Goa Offbeat 3 - Palolem & Galgibagh

That one significant day of my tour!

A day before we got to know that it's just Me & Nayyu who are available for tomorrow’s exploration hence we decided to execute the plan as adventurous as possible. Overnight! around 11 PM we struggled beyond our limits to get the bike for rent as every owner’s rejected to rent their bikes. Our hopes started fading away. In a flash! A thought strikes to check with a local friend of Nayyu & it was the last stone to unturn. Favorably, The stone gleamed & the birth of good deed took place.

We woke up @ 5 AM the next day & started this journey with absolute excitement & energy in our bodies.

We did not have anything specific in our To Do’s but we were specific about the places to visit. To start with, we decided to visit Palolem beach because there is a secret trek to Monkey Island. This activity was on top of our priorities for the day.

How We Started?

Living Room @ Dabolim

As we stayed in a private apartment @ Dabolim which is a high-density residential colony. Quietness was all around the environment, We swiftly headed towards the highway in the halogen. The distance to our first destination was 60Kms. While Nayyu was driving in that dawn, We saw a café en-route & I tapped his shoulder to break for a pit stop. Basically, caffeine to activate our nerves. I haven't seen anyone on the streets or anywhere until then in the early morning. I was perplexed to see this café overcrowded. We entered inn & ordered bread, Samosa’s, Puff’s & Chai ( Kinda Semi English Breakfast ). It was unplanned & we were unhungry. I feel it’s the place that enticed us. I highly recommend everyone to visit this place for some really good chai & bread. Ever since on this vacation, I misinterpreted that bread ( Sweet Bun ) was roughly toasted & of poor quality dough. I found it hard to chew every time.

After being to this place, I realized I was wrong. It was the specialty of this local. The owner of the café came to us & offered a special bread which I haven't tasted in my entire life as he realized we aren’t locals. The dishes here rejuvenated my taste buds. I highly recommend this place to travelers for its delicacy.

CAFE NAME: MADGAUM CAFE

Madgaum Cafe

I handpicked the Gorilla pod from our daypack & was filming the streets of south goa for the rest of the journey as a pillion rider.

We reached Palolem finally around 7:30 AM. I heard from a lot of visitors that South Goan Beaches are more private & peaceful. It was a treat to witness. Absolute Calmness & the spectacular waterscapes were fascinating. We sat on the shores & lost to those horizonic views.

Palolem Beach

We choose to do Monkey Island Trek for all-new experiences as this is a trek by water to an Island. Genuinely, this could become a whole new experience because I never had an opportunity to trek on the water. So, the trek basically starts from one end of the beach to a floating isolated mountain. There was a high current on the shores & I was skeptical about passing through this scary, invisible trail. Nayyu knows how to swim so he was confident to advance. I felt it was witty to ask around about crossing the waters as there were none heading towards this trek. Checked with the helmsman who was passing by the waters & he told currently it's high tides & water levels are higher than usual.  And advised not to risk it. For a person whose subconscious is tripping around No’s. This advice bought the firmness of denial. It’s not that I wasn't excited for this, It’s just that I was scared to risk it as a non-swimmer. The bytes that we cannot visit this place left us with bits of disappointment but we moved on leaving our griefed footprints.

Glimpse of Monkey Island

This misery didn’t affect much. As a traveler, I was quite habituated to expect the unexpected. We gathered some knowledge about the places around & decided to visit a place nearby called Galgibagh Beach. We chose this because this place is remotest & border to South Goa as next to it was Karwar of Karnataka. This place was around 20Kms from Palolem beach. As a fun pact to keep our excitement alive we decided to travel with limited navigation guidelines. We turned off maps & all we can choose is human navigation that too 3 asks.

In the shades of Galgibagh

Turtle Nest

KanyaKumari Highway

We came out of the Palolem & took our first helpline to take up the correct deviation. We rode as advised & there was a highway, Tunnel & a parallel road where we took our second helpline which was crucial at this time. From there, we were told to travel 12 kms straight on Kanyakumari Highway & we were left with 16 kms of the journey by the time we inevitably lost our 2 lifelines. The highway looked like it was taking us to an endless destination. There is always this feeling that if you are travelling on your estimations you always feel that you might have come ahead. We stopped at some point & felt it was the right time to use our third lifeline, Indeed it was. We reached Galgibagh Beach & trust me it was just both of us on this enormous seashore. An ideal place of solitary. This sightseeing was quite unusual to me because I have never seen beach shores with tall trees around. This place is less travelled by many tourists because this beach is reserved for turtle nesting. A small fact about the turtle nesting, Turtles after laying eggs leaves no trace of footprints or path travelled. It’s super-sensitive as eggs are laid on shallow depth & could get damaged. To protect this, there is nesting done through the nets as shown in the picture. We snapped some pictures & laid down by munching some cookies & chocolates on the shady tall trees. I literally fell asleep for an hour. After this power nap, I was super pumped for the rest of the journey.

Next Chapter: GOA OFFBEAT 4 - BUTTERFLY BEACH
Previous Chapter: GOA OFFBEAT 2 - NAMAZGAH