Flag Off

This is flag off for our drive to Goa.

As the trip started to get finalized and dates fell into place, while default plan was that we meet at Goa, new thoughts started to surface.

Why not make this a road trip was the new thought....Hubli to Goa is a lovely drive...Can we...

Not only because we both so enjoy road trips, but because it had it's pluses too....It would give us that much more flexibility when in Goa, especially considering taxi's there are a real rip off. Added bonus was that Sujata got to take even more paintings.

To make this happen, I had to first get to Hubli, and though that extended my already fairly long trip by a further two days we decided to do it......and it proved itself a damn good decision, adding so much verve, fun and possibilities to the trip.

I took a night bus from Hyd to Hubli, reached at 9 am....a quick shower and breakfast, and we were off by 10.30 am. 

The first leg, Hubli-Dharwad-Belgaum is a scenic drive and then you get to the ghats. Between Belgaum and Goa stretch the western ghats...... so it's drive through mountains high enough to make your ear pop a few times, and there's thick forest too. So definitely alluring and exciting.

While we meant for exciting in spirit.....we got more. We actually got into a minor accident. An unexpected speed breaker, sudden brakes and the guy behind rammed into us.... breaking one of his headlights and one side of our fender.  Tempers were ruffled, longish altercation happened, he pushed off without even an apology.... seemed to have found it easy to lay blame on us, two women see. That really got to us, so we decided to report. Found the nearest police station, a cute little outpost high in the ghats....and that was a whole other story. 

A story that ended well..... as the police called that guy, and he actually met us in Panjim the next day with compensation in tow.

The pictures will tell the story better. 

To start at the beginning: 

The car getting loaded...... mostly with paintings, she had 14 large and medium ones....and 30 small ones. That's Arun in the background, and Pratik up front who came down to help load and flag us off.

On the road.....

B'fast stop, actually brunch stop, near Belgaum....... an hour and half from Hubli. We had yummy poori bhaaji and an interesting local tiffin, the name of which I've forgotten.

There's lots of onion farming in the belt

Into the ghats

Thick forest on the way

Somewhere on the top

Above the clouds

Chorla ghat which is border between Karnataka and Goa

And then the accident...... I'll write another post on that, it's an experience that calls for one.

And then yet another episode...a cute one.  We're pretty close to Panjim.... asking for directions and this guy says, "you can take that far off bridge or I'll take your car across by ferry"

Sujata was game. We get the car onto the ferry, which was an adventure in itself, as we're so not used to it. We then settle down for a nice ride. He gave us a ticket, a ticket for 7 Rupees. Before we can even figure how it can be so low,  we find that the guy has literally done a U turn of the ferry, and in under a minute the gang plank landed the other side of the river. Was crazy funny. 

Getting on the ferry......

The other side

A cute little boat ...that's the river we crossed on the ferry, literally crossed.

Driving into Panjim at close to sunset

And from this moment on Google maps became our close and constant companion, for the evening and for rest of trip. We drove straight to Kala Academy for unpacking and setting up of the paintings for the exhibition that started the next morning....... and thus ended an eventful day, well past ten at night.