Off to a flying start

Following quite a heavy Wednesday night out with the boys where Chris (Harriet’s Dad) came and David (Moth) Brown we were awake before the alarm at 5.30am. It was raining and miserable, just like I felt but our taxi arrived to take us to the bus park, which is still the temporary one that has lasted for the last 5 years. The bus was 15 minutes late and we were lucky to get a seat it was so full; in fact there were two seats short. This delayed things for a further 30 minutes while the driver, checked, double checked our tickets and phoned base. He ended up having to put off the two people that didn’t have a seat to wait for the next one, saying that this had never happened before. This was very lucky for us as I never was very good at musical chairs. Once we had got going, Claire said that she wanted to tell me something about our booking; I told her to keep quiet until we got off the bus but anyway, I think we were the two overbooked passengers. It wasn’t long before we hit the traffic jams on the M1 at junction 13 and it took us another hour to get through them to Luton because there had been “an incident”. We arrived at Victoria about 2 hours late and it was still raining so we had to carry all the bags through the rain to Victoria rail station where we caught the Gatwick express. This service leaves every 15 minutes but when we arrived the clock said that there was 13 minutes until it left.

The plane left almost on time so we didn’t have long to walk around duty free, in fact we didn’t have any time to walk around duty free. Monarch Airlines had done a sterling job in getting the plane to leave on time, especially as the man that used to drive the stairs for disembarkation ran straight into the aircraft door. It was immediately obvious that this plane was going nowhere as the door seals were knackered; and so come to that was the driver. They managed to get another plane ready for us without much of a delay with a similar capacity to our proper one; they were only two seats short, and guess who the last two passengers to arrive were? Although the plane had a similar capacity it was smaller meaning that the seats were extremely cramped for a long haul flight and also it couldn’t carry enough fuel to get all the way there in one go so we had to stop in Bahrain to re-fuel. We didn’t particularly mind this because we had never been to Bahrain before and it gave us a chance to see their bars. The aeroplane seats we the smallest that I have come across and could only get in by lifting the middle arm rest up before I got in, but this seemed to change the channel on the tv. We had the very back seats that were where adjacent to the smallest part of the isle and everyone kept rubbing past to go to the toilets etc. They also had to queue up most the time so we couldn’t see the already small tv screens. The staff were wonderful and made the best of a bad job and because the plane had to refuel, the original staff were not allowed to do the whole journey as it took them over their hours so all the staff were there with only one hour’s notice. They had to get off and stop the night in Bahrain before returning the next morning but this left us with a rather cramped plane and no staff. They had to fly an entire crew out from England, with hardly any notice, so that they could take over and complete the rest of our journey with us. An amazing job was done by all, except the ex-stair driver.

We arrived at our hotel, I use the word hotel loosely, at around 7.30am local time but we couldn’t check in until 12.00 noon. As I have said in the past, you can tell what time it is in India, when in the UK, by turning your watch up side down. This trick works from England and India because they are 5 and half hours ahead of England. We however could not do this because; both Claire’s and my watch had recently broken so I had to keep getting my phone out. This also didn’t help as it was still set at English time because I had turned roaming and the internet off for the duration of our stay. The only way I could find out the time was to set up the analogue clock on my phone and turn it up side down. Anyway, we dumped our bags in reception, had a free breakfast, changed in the dirty toilet and set off to find the beach. They have had really weird weather here in India this year; in fact all over Asia and I think Australia too. The monsoon normally finishes at the end of September and they have clear blue skies until the following April, but they are yet to stop properly this year. Although the ground was wet and it was a little overcast it stayed dry for the whole day on Friday and we would have had a nice walk all along the beach to Baga river and back, if it wasn’t for the constant pestering to sit on their free sun beds. They even have a Weather Spoons and a Love Shack but most are only just being built because we are still at the beginning of their season. There are few white tourists here, the vast majority being of an Indian descent, and in their thousands. Already, Claire wants to go back to the South, I think that I will have my work cut out to keep her here for more than a couple of days. Tomorrow I will rent a motor bike for a couple of days so we can see as much as possible before we slide off to our favourite south Goa. The only two nights that we stayed in north Goa before was also in Calangute but we are yet to see anything that we recognise. We remember it looking more like a normal town with lots of tourists advertising “roast beef with real Bisto gravy”.

The room is very basic, even for Indian standards. We have our own shower room and toilet and two single beds and a small balcony where I am sitting to write this but no TV, fridge or aircon, only a large fan over the twin beds. Trouble is, it only works when the electric is on, which is not so often and even though it is cooler than normal it’s still about 30 degrees and even more humid than normal because of all the rain they have had. It’s not really worth us paying extra for a fridge because we will not be stopping for the 3 weeks and they usually charge by the week. We have stayed at many different Goan hotels in our time and very few have not got a TV; I wonder if they charge extra for those as well. Anyway, Claire forgot the cork screw so we have had to live entirely on food and water since we got here. We needed a drink, especially with the last two days that we had in England before flying out here, but I will leave Claire to tell that tale another time.