Panaji, Goa

After almost a full day of travelling, we made it to Panaji. We were met by Mrs. Fernandez, our slightly crazy but very lovely host. Since it was now dinner time, we asked for some restaurant recommendations which were vegetarian friendly. She completely didn’t understand vegetarianism and was just so confused as to why I don’t eat meat.

She was at a bit of a loss as she could only recommend seafood options, but we ended up finding a restaurant from Google Maps. The food was amazing—James went for a veggie biryani, and I went for a mango vegetable curry. Probably one of the best curries I had by that point and was exactly what I was expecting from the South Indian cuisine.

Unfortunately, though, the next morning, James came down with his first bout of Delhi belly, which we assume was from the biryani. Strangely, my bout of Delhi belly also came from a biryani, so from this point onwards, we swore off biryanis for the rest of the trip—which was really quite annoying since they are so tasty!

Apart from going jogging, I spent the next two days just wandering around the small city. We stayed in the Latin area, so I was in my element taking photos of the colonial-style buildings and streets. Despite their colonial look, we found out from Mrs. Fernandez that some of them, including her guest house, were actually built fairly recently—about 10 years ago. It was crazy how touristy it was—so much so that most of the houses and businesses had signs stating that photography was prohibited. Mrs. Fernandez also had one of these, and every so often, we would hear her from our room, shouting at tourists to stop taking photos.

When I mentioned to Mrs. Fernandez that James wasn’t well, she offered a herbal remedy. I didn’t particularly want to go into details about it and just mentioned he had was having some tummy problems. So every time she saw me or him, she would always ask if he had taken the medicine, and we didn’t really know what to say. In the end, on the last day, we just admitted we didn’t use it (but thanked her very much).

With James still not feeling well, I went to one of the local beauty parlors and got my nails done. A young man did them—he cut them a little too short for my liking but did a great job shaping and painting them. Although they looked nice on day one, they didn’t last very long. I suspect it was because he only applied one coat. Still, it was a nice 20- to 30-minute break.

On the third day, James was starting to feel a little better, so we decided to venture north out of the city. We were on a mission to track down some friends of James’ grandparents, who they had lost contact details for. Armed with a piece of paper with two names on it and a Tibetan market where they once had a stall, we set off on a day-long adventure to see if we could reconnect them.

So far, we’d only taken long-distance tourist buses, but to get to North Goa, we would need to take a local bus. We got to the station and had absolutely no idea which bus we needed—we were looking at the fronts of the buses and checking the bus station timetables but couldn’t see any buses going to our destination. After walking up and down the station a few times, I went and asked someone, which gave me the chance to practice my Hindi again—something I hadn’t done in a while since Hindi wasn’t spoken in Naddi. We got directions to another section of the bus station, and we were soon on our way—no air conditioning, but large open windows that let a breeze through to keep us cool.

Our homestay breakfast was so poor that by the time we got to North Goa, we were starving. The first priority was finding food. We popped into the beach area to grab something to eat, passing countless tourist street vendors, all selling similar things and inviting us to look inside.

Our next stop in Goa was Colva. We mentioned this to Mrs. Fernandez, and very helpfully, her son was also there and explained that we should get the express bus there as it’s the first stop. When we were checking out, Mrs. Fernandez invited us into her home (I had actually had a tour a few days before when James was tucked up in bed). She explained that her younger son had died whilst working as a police officer—he was struck in a car accident. Now, it was just her and her older son, as her husband had died a very long time ago when the boys were very young. Mrs. Fernandez’ plan was to build the guest house and use it to pay for her younger son so he wouldn’t have to work in the police, but sadly, this didn’t quite happen in time. The younger son was a very talented painter, so all around the guest house, his artwork was displayed. The older son helped with online bookings for the guest house, and it also seemed like they had other properties for rent, which he managed.

It really hit me how hard it can be for families in India, and I just really felt for Mrs. Fernandez—she was really so lovely to talk to, despite often being in mid-conversation with her when she would stop briefly to yell at tourists to stop taking photos. We took some photos on the last day, she didn’t realise it was us and we didn’t see she was looking, so she yelled at us too – we were very scared and apologised refusely, but as soon as she realised it was us she let us off. Super scary but also very lovely at the same time.