Holiday in Goa

Sunrise in Goa at about 6 am after a very short night in the train

Have you ever heard of Goa? You probably have. It's not only a genre of electronic music but also one of India's most popular tourist destinations, that is for Indian tourists as well as for foreigners. I'm not sure if the tourists came because it's such a nice place or if it is such a nice place, because so many tourists came. Whatever, among all Indian states, Goa ranks third in literacy rate with 83% of people being able to read and write. And with 96% of households having electricity it's the second best state in India. At the same time, fertility rates are among the lowest in the whole country with only 1.8 children for each woman. I bet there's some causal relation!
The wealth was also notable in the superior road conditions. When we were driving on a perfectly even, four-lane road with trees nicely arranged on both sides I couldn't believe this is India.
After having traveled to some places, I feel that there are many places, much nicer than the rural, monsoon-struck Manipal. But according to the statistics (from wikipedia), there are also many place in a far worse situation.

We took a night train to Goa, which was supposed to get us there in just 4 hours. Not much sleep for the night, but it turned out worse. The train was late by an hour, so we were waiting at the station till about 2.30 am. On the train we didn't know whether it would catch up the delay, so we had to get up well in time, not to miss our station. It turned out that the train got even more delayed. So we had less sleep, and a longer train ride than we planned. But we got to see a beautiful sunrise while rolling through the green hills of Goa ;)

After our arrival we went straight to the beach (that's what Goa's all about). Our idea was to walk up the beach for some 10-20 km to the next city. While we still managed to cross a river, we soon had to withdraw from our plan when we face impassable cliffs. We went away from the beach and more into the country and had a pleasant walk there.

Crossing a river (google maps). I carried my backpack on my head, but forgot about the documents in my pocket.

It had been cloudy in the morning, which was great for our walking, but around noon it became so hot that we decided to stop at the next beach and catch up on the sleep we missed during the night. The beach was pleasantly empty and we were only sharing the place with some 'locals':

A 'local' at Agonda Beach, Goa

The rest of the week end we spent cursing around the small state. Seeing old Portuguese cities, having fancy sea-food dinners on the beach, walking through big markets, being ripped of for souvenirs, sweating, ...

One of those houses reminding of the Portuguese reign. Panaji, Goa.

On our last day we did what I always wanted to do. We jumped on a moving train. Everything had gotten a bit delayed and after we queued for our tickets and got our of the office the train was already rolling. So we ran across the bridge to our platform as fast as we could and barely managed to jump in just before the train was getting too fast. -- Only then it was that we realized we were in the wrong train. Well, we got out, took a bus back and took the next one. Not a big deal, but a good story I hope, and a least I could jump on a moving train!