4-10 April
Close your eyes for a minute. Imagine a tropical paradise. Pristine sandy beach, clear blue sea with gentle waves lapping onto the shore. At the top of the beach a wall of palm trees, with lazy trunks at angles. No noise or crowds to disturb the ambiance.
Welcome to Bamboo Yoga Retreat. The perfect antidote to our travel experience so far.
Paradise
It nestles on a private beach in south Goa, with cooling breezes from the sea. Our stay occurred during an unusually quiet period before visitors arrived for their Easter holidays. The guests were a mixture of singles, (who wanted to “fly and flop”), couples and groups of friends; one family arrived the day before we left.
The accommodation comprised huts on the sand, with hot showers and air conditioning. The food was excellent and they always cooked something specially without garlic for Lynne. All vegetarian, with a kitchen garden.
Peter chose to meditate; Lynne went to yoga; 2x 90 minute sessions were offered each day.
We both swam in the warm sea. The views of the beach, the setting sun, the night sky with a full moon, and even the planet Mars, all conspired to enforce a sense of tranquility and happiness: Paradise discovered.
One of our fellow guests lent us her Footprint guide to Karnataka, so we spent quite a few happy hours getting to grips with the Indian railways timetable. We were planning the next stages of our journey, choosing to visit Hampi in Vijayanagara and Mysuru on our way to Bengalaru.
Most frustrating was trying to book our train tickets on-line: we tried various web services, having to input the same data each time, but no, the use of foreign bank cards was prohibited. The manager at our yoga retreat tried three times to buy the tickets with his own bank card, but again no joy.
So an in-person visit to a railway station appeared to be the only solution: an adventure then scheduled for our transfer to our next hotel.
Matters were complicated by there apparently only being one sleeper available for the night we wanted, and none for the following night. So Lynne came up with 4 different options to deal with various outcomes; this meant we could regain our own paradise.
After four full days at the Bamboo Yoga Resort, we happily moved on to another hotel, with proximity to the railway routes we wanted, but not before enjoying a last swim, with the sea and beach all to ourselves.
Tickets
The taxi journey took a good one and a half hours to get to Madgoa Station. In southern Goa, Christians account for just over 35% of the population; we hadn’t expected the Easter weekend traffic jams, which we encountered. At the Reservations office, two of four counters were open, and seemingly not many people were ahead. Nothing happened for a long time except excitable people pushing to the front and some soldiers pushed past, talked loudly and then vanished again.
It turned out this was the end of the ticket agents’ shift, so all work ceased for a period; they didn’t want to risk working overtime. In all of this, we were made aware that we needed to fill in paper forms to make a reservation (this is India, after all!). To get the forms, we needed to get to the front and be given them by the agent, who was busy ignoring everybody’s clamour.
We finally received the forms, filled them in and re-queued. Lynne brilliantly held her own and managed to keep the agent’s attention, in the face of overwhelming odds. We emerged with four tickets, which after close scrutiny, we thought might be the right ones.
We found our waiting driver, and continued to our next lodging, the Coconut Beach Resort. This was chosen to give us a little space to organise ourselves for our imminent journeys. Unfortunately, the hotel has a hugely underwhelming internet supply. In the few time slots it works, everything takes an eternity.
Very pretty
The place is lovely, a short stroll from the Bogmalo Beach, which is nice, but not a patch on our previous beach. Very much more a tourist resort, it wasn’t our ‘cup of tea’. However, it served us well (except for the lack of internet), and we were grateful for the kind help given by one of the receptionists, from Scotland, with the name of Lynn!
This is more like my kind I’d trip