Andy Cunningham

After Agra, the trip on to Jaipur seemed never ending, and even the chaos of the Indian roads failed to keep our attention and most of us dozed for some part of the trip. We arrived at our hotel, and decided we just wanted a quick bite to eat before calling it a day.

The following morning we rose bright and early to get up and visit the Ambar fort. A fleet of 100 elephants make 4 trips each to take the first 800 visitors up to the fort on elephant back: the rest of the days visitors have to go up in the local rattly 4x4s (which is how everyone comes back down).

The fort is spectacular, and the mountainous terrain makes the view more impressive after the flat country of the last few days. From there we travel through the city of Jaipur to visit a carpet factory, a jewellers, and the astronomical observatory including the biggest sundials I’ve ever seen. The carpet factory offered a chance to buy a rather unusual souvenir in the form of a hand made woollen carpet. Much of the city of Jaipur is built from the local red sandstone, and what isn’t, is painted pink leading to it’s tagline: the pink city.

After the day in Jaipur we back our bags and head back down to Goa, and our final hotel of the trip, the Ronil Beach Resort in Baga Beach. The rooms prove to be basic but mostly clean, but the aircon works, and the restaurants and beach are an easy stroll. You kind of have two choices when staying in Goa: either the north, which we went for, with more basic hotels, but with restaurants, bars and nightlife on the doorstep, or the south, with the big all-inclusive hotels and have to take a taxi if you want to go anywhere.

The resort towns of Baga, Calangute and Candolim run into one another along this part of the coast, with a continuous run of shacks along the beach providing sunbeds, drinks, and excellent food, all very cheaply.

The system on the beach is excellent: all the shacks have sunbeds available, which will be set out with sunshades to your desires. They’re all free, as long as you’re buying from their bar, so we were kept topped up with drinks, and had a convenient sport for lunch each day. We picked one called “The Buzz” largely because it was the first one away from the cluster of noise and watersports as we came onto the beach. I recommend their toasted sandwiches as well as the Indian offerings on their menu!

We tended to migrate from there back up the beach for a sunset drink before freshening up and finding dinner.

The food choices in Baga were excellent. We can highly recommend Kim Faa (Chinese) and Fiesta (Italian) if you want a change from Indian food. But the Indian food was the highlight for us, with excellent meals everywhere. A couple of specific mentions:

• East meets West – great setting, fantastic food, but slow service, and wouldn’t move us to a table away from the music despite being half empty.
• O Pescadoro – lovely courtyard setting, superb food.
• Salt and Pepper – more basic setting, but the food and service were great.

The prices were unbelievable – typically 75p to a pound for a beer, and a whole dinner for both of us, including drinks, for about GBP7.50!
One of the features of the beach at Baga is the steady stream of hawkers selling … well, just about everything. Sunglasses, sun-hats, sunglass cleaning, fruit, jewellery, various forms of tat as souvenirs, massages, and even ear-cleaning. Unlike in the north, most of them weren’t too pushy and actually understood the word “no”!

We did two day-trips from the beach. The first was to the Dudhsagar waterfalls on the eastern extreme of Goa. Wonderful view, though it was somewhat spoiled by the crowds of noisy tourists around the pool. The second was a half day dolphin watching around the estuary of the Mandovi river. Both made a nice change from the beach.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip: an interesting tour, a great beach, fantastic food. Highly recommended.

Oh, more photos in the gallery!