm taking the piss, luckily Sam is much better! We found though that working as a team worked, with one of us being more keen while the other was more like "hmmm don't know, probably find something better elsewhere" sort of thing. Just be super friendly and nice & if you can make the sellers laugh that works a treat! So with our new threads and a few extras we were Holi ready! 

One of the many stalls in Anjuna market

Me feeling myself in a new market buy!

Even though we had checked out of our hostel that morning, they let us keep our stuff there so we didn't have to worry about moving until later. From the get go, all of us were throwing paint powder everywhere, running around with water guns and water balloons filled with paint, it was so fun & just carnage. This was before we had even left! We then all headed down to Waters, which is a restaurant come bar/club normally. It had been cleared out for us and had a pool which ended up looking like a rainbow had thrown up in it! I can't even tell you how much fun this day was, no one cared what they looked like, everyone was throwing paint at everyone & the atmosphere was amazing. About 15 of us went somewhere round the corner for a food pitstop, all lounging around on cushions eating fresh curry and spicy,sticky schezuan chicken (how we were let in looking like we did I don't know!) The crazy day ended in a beach rave that went on until god knows when! We met so many nice people and just had the best time. It was the perfect way to end our time in India! The only fly in the ointment was the shack of a hostel we eventually ended up in that night. We got lost, luckily got picked up by some guy on a moped with 3 of us on there and 2 backpacks it was a mental ride! It genuinely was a thatched roof & straw walled hostel, which means you can hear everything, with no room to swing a cat in... although maybe the frog that I found on my pillow! Would NOT recommend! (I can't even find it on hostel world so maybe its been shut down!)

Some of the powders used during Holi

This was us before we even left the hostel!

End of the night ... can you tell who hadn't washed yet?!

So that was the end of our two weeks in India! It went so fast and there's so much more of this country we could of seen. I can't lie I was slightly dubious before I got there as I'm not a huge curry or rice fan, obviously scared of Delhi belly and just wasn't sure what the place and people would be like. I can honestly say though that India had the friendliest backpackers we've met on our travels so far. As well as this the locals are lovely and genuine & can't seem to want to help you enough. Sam managed not to get ill at all and I only suffered over one night so we did well. I would really recommend India for anyone who wants to be immersed in a totally different culture and have a more off the beaten track style of backpacking, If you have anything you want to ask me please let me know! I plan on putting up a few posts about what to pack for there etc as well and will be blogging regularly again so stay tuned!

The state of us post Holi getting our flight home!