Like any other day, I woke-up to the morning alarm and after having snoozed it for 3 times, I decided to slip out of my bed. The day we had been so eagerly waiting for had finally arrived. As I sleepily dragged my feet out to the living room I found my 2 bags, packed over the last 2 days, kept against the wall. I had stuffed every thing that would be necessary over the next 2 weeks. I was fairly confident about having taken all the items in the check-list. However, I was particularly worried about the inner wear. I had about 16 days to spend with only 8 pairs of it, 4 of them bought specially for the trip!
I had not applied for a leave on that day on the pretext of leaving early and I had to spend half a day in office. Did not have much to do in office than give my data access to team mates and transfer the work to them and accept wishes for our safe journey from the colleagues and friends. After an early lunch, me and Jeevan collected our bags from home and set out to the railway station. The rest had already left for the station or would leave shortly. I checked my watch and realized we had only 5 minutes before the train arrived. The train would stop at Udupi station for 10 min and leave to Goa at 2:20 pm. Without wasting time, we hired an auto and stuffed our luggage into it. With so much luggage we had little space to sit. We took 2 bag-packs on our lap to make space for us. I placed my right foot between the 2 bags below. My bag extended till the edge of the door and there was no space to rest my left foot. I left it hanging perilously outside the door. It was getting very uncomfortable and wished to reach the station soon.
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| Aditya arrives at the station... Finally! |
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| Monsoon makes fields beautiful.... |
We reached the station at 2:15 pm. The train had not yet arrived at the station. You can take your chances with Indian Railways by being a few minutes late and yet get away with it. Its a race which you can expect to win 9 out of 10 times. However, I had got over-confident during my last visit to Goa and missed the 8:00 am Mangalore - Verna train- a dubious honor I could do without! Any given day, I would happily let someone take away that honor, but the prospect of Aditya taking it today made everyone of us feel utterly uncomfortable. Aditya had the printout of our online railway ticket. Still worse, none of us knew our seat numbers. The clock had ticked past 2:20 pm and there was no sign of Aditya or the train. We had called him twice to enquire his whereabouts. "Raaste mein hi hoon, bas pahoch raha hoon" is the what we heard for the second time. We curiously examined a couple of auto-rickshaws as we eagerly waited for Adi's arrival. As a contingency plan we called up Aditya and got our seat numbers. Hoping that the TC would have seen Idea Ad (what an idea Sirji), we thought showing an online copy of the ticket in Gore or Manju's mobile (both Samsung Spica- GPRS enabled) would suffice. Finally after 5 anxious minutes, Aditya, clad in cramster jacket and wearing a cyan color T-shirt, arrived at the station. Thanks to Indian railways, Adi had won this thrilling race. Adi's arrival had transformed our mood from one of anxiety to joy and cheerfulness. A few minutes later the train arrived at platform 1. Next 5 hours, we passed through the beautiful landscapes along the Konkan coast. The fields, streams and the sea looked more beautiful in ongoing monsoons. We reached Madgaon station at around 7:30 pm. We hired 2 pre-paid taxi at Madgaon station and reached Vasco around 8:30 pm.
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| TEAM at Madgaon station. |
Goa being a tourist hot-spot, the hotels are quite expensive. We decided to check-in to a modest hotel as we just had to spend the night and leave to Delhi early in the morning. We ended up checking into a hotel a bit too modest for our liking. Due to incessant rains, the water had seeped into the walls, peeling the paint off the wall. The stale smell in the room gave us more of a storage room feel. We learned our first lesson of the trip- to examine the rooms before checking in. We had dinner in another nearby hotel. We ended the day with some light moments at the bus-stop outside our lodge. :)
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| Bus-stop outside our lodge in Vasco. |
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