Today we will be traveling through the space and time of internet to Goa along the coast of India. The picutres I took were from a trip in 2016. Goa is a very popular place with tourists and party people from around the world. India and Ghana where I live have a lot of things in common sometimes, being that both attained their independence from England as they were both colonies.
Ghana was also very early on home to a number of trading posts built by the Portuguese and other European powers. Goa was also a Portuguese enclave. Today we will be taking a trip to the religious center of Portuguese Goa and a Fort overlooking the entry to the river. This is very similar to a number of forts built along the Ghanaian coast. The climate is also very similar to Ghana so it felt familiar in a lot of respects.
My brother inlaw's family is originally from Goa so when we visited around Christmas of 2016 we all pilled into a rented van and took the long road trip down there.
Please excuse some of the pictures I was using an old Canon DSLR camera with the kit lens and I was experimenting with a wide angle attachment, I found that focus was not very clear on a lot of these pictures. I think that this camera and lenses were quite dirty from age on the inside components too.
A sacred cow along the road side.
The journey from Mumbai to Goa over road theoretically is about 14 hours of continual driving. But with construction, police road blocks, traffic in places like Pune and stops to eat and rest along the way it took much longer. The route take you inland and up onto the inland plateau then over the coastal mountain range and down to the coast again.
A large man made lake as we passed through one of the national parks on our way too and from Goa.
A view from the winding road over the mountains.
A big colorful truck coming around one of the blind corners as we worked our way through the mountain roads. The youngest in our group got quite car sick and lost her stomach contents on the floor of the bus.
Some views along the road of some agricultural burning.
A common view along the way of a man and his wife who rides side saddle on the motor bike.
We arrived in Panaji late at night and checked into an Airbnb there in a modern apartment overlooking the south bay and river. The next morning we were greeted with a wonderful view.
After a little rest we all got motivated to do some sight seeing. Our first stop is the Basilica of Born Jesus.
This was the first church that we visited around the Basilica there were a number of them and I really cant remember what is important about them or distinguishes them from each other. But they are great examples of Chatholic Colonial Architecture.
Above is the second church we visited and in some of the pictures you can see that I was really pushing the wide angle lens on the camera.
The day was getting long and from there I think we headed into town for some lunch. After lunch we went to the beach in town where the river meets the sea and caught a nice sunset.
The next day we were off to the next site. This is a fort at that overlooked and protected the mouth of the river. The Fort is called Aguada Fort.
The place was packed with exciting looking tour buses.
There was a large battery wall surrounding the whole place.
The light house tour is probably the most predominant feature.
After the fort we continued up the coastal back roads to some of the beaches to the north. These were very touristy beaches and I was hoping I would find some waves and a place to rent a surf board. But the water was very flat and not anywhere to rent a board anyway probably because of this.
On the last day we visited another beach to the south of where we stayed and caught another sunset. I got my first taste of cashew fenny on this beach too which is similar to distilled palmwine which we enjoy in West Africa, but is has a very strong smell to it.
