4. Goa for a day --not long enough!

Our decision (rather my decision) to take an economy flight (the aforementioned SpiceJet) for the one hour flight from Mumbai to Goa was a bad one as we ended up spending the entire day at the Mumbai domestic airport for our plane to come in from Delhi. An expensive meal at the airport restaurant and conversations with fellow stranded passengers from Germany and Russia kept us from going stir crazy. Astrid had flown from Berlin via Helsinki (it's actually closer...look on a globe) to Mumbai the night before and had been waiting at the gate since early that morning. She was still alert and talkative, unlike the Russian couple next to her who were comatose and wrapped around each other, and eager to practice her English. When we asked if she had been to the U.S., she said "no, only to New York and California", which perhaps means she considers the midsection of the country to be the "real America"? ...hmmm she didn't look like a Palin supporter.

We finally made it to our hotel, the Radisson White Sands Resort in south Goa, by about 7 p.m. that evening after dropping Astrid off at a small town on the way. She was meeting up with friends and then off to an ashram for 10 days. This resort was absolutely beautiful and a welcome retreat from our days in Delhi and Mumbai. I felt a momentary pang of guilt about not getting out and seeing the countryside but given that we only had a day and it was unbelievably hot, we just spent our time in and at the pool. I think we were one of only about 20-30 guests at the resort at the high season... another victim of the hard economic times and terrorism fears. The few other guests were mainly Russians, including one loud, boorish drunk fellow who shouted orders to the staff in Russian. We learned later from our Indian friends that Goa is the retreat destination for the Russian Mafia and I think some of them were at the White Sands. At any rate... nice Americans like us were very warmly received and appreciated! We had dinner down at the beach that night and had the waiters and chef all to ourselves. Our waiter loved posing us for pictures and took some really nice ones using no flash at night:


We had wonderful fresh grilled tiger prawns and fish that had been caught that day and many good memories of our short beach stay. Govind, our waiter and talented photographer: