So this it. The grand finale. One last tango. The swansong. The day you have all been waiting for a long time. Ladies, Gentlemen and Jhayu, I present to you the last episode of the Goa Mini Series. Yes the journey is over and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I suffered. I know you did, sadist bastards!

So on the night The Reich Camp got busted by cops who saved our lives from being subjected to further torture at the hands of Herr P******m, we sat around drinking till people woke up in morning . In the mean while I conveniently managed to forget about the swimming pool at the resort so let’s go over it quickly.

From Goa

Apart from being dunked in to it at nights, I also spent a considerable amount of time in it in day time and that too voluntarily. In fact I spent more time in pool than Jhayu, KurtNirvana and Bunny Singh combined. It was a wonderful looking pool! Lined with blue tiles and filled with what looked like cool, clear water it was so inviting. Hell it even had a sunken pool side bar, so what if it was not functional. But this is where the good part ended. The bad part was that instead of water it was filled with acid. Yes, a highly diluted version of hydrochloric acid.

In their unbridled enthusiasm to keep the pool free of germs, the resort people decided to take no chances and put enough chlorine in it to kill even the cancer cells. Obviously I, not being a lesser mortal, did not realise it. Besides a sunblock was one of the few things I had forgotten to carry for the trip. Others included my trusted Magnum, my purple I-wanna-be-the-artist-formerly-known-as-prince-but-now-is-some-fucking-symbol suit and Loose Cannon.

So first dip in pool made me see red as the chlorine in the water increased the amount of blood flow to my eyes. I took care of this by wearing goggles even in pool. Sunblock was the last thing on my mind as I seriously believed that I was born pre-tanned. Apparently not. Seems like there was still some scope for darkation. One day I emerged from pool to realise that I had a reddish nose. I didn’t pay attention to it and next day again spent good hour in pool at noon. My nose didn’t take very kindly to being ignored. And it turned from medium to over done. Yes I had a black nose. Now don’t go all awww-how-cute on me! I know anything and everything looks cute on me but that’s not the point. The point is that I had a burnt nose dammit!

So once P******m and its motley bunch of P******mers, including the fore mentioned people, left for the railways station, a bunch of us who stayed back checked out and headed out to our new hotel. Obviously since P******m wasn’t footing the bill there was no way we could have afforded the 4.5k per day rooms at the resort so we downgraded a bit. By a bit I mean we moved 400 bucks a room kind of place to be shared by 3 guys per room. Yes we are that cheap.

From Goa

And by we I meant Me, Rhino, 5 other P******mers and 2 ex-P******mers. The rooms were a part of a chawl like home barely five minutes of walk to the beach. It came with a fan, a tv, a fridge, a double bed, usual far or table and cupboard, some plastic chairs, an attached bathroom and a assorted set of dogs that hated us for trespassing on to their territory. If you took one turn too early for this ummm guest house then you would have to deal with a family of pigs to get to the room. If you took one turn too late you had to face the bark. Damn it wasn’t easy being drunk in Goa.

From Goa

One thing I realized while spending time with these 8 lucky men is that some men cannot have a conversation without describing the anatomy of any woman with 50 meters of them, give or take few hundred kilometers. There were at least two such people in the group which kind of put me off. Since it was impossible and beneath me to take part in such trifle conversations I had only two excuses for keeping quiet, either eat or drink. And I made most of this opportunity.

From Goa

When I had heard the P******m was taking us to Goa for off-site I was ecstatic and was drooling even in sleep with the dreams of yummy food and cheap drinks haunting me. For most of the time till now it remained a dream only. But now that I had gotten rid of P******m, albeit temporarily, I went on to indulge myself. Without wasting any more time we rented 2 wheelers to take us around the place. So it was two per bike. Now me being spoilt rotten due to over indulgent parents rarely had to make any effort to reach from point A to point B and any memories I had to riding a two wheeler were of a Kinetic Honda 10 years back. The rest of the group didn’t have any faith in my memories and I was reduced to being a pillion rider. This turned out to the best decision ever as the driver could not drink for obvious reasons. I win!
So before we took off I had a beer or two, cant remember, we headed to Mapusa. We all took off at high speeds. The guy I was riding with caught with the bike in front and asked the question that haunted me for the rest of the trip, “Where is the brake?” WTF! Where is the brake? WTF! WTF! WTF! HALP! Luckily that was the only thing he didn’t know about riding and once he knew where it was he figured out how and when to use it too. And then shit happened.

From Goa

Just few minutes later we were stopped by Cops who asked for driver’s license. Now one of the drivers didn’t have it. So we all surrounded the cops, each one thrusting their license at the same time and the guy without license just hovered around. The Cops were totally confused by who had it and who didn’t and eventually let us go. Reached Mapusa without further incidents. We were starving. I remembered someone recommending a restaurant called Racecorner in the Mapusa market so we went around asking for directions and as usual were well lost. But after a series of wrong directions some one pointed us to the right place.

From Goa

Turns out Racecorner was actually Reis Corner. It was tiny, not so fancy place. Not really impressive. All that changed once we got the menu. Holy Guacamole! This place was cheap cheap cheap. I cant stress enough! They had chicken thali and fish thali for around 50 bucks. Hold on, the fish thali came with a full medium sized pomfret! They all ordered thalis all around while I, how could I share meal with lesser mortals, chose to have Calamari garlic fry along with usual Rum and Coke. Hold on, this is truly stupendous, the large Old Monk was, *drum rolls*, SIXTEEN BUCKS! ^$%#&U;%R$&^$%@#@%@$%. WTF! Yes the same large old monk that I paid THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY bucks for at the funny-colored-amphibian place. 360 vs 16. World just stopped making sense.

From Goa

After eating we moved on to finish the business we were in Mapusa for, Alcohol! Alcohol in Goa is so cheap that you have to be really stupid to be drinking water. We went NUTS! I found this awesome bottle for Old Monk which is actually shaped like a Monk. So I picked up two of them, one for me and one for Mermaid as she always wanted it. I went on to pick up another quarter of Old Monk Gold, a bottle of Malabaricus rum, a bottle of Feni, two bottles of quite cheap but very interesting wine called Roseta. That’s it I think. You think that’s bad? Another guy in the group picked up 9 bottles! You think we went overboard, hmm yes I guess so, considering you are only allowed to carry 2 bottles of alcohol from Goa to Mumbai. The cops have nothing better to do than to do random checks and “confiscate” the liquor you see. Things they have to do.

From Goa

All loaded we headed back to our “hotel” dumped all the alcohol there and headed towards beach. We spent some time on beach playing football and drinking King’s beer. There I picked up some trinkets made of shells from a lady for some friends. Later on when I was sober I realised it wasn’t shells but goddamn plastic! Hell it was so well faked that Mermaid didn’t realise it even though I told her. Looks like someone warned the Goan people that I was coming so they locked up all women inside their houses, I didn’t get to see many women let alone pretty ones!
Once it got dark we went around driving all over the place. Unfortunately on guy had a flat tire so all of us turned back to our “hotel” while one guy went to Reis Corner to pick up food. I stopped over at Souza Lobo’s and picked up Squid in Garlic Sauce and Sorpotel with bread. Reached back and gorged on some of the yummiest food ever. Souza Lobo rocks!

From Goa

Post dinner everyone proceeded to spend the whole night on the beach with their respective drinks respectively but I took early retirement as the last few days of no sleep finally caught up with me. Next day the breakfast was wine and left over dinner. Then we spent time packing our clothes and getting ready for the journey back. Went to some place for lunch, cant remember its name. I had Calamari, again, and Beef chilly fry. It was one of the guys birthday so we cut a cake. It was the most succulent, soft, yummy cake I have had in a long long long time! Damn you Goa. I would starve to death in Mumbai after this.

From Goa

Post Lunch we boarded the two Vans we had hired and headed to the station. We reached with still over an hour to go for the train. I and another guy had no tickets while rest had confirmed sleeper berths. So both of us bought the general class tickets costing under 200 bucks each. With so much time to go how could we just sit at station. So four guys, including me and Rhino, set out in search of a bar for last drinks. Unfortunately there was no bar around station and the only wine shop was closed. Not the ones to give up we sat outside the wine shop and waited for it to open at 5. We got a last round of King’s beer before heading back to station.

From Goa

We boarded the train and found empty berths and slept and no one bothered to check that I had general class ticket. I think it was because I am so intimidating. Before we dozed off we hatched our evil plan to get all alcohol in Mumbai safely. How, well if I tell you I will have to kill you, you, you and you. Oh and you too.