Go .......

We woke up early since we knew that six of us getting ready wouldnt be a fast exercise. Ashwin was the first one to have a bath & he quickly ran to the temple to seek the blessings of Lord Gokarnatheshwara. He also had an apology to make for last year, hoping that the curse wouldnt continue.We were all thankfully ready within 9'o clock and quickly finished the formalities of checking out. Ajay felt (his sixth-nonsense) that his front brake was not alright & that it needed brake oil and as always (dont ask me how) there was a bike-shop right beside our lodge!! Even on my bike, the chain seemed to brushing with the chain-guard & was making a metallic noise intermittently. I asked him to check & after removing everything it was found that the chain-guard itself was a bit broken & the sound was due its vibration, so after a bit of risk-calculation I decided to get rid of the chain-guard for good. A year and a half ago I had got the knee-guard & saree-guard taken off from 'her', now the chain-guard, so 'she' was almost 'naked' now.

One more friend of our's Shreeshaa Hegde had left the previous night from Bangalore & reached Goa this morning. He was staying at his uncle's place in Margoa & we told him that once we reached Goa we would pick him up & then search for some place near some beach. We left Gokarna at about 10.30AM, we were finally on our way to Goa. We were stopped at the Goa-Karwar checkpost and asked to show all the documents (RC-book, license, insurance & emission certificate). The inspector then insisted that we show our originals which we (barring Ashwin) didnt have so he asked us to shell out a 100 bucks, which was very cheap - both pricewise & conductwise.

We reached Margoa at around 3'o clock or so and after calling up Shreeshaa decided on some spot to meet. After a slight bit of confusion he found us & we had lunch at a restaurant nearby. He then took us to his uncle's place which was very near to the central part of the city. It was a spacious single BHK house. It seems Uncle was staying alone here for work and his family was back in his hometown. He was a very nice guy & he didnt have any problems with so many of us spending a night or two at his place. So we decided to have our lodging in Goa there itself. Who would have thought that of all the places we would go to we would get free accomodation in Goa a day before New year!!!

Here one more guy, Jai, joined us from Bhatkal. He was Roshan's friend and also Bhatta & Murthy knew him since he was from CTS as well. After a bit of rest, we decided to go to the nearest beach - Mapusa beach. But we were 8 of us & only 3 bikes so me, Roshan & Jai went to check if we could hire a bike. The rates were high and since we needed it for just one place we felt it would work out costly, so Jai & Roshan took an auto to Mapusa. It was a bit tedious to get to it. This beach had a lot of restaurants but I guess the terrorist-threat that was looming around Goa during this New year's eve had its effect. We sat for some time, walked around for some more time and after a while when we had nothing else to do we headed back. We decided that we would go triple-ride on two bikes as long as there were no cops around. But we soon realized that cops were there just about everywhere & that they had bigger things to bother about.

Shreeshaa suggested a place for dinner near to his uncle's house & it turned out to be a nice one. We drank merrily, ate heartily & on Roshan's insistence ended up having shots (of Romanov) as well. Since the house was at a walking distance it was decided that Bhatta, Roshan & Jai would come walkig & the rest of us took our bikes & left. A few minutes after we had reached, we got a call from Jai saying he needed 'help' in managing the other two. So me, Murthy & Ashwin walked back and 'helped' them get back. Back at the house Uncle had neatly arranged sleeping-mats on the floor in the hall and all that we were left to do with was sleep.

30-12-08: Gokarna-Margoa