RUN!!!

Goa is beautiful!  I don’t need to say any more than that. Goa is just a really great place to go visit.  I only wish we had more time.  And, at the same time, I am happy with the time we had.  No, that’s not a contradiction.  Let me explain.

At Sandesh’s suggestion, we were going to try out a new service from the airport called “AirLift”.  No, we did not get a helicopter (yet). Airlift is a new private service that furnishes a brand new fleet of Toyota Innova AC and WiFi enabled taxi’s to and from the airport from anywhere in the city! Take a moment and think here, these are big cars compared to everything else on the road, they have AC, and a new car smell too.  These taxis are nice; and, at 300 rupees (7.80USD) per person, it’s a great deal. A normal non-AC Indicab taxi with very little luggage room and even less leg room will cost upwards of 500 rupees to get to the airport from where we are in the city.  Back to the story, so we were going to get one of these taxi’s to the airport.  Step one, go to the super market.  Step two, buy the Airlift card at the supermarket which has the special code on it to reserve the taxi, really, you pay for the taxi at the super market.  Step three, call the Airlift call center, give them the special code on the card and reserve the taxi.  Step four, wait. Step five, wait longer. Step six, panic.

When Sandesh called the call center to reserve the taxi, someone there messed up and never actually reserved the taxi for us.  Unknown to us, we were waiting for nothing. We had planned to leave Honeywell at 3pm allow 1+ hour for travel to the airport, time to check in, time to go through security, and time to wait.  All of this culminating for a 5:55pm flight.  Well, like I said in step four and five, we waited.

We stood outside the Honeywell main gate at 2:30pm waiting.  And when 3:30pm came around, we started to get worried.  Sandesh called the call center, and for some reason, every phone line was busy. After 20 minutes of being on hold, we decided that we needed to call a different cab.  So, he called, and about ten minutes later, we had a cab there ready to go.  He laughed when we told him we needed to be at the airport for a 5:55 flight, but he said he would try his best for us.  As always, traffic in Bangalore was a mess and the speed bumps did not help anything.  The whole way to the airport, we were passing signs that kept counting down the distance to airport and I was constantly calculating how long it would take us at our current speed.  When we were about 15km away, I calculated that we should be there just in time to see the plane take off.  For some reason, I had a calm, reassuring feeling that we would see that plane take off, but from the inside of the cabin.

5:40pm, we arrived at the airport.  FIFTEEN MINUTES before the flight was supposed to take off! We ran from the taxi through the lines, up to the check in counter and said we were here to check in for the flight.  The lady looked at us, and went right back to her computer.  Again, we said we need to get on that flight.  She said there was no way, this time she even called someone to find out if it was possible, and again the answer was no.  She started telling us that we would need to book another flight for the next day.  NO!  We needed this flight.  As she was talking, my mind started racing, there was too much depending on this flight. We had a hotel room booked for the night, we had a driver waiting for us in Goa, this flight was non-refundable, so we would lose this ticket and then have to buy another, and we would need to go back to the city and then come back again the next day.  There was no way I was ready to spend another 200USD for all of that.  Somewhere in my thoughts, I heard Steve tell the lady “We don’t have any check luggage, it is all carry-on.”  She looked at as, and said, “Let me check”  After she hung up the phone, she printed out our boarding passes and said “RUN”.  So we did.  We ran though the airport to the security check point and after three minutes we were all through and off running though the airport again.  We made it to the gate and got on a shuttle that drove us to the plane sitting on the tarmac.  Somehow, we made our way through the airport leaving the taxi to sitting on a plane in just under 12 minutes.  In retrospect, it is a great story, but not something that I want to have to do again.  I am still amazed that we managed to pull it off.  Once we were on the flight, it was only a short forty-five minute flight to Goa.  And as I said before, we had a driver waiting for us when the plane landed and he took us right to the hotel.  It was like the whole fiasco never happened.

The rest of the weekend had nothing in common with our departure.  Really, it was the exact opposite.  A nice relaxing weekend by the lounging pool side, walking on the beach, and really fresh seafood!

Saturday night, we went to a little place next to our hotel, our table was literally right on the beach and we ordered the catch of the day.  As we were sitting under our palm tree umbrella enjoying our dinner, we wanted to enjoy even more.  So, we ordered plates of tiger prawns, more fish, and then even another plate of fresh fish.  It was a Goan dining experience to remember with amazing local spices, flavors, and loads of garlic. If you don’t know me very well, I have an addiction to garlic.  Seriously, I put it in everything.  My roommates back at school have a love/hate relationship when I cook.

Sunday, we woke up later than we planned, and a bit more sun burned than we all thought.  I have had worse sunburn, but it’s still not pleasant.   With some aloe, I will be fine in two days.  The problem wasn’t my sunburn; it was leaving the hotel.  I didn’t want to leave.  I was enjoying myself too much.   All good things must come to an end.  So we left the hotel.  Originally, we planned to rent scooters for the day and drive ourselves around Goa.  Why not?  The traffic here was safe.  We never did do that, instead we wound up renting a taxi for the day and he drove us around to all the places. I am kind of glad that we didn’t do our original plans.  We had a nice driver and he took us to some really interesting places in Goa.  This included 15th century cathedrals built by early explorers and missionaries,  a Portuguese fort guarding the bay,  a trip through the capital city of Panjim, and a few other locations.   It was a nice slow paced trip around the very laid back state of Goa.  A calm end to a serene weekend.  Now only if Bangalore would learn from Goa and not be so liberal with beeping the horns.

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