My World of Food and Travel

I have been away for a long, long time from blogosphere now. Maybe the longest time ever since I started my blog. For the first time I have not been able to balance my work life, home and blogging, all thanks to someone’s terrible planning at office. Before I turn this into a rant-post, I should also tell you that despite all the unearthly hours of office work that I am putting in, I have been travelling a lot and gone birding to my heart’s content. I have been using every spare minute to recharge myself with things that I love, or the stress would have busted me for sure.  And so, even though my work schedule is still pretty tight, I am taking a breather and refreshing my memories about my second back-to-back Goa visit – this time for Christmas. ( The earlier one was in Diwali. ) The last time we were in Goa, we did not have a proper notion about the region’s rich birdlife – where to go, what to expect, et al. This time, we were a bit prepared, though the visit was not stric...

“So, we are in Goa,” I said to the husband, who was lazily lounging around in the four-poster antique bed at Cancio’s House. “And the beaches are over.” “Now for the birds,” he replied sleepily. Goa’s susegad air seemed to have worked well on him. “But where?” I nudged him. “You are the researcher, you do the research.” He then rolled over and started snoring. I quickly browsed through some sites and before I knew it, I had fallen asleep, too. It was 6.00 am when I woke up with a start. The husband, surprisingly, was already awake. “Where to, then?” he asked. Morjim beach is what I found myself saying and Morjim beach was where we found ourselves at around 7.00 am in the morning. The beach is a nesting and hatching habitat of the endangered Olive ridley sea turtles. The Tourism Department has strived to aid conservation efforts by restricting temporary seasonal structures (like shacks) to a portion of the beach and requiring them to operate only during daylight ho...

(Caution: Long post ahead!) My first memory of Goa was as a wide-eyed kid, squealing with delight as the waves took away the sands under my feet, way back in 1989. The wonder of this small coastal state remained with me and I continued to visit it repeatedly in the subsequent years, sometimes with family, a few times with office colleagues and once with my cousin and her friends. And yet, each time I ended up seeing the same things over and over again. So much so that Goa became synonymous only with beaches, shacks, churches, clubs and port wine. Finally, the trip in October 2014, the ninth one in the series, cracked this belief. Goa was a revelation as we explored a side away from the beaches, the non-touristy circuit, a facet so rich and diverse in its ecosystem and culture that it took our breath away.  Come along with me and I will show you what I did this time that was different from the other trips and was so fulfilling. Here’s what I did: 1. Went bird-watchin...