Two Weeks in a Palolem Beach Hut

OK, first, I realize this post is a bit delayed getting out since I spend the past two weeks in a Palolem beach hut and this is when I spent my holidays but I promise to catch things up for all of you who have been keeping up with me on this journey! Getting access to WiFi across the world is not always the easiest to achieve while traveling so I just try to do my best! Stick with me though as I promise to catch up this blog to my present travels in the next two weeks so stay tuned for many more posts to come!!

Taken at the far end of Palolem beach

The local Indians at the beach wearing all their clothes…

So after my first week in Goa, I had the holidays coming up and was torn with a decision to either spend the time in Thailand or just to remain in Goa. Since I’d been traveling almost five months by now, I decided maybe it would be best to just sit tight where I was and I figured a small Palolem beach hut would be perfect. I liked to think of it as a vacation from my travels. But wait, isn’t traveling a vacation? Well, no, not exactly. At least not all the time!

Friends I met in China that I randomly ran into again two months later! They were sitting next to me eating breakfast in Goa at my favorite restaurant spot!

It’s easy to pack it up for a weekend and head to the beach or mountains but its a whole different thing to plan out a trip country to country and deal with the airports, taxis, languages, currencies, border crossings and visas, hotels, and all the other fun stuff. Obviously I still think it is all worth it to deal with this if you truly want to travel but eventually, you’ll want a bit of a break from it all and Goa seemed the perfect fit. While you’re here, you realize how much different it is than the rest of India. Sure there are still cows on the beach and touts on the streets but things are just much more relaxing here so it wasn’t too hard a decision to stay through New Years day.

Knocking down the coconuts. This guy would make his rounds about every week to keep the trees free from coconuts from falling onto the beach (and to a lesser degree the poor saps lying under the trees on the beach). Apparently coconut trees are responsible for killing 150 people every year, far more than are killed by shark attacks! Just a random bit of trivia…

Anyone in the mood for pizza?

“The Ice Machine Man”. Start with an empty bottle, fill it with water and freeze it. Wait one hour, then remove from freezer and beat it with a spoon until chunks of ice have filled your glass. The result? A proper Red Bull & Vodka on a sandy beach.

I found a beach hut right along the shore for slightly more than it would cost me for a tasty sub sandwich from Jersey Mike’s back home and I became a local of sorts at the neighboring restaurant and bar.

Sunset from the restaurant I frequented at least twice a day

My Palolem beach hut for the next two weeks…

My friend I had been traveling with all through India up to this point was unfortunately headed home for the holidays so for a short time, it was back to just me, the sand and

The Nepali gang from my restaurant. After spending every day at the same spot, you’ll get to know the staff pretty well and you’ll also rack up quite a hefty tab after three weeks! Like 8,000 Rupees worth!

an awesome sunset every night. After a few days I had met some friends, one of whom had actually been living right here on this very beach for the last two months! And I thought MY three weeks here was a long time to spend on this sandy beach!

My Palolem group! At this table we are representing England, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden, Brazil, Holland, Jordan and the U.S.

Since I was getting a bit ‘stir crazy’ just sitting on the beach, we decided to rent kayaks on one of the days and paddled around one of the islands right at sunset. Why had I not done this sooner? It was a great way to spend a couple hours on the water…

Yes, you can still have a Secret Santa party while in India!

On another day, we had all set out to hike that very same island I had kayaked around. It was actually nice to get away from the beach for a while and we spent a few hours there on the rocks. We even found out there were monkeys on this small island though not much else. While there, I realized what the date was and felt utterly foolish when I realized it was actually a few hours before Christmas Eve! Maybe it wasn’t quite ‘Eve’ yet back home but it definitely hit me how crazy it would be to spend the holidays on the other side of the globe in a small Palolem beach hut instead of my hometown with my family after all the years I’d spent doing that.

That night, we didn’t do too much to celebrate but I did rock out a santa hat most of the night and most of the restaurants and bars had things going on for the occasion as well as many decorations as well as fireworks up and down the beach.

What happens when you lose your iPhone on the beach? You end up like this poor old sap at 8 in the morning in front of a restaurant of folks eating their breakfast and providing free entertainment. I felt bad for him… He ended up putting up flyers all over the beach for the next two days for the lost phone…Not sure how it turned out

Getting my ‘Indian’ pants custom fitted for the big night….

Making Chapati bread at the restaurant. Basically, you shape dough into a pancake form and then you stick it to the inside wall of a fire pit barrel. And its hot in there! It took me three attempts for a successful Chapati sticking! It kept falling into the coals…

Fireworks every night…

For New Years celebration, things were similar to that of Christmas in regard to the fireworks that were set off during the night as well as the bars and restaurants organizing their own type of celebrations. Since it was such a festive night, I convinced all my friends to get into the Indian spirit by dressing up. For us guys, we sported white pants with a white top (traditional dress for men on certain occasions) and the women went shopping for their ‘Sari’ dresses which are worn by Indian women. It definitely made the night more festive although my shirt didn’t make it after an unfortunate incident of orange Fanta ruined the outfit by some random beach goer. For New Years night, there were definitely fireworks going off as mentioned before but unfortunately, the power along the beach had went out right before twelve and had been out the rest of the night so things still did go on but it definitely put a damper on the night since the music came to an abrupt end everywhere as did cold drinks later in the evening.

Street view of the market off the beach. And I’m sorry but I don’t know why this guy appears to have a trash can on his head…

Since leaving Goa the day after New Years is never recommended due to the maddening amount of people trying to do the same, I decided to stay just one more day before having to head back to Mumbai for my flight to Thailand. That crazy experience, which was done by bus, is going to have to be put into an entirely different post! My Palolem beach hut days have come to a close!

This was taken on the far end of the bay. You have to cross some large boulders to get there but it is likely the best place in Palolem beach to catch the sunset and I had only discovered it after almost two weeks of being here.

This was taken from a small island we hiked to next to the beach. Apparently, there were monkeys here but no cows in sight.

OK, way too many sunset shots on this post but what else can I do? I caught the sunset every night for three weeks straight!