Wandering Sasha

Ehemm.. whatchu looking for? Sexy ladies in bikinis? Yup true that was exactly our goa trip. Let me censor the trip details to make it readable for children.

Hello! Sasha is back with some cool party stories this time. As always, my travel buddy/best friend Mariya joins the story very quickly. Before getting in depth about the trip details, please allow me to do some buildup regarding the pre trip planning. Because the real story starts from there.

Remember our Mumbai trip? (If you don’t please check it out in my other posts. Thanks). So me and this pretty talented gorgeous young woman have this mandatory rule that when we meet, we decide our next meetup/vacay then and there. So before we parted at the Mumbai Airport, we decided to meet again in November. I said cool, let’s go for it.

The time has come, I realized to go for another trip. And this time, it should be a crazy getaway. Had enough of nature with Vagamon. Let’s go somewhere fun? And in India fun=Goa of course!

The planning started in October itself, a month prior to our mutual free days. It was in my bucket list to travel to Goa in a Vistadome AC compartment of Vande Bharat express. The train departs from Lokmanya Tilak station.

We both were super happy we could grab tickets to the Prateek Kuhad live concert happening at DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai. That too just a day prior to our Goa trip. Accordingly we planned everything and Mariya landed on 15th November. As always I had gone to pick her up from the Arrivals. The day was slow, just like how we wanted. This time she had come to my second apartment in Wadala. I had shifted from Lodha a few months ago. We spent the day chit chatting about life events till it was time to leave for the concert. Both of us wore matching blue dresses which we bought during the Vagamon trip. (See everything is connected?)

Had to stand in a snake like queue for more than an hour to get into the venue but we had no complaints. We spent the time commenting on rest of the people, giggling and praying they don’t get to hear what we said. It’s always fun to have her around.

The show was beautiful. The LED background imagery and of course the singer himself was astoundingly marvelous. After an hour while we were outside the stadium for a snack almost deciding to leave, Mariya ran inside hearing her favorite CO2 being sung live by Kuhad. I was personally a bit disappointed that my favorite song by him Cold/Mess wasn’t included in the concert. But let’s not forget what we got with us. Prateek Kuhad was magical with his voice echoing through the air. We reached back home and slept around 12 knowing we had a train to catch in 6 hours.

Ting tong! I was the first to hear the alarm I set for 5:15. I snoozed it because I knew (Rather believed) I’d wake up in couple of minutes because in my mind I’m awake 🙂

The time was 5:40 when we woke up. My heart skipped a beat. The train would reach Dadar at sharp 6. Holy cow!!! We just grabbed our travel bag which I had fortunately packed few days ago and Ubered a cab to the DDR railway station. We were hurrying towards platform three and trust me peeps, the train arrived within minutes after we reached the platform. We got into the Vistadome compartment and found our seats. It was then we realized I was in my nightwear wearing bathroom slippers. Nevermind. This is better than losing our expensive train journey to Goa.

It was a pleasant time in the train with comparably better food than other coaches. Mariya was found seeking calm in the middle of chaos I wondered how she does that. My girl was writing in her personal diary, scribbling something which is almost indecipherable by any other human being. She invented her own scripture for secrecy I suppose.

By evening we reached Goa and was shocked to discover the Taxi mafia of the city. It costed us around 2k for a taxi to Zostel Anjuna. But what to do otherwise, we were forced to accept the looting bargain. I prayed Karma to hit them back as I made the payment.

The Zostel was a really chill place, with good, fresh energy radiating from the surroundings. We changed into our casuals and slept for sometime. We woke up and made a friend, a boy from a place I don’t remember. Ask me his name; I don’t remember that too. But he was really sweet and helpful. He helped us rent a scooty and accompanied us to the nearest Anjuna beachside shack at night. It was a calm night. We danced and drank and ate good sea food. Yumm!!

I was drunk driving through the roads of Anjuna with him guiding us in front of us with his scooty. Fortunately we reached back to Zostel safe and sound. Well that was the entire day. I felt alive after like lots of months!

Next day morning we decided to have a healthy brunch at a beautiful place facing the beach. Google told us about Eva Cafe and instantly we fell in love with the place as we reached the location. I was driving a scooter after so long but it felt quite nice riding it. We had the perfect beach front view from our table at the cafe and our brunch was a delight to the heart. Somewhere I could feel the cracks in my heart slowly closing up.

After a hearty brunch we decided to walk down the cafe to the beach. (It was Mariya’s plan which I disagreed with initially but turned out to be a cool idea. Shush let’s not tell her). The drive back to the Zostel was pretty smooth. We did some street shopping on the way from local shops. Evening felt slow and composed as we rested in the Zostel itself. Made some new friends. Read few pages. Talked to family. It was a great day.

And the night… tadaaa!

Time to reveal the star spot of our trip, the Thalassa!!! Oh my goodness what a place! I knew about the spot long back through Instagram reels. Apparently there’s a belly dancer here who’s known to be the best in Asia. We were happy to wait in the queue to get a sneak peek of this party paradise.

And as we entered we realized why this club is super crazy. Damn the energy!! Just brilliant. We started our night with some drinks. I chose my favorite peach margarita and my girl chose champagne. We had dressed up like crazy just for this night. The grand finale of our trip.

I danced with a huge-ass gorilla and then we watched some performances from the Thalassa team. The performers were not Indians. The ladies looked fine as hell. And and and here enters the man of the night, Dharmesh- the super famous belly dancer who impressed us right from the beginning with his master moves. Wow. Like wowowow. How the hell can a man be this flexible? I wondered. Hmm the dude has got some real charm. All of the crowd went head over heels for this guy. Insane energy levels wtf.

We had neat shots in between and danced once again on the stage as they played crazy beats. It was during the dance we befriended a group of handsome young men from Delhi. They were here for one of their friend’s bachelor party. We started dancing together and it was so fun. Again there were performances by the Thalassa team who played with feathers and fire alike.

After we made sure we had a great time, we slowly left the club around 1:30 at midnight. Next day morning I woke up with a mad hangover and body ache. Mariya reciprocated the same feeling. We returned the scooter, and had some strong coffee and patiently waited for the caffeine to kick in.

We spent the morning shopping at the local market for souvenirs. Grabbed our bags and vacated the Zostel, caught our train to Bangalore; where I stayed for a couple of hours before my train to Mumbai. This was a truly memorable (I don’t remember half the drunk stories though) getaway. Ahhh Goa, you beauty!