An Irksome Tour To Goa!!

Its February 14th, obviously its the day of the Month with the “Valentine’s Day” celebrated around the world. And also my tour to Goa has finally ended and I’m safe and sound in my basecamp. The Industrial Visit (will be referred as I.V from now on) fever was been spreading throughout our class for the past 4–5 months. Inspite of so many hurdles and opposition from our department staff till the last minute of starting the tour, we had managed to overcome them all. But that was not worth it. To say things clearly, this is what happened :

Past — Feb 8 :

Our Head Of the Department (HOD) did not like the idea of the students planning the I.V to Goa, since he felt that it was unsafe for us. The organizers had selected Hyderabad, Bangalore just for name sake so that it might look like an Industrial visit instead of just an ordinary tour, but their main aim in their minds was to get to Goa for booze themselves with cheap alcoholic beverages available there. The organizers showed clear, false fostering over the students for making them getting interesting the I.V. for their own selfishness. However, 95% of the class agreed, paid the money and we were fully set to start our tour to Goa.

Day 1 — Feb 9 :

Our Class Advisor had told us that its was compulsory for every student to attend the class on that day, since if everyone had bunked the class for the excitement of I.V, the class would look empty. So like everyone except the organizers, I had went to college after preparing my backpack ready-to-go, the previous day itself. Our Ma’am got permission for us to leave the college at afternoon itself so that we can get ready for the tour without getting restless at the last minute. I started from the college at 1PM and reached home by 3.30PM and I verified my backpack for my clothes, medicine, first aid kit, snacks and water. I hired a taxi at 5PM to get to the railway station and I had told my friend Arumugam to recharge my mobile with an amount of ₹200. He had done the same but due to the misconception made by the shopkeeper who deliberately recharged me with a different plan which was worth ₹201 and was a 3G data plan. After reaching the railway station, we had fought with the shopkeeper and the AirTel customer-care to get the problem resolved. Finally at 7 PM, we had resolved the problem and I had been given with a 3G data plan with 250MB. However, my talktime balance was still low and therefore we had to buy two more recharge coupons worth ₹50, so that I could talk to my parents after getting to Goa.

After an hour, our train (West Coast Express) to Mangalore had arrived and with lots of excitement we entered it. Most of the boys had started drinking in the train itself and one of them made a big crisis in the middle of the journey that made him separated from everyone one of us till the end of the tour. Our mobile networks started to go out of our home network and they were on roaming. Me and Arumugam spent a sleepless night till morning because our organizers did not care about our seating arrangement.

Day 2 — Feb 10 :

We had arrived at Mangalore at 5.30AM in the morning and we were waiting for our next train. We had filled up the ports in the railway with our mobile phones for charging them and we had our morning coffee. At 6.30, our train to Madgaon named Verna Express had arrived and we departed from Mangalore. The compartment was a chair car and it was a slow diesel train moving through tunnels and over beautiful rivers. We were forced to stop by various small stations in the country side an Me and my friends Muthu Sankar, Sadam, Shahul and Manikandan got down and took various photos at each of them. I also helped my fan Saranya to fetch drinking water from one of the stations while we were roaming with my handycam when our train was at halt for few minutes.

At about 12PM, we had arrived at Madgoan (Margoa) train station and with tiresome sleeves, we took our backpacks and went out through the exit. We had waited for half an hour for our bus to arrive at the train station and I was busy shooting interviews with my mates about the train experience we had in the past two days. Later, we boarded the bus and went inside the city for having our lunch. It was about 3PM and the restaurants were out of seats for feeding us all. So we separated ourselves into groups and searched for other restaurants in the city. Me and my gang incidentally went inside a restaurant which was actually a Bar and we were scared of the surroundings. We had finished our lunch with hurry-burry and ran towards the ATM after realizing the expenses which we may incur in the following days might tear our pockets soon. After getting our wallets filled with cash, we ran towards our bus while everyone was waiting for us with dismay in their faces and set off to Hotel Solmar Exotic, which should be a 5-star hotel as told by our organizers. But when we reached there, we found that it was just a big mansion with a dirty swimming pool with no security for anyone. We were very disappointed and with sigh and anxiety we checked in to our rooms. Our room had a broken televsion with a 2–3 channels and my roommates (Sadam, Manikandan and Arumugam) was eager to watch the music channel 9XM. Our peacefulness didn’t last long since just after 15 mins, one of the organizers came to our room and told us that we need to change rooms since the girls were feeling uncomfortable with their existing rooms. We had a quarrel with him over this and to avoid any fights we decided to shift after our dinner. During the dusk of the evening, Me, Shahul and my roommates started searching for a tea stall to have some tea. Unfortunately we were not able to find any within our expanse. Then we found out that tea was available in our hotel itself for a price of ₹8. There was a heavy quarrel among the students regarding the look of the hotel and its location on the map. The hotel was totally insecure and the streets beside it were filled with pitch darkness during the night because of the absence of street lights. The organizers had told us that the hotel was looking beautiful when they had seen in the website, but to our eyes, it was a total disaster. Some of the kerala boys had raged with the organizers that they did not like their rooms and wanted immediate check out from this horrible place. The organizers calmed them down and started collecting an extra amount of ₹250 from each student for shifting to another hotel. Most of us did not like their sudden change and started to suspect them that they are trying to steal money from us. Finally the decision was set that we will be checking out the next day morning to another hotel.

After finishing the cat-fight, we decided to head out to the nearest vegetarian restaurant for having our dinner and soon realized that 99% of the restaurants in the city were actually Bars. We finished our lunch, bought some mineral water in the nearby pastry shop and started to head back to our hotel room. As I said above, we had to swap our rooms with girls since the organizers told us that it was insecure of them. But the tangible reason was that the girls had planned to swap rooms because their television was not working. We had been cheated by them and yet still my roomates did not lose their temper while I was burning with anger. For an hour, we talked about our day and plugged in our electronic gadgets for charging them up for the next day. Then the boys had went to the swimming pool to have the last-laugh and spent about 3 hours playing in the water during the dark night. I had went to sleep after receiving a call from my friend Kirthika who told me to sleep as soon as possible.

Day 3 — Feb 11:

We woke up in the morning at 7pm with frequent disturbances from Sadam’s alarm clock at 5am and we got ready to check out from our hotel. We had taken our belongings and boarded our bus. For breakfast, we searched for a restaurant nearby and finished it at 10am. Next we headed out to an old fort created by the Portugese. It was a a very beautiful fort surrounded by the sea on three sides and it had a vast expanse in the center. It also had a light house as a part of it, which looked very aged and darkened. There were few school children visiting the fort and few of the boys took photos with them and had lots of fun. After finishing the sightseeing, we exited the port and had some Nimbu-Soda (Carbonated Lemon Juice) near the bus. We boarded the bus and headed off to a restaurant by the beach. The Goa Beach was filled with colorful boats and parachutes flying here and there. There was a lot of water sports which we could try out for a certain amount price. I did not like to get into the water since I was not ready at that time, but my fellow mates got inside the water and had lots of fun. Me and my gang were walking by the beach with coke while Sankar was having his treat with a tin can of Beer. After enjoying the stay at the beach, we had to search the neighborhood for having our lunch. I did not like to have lunch at that time, so I bought myself a Kwality Walls Twister Zing to get my tummy filled.

After everyone finished their lunch, we boarded the bus back at 1.50PM and went to another rocky beach at 2.40PM. We took lots of photos and videos of our friends playing the water and we also tried to catch some small crabs crawling and hiding in the rocks. We spent about one and half an hour there and we started moving to our new hotel. We had arrived at the hotel at about 5PM and to our surprise, the name of the new hotel (Hotel Solmar) was the same as the one which we had checked out in the morning. It was all making sense, that the organizers had mixed up the hotel locations and had us all worry in vain because of their mistake. Finally, we had settled down and refreshed ourselves for dinner.