Trip to Goa & In Goa

Our plan was to leave home at 6 am … so, the car was loaded the previous night, except for a few last minute things. We were able to keep up to our schedule, which was an achievement in itself with 2 kids.
Before I go into more details, let me …

… REWIND A BIT:
Initially, we contemplated leaving earlier in the month, which would have been right after the 2 workshops. But, we decided to attend our church ‘Family Retreat’ on the 2nd of October. We had a team to look after the kids the whole day, which was a blessing.

Pictures at the Family Retreat of the ‘Shibah Community Church’:

Kids excited at the beginning of the Retreat:














The families at the ‘Family Session’:














All participants at the retreat:














… BACK TO OUR TRIP NOW:
We were out of Bangalore and on the NH-4 towards Mumbai within 45 mts. The drive was very pleasant …


… until late in the morning, before we hit a really bad patch. The roads were literally like waves, the only difference was it was not moving. The car was like a boat being tossed up and about … it was dusty, making it very uncomfortable. After a few kms. of such driving, we were back on good road for a while.

Last year, when we drove to Goa, we halted for the night due to inclement weather. This time around we were doing it right through the entire stretch of 666 kms. from house-to-house. Not a very exciting number in the Scriptures :-(
The challenging part was trying to find a better route to enter Goa. Last year, we went one way and came back the other. Though the return was slightly longer, the roads were of better quality. I was hoping to find that link.

And at Hubli, after driving for about 415 kms, there was a sign towards Karwar and we zoomed down that road. It was a very pleasant drive with lot of greeneries. The weather was pleasant too, making it a better drive.

Having seen a few venomous snakes near our house, not so long ago, my eyes were around the roadside to sight a snake .. and I was overjoyed when I saw a black thing slithering on the side of the road .. it was a BLACK COBRA (I think it was, anyway!) … what a sight! Just looked up out of curiosity, enough for me to get this picture & disappeared out of sight.














It felt like we were driving through a zoo, when we came across an Elephant on the road, blessing people who gave alms.















As we were nearing Goa, we saw a few landslides owing to the heavy rainfall in the Northern part of Karnataka. If we had come a few days early, we might have been stuck with the landslide. There were at least 10 big ones enroute ... and some of the boulders were as huge, if not bigger than the car. Thank God for His wisdom and safety.

This was Ame’s first sight of the Ocean .. so, we wanted it to be a memorable one for her!















The drive through this crevice was simply beautiful.














And as usual, it was FUN at the beach in the evenings:
















Playing in the mud:




























... burying the kids leg in the sand:




























And Theo’s ‘masti’ (= heroics) on the beach:














Kids playing at the backyard:















Not without my ‘mother-in-law’:















Carmen’s mum will be undergoing a minor surgery in her eye on 14th early morning …. And we will stay for a couple of days.

We will be returning to Bangalore on the 17th – again, hoping to do one straight drive all the way home!
It's been cut short by a week for a reason, which I can't go into detail here.
It's disappointing for us, & more so for the kids!