Palolem

Now this is where you want to be! The beach was quiet and peaceful and clean. The sand was white, the water was shallow, warm and had gentle waves that just folded over. The palm trees poked out above every roof. This beach was lined with little clusters of bungalows and open-air restaurants. While each restaurant had the same crazy menu of Indian, Mexican, Israeli, and Chinese food, they also had beach-facing chairs in the shade that caught the warm breeze. Not too shabby.

There was of course the hustle of bungalow selection. As our taxi turned into the road leading to Palolem a man on bike rode up next to us and handed us a business card for his bungalows. By the time the taxi stopped there was a swarm of touts trying to bring us to their bungalows.  We agreed to look at each person’s bungalows and then make a choice which worked surprisingly well.  In all, we viewed 8 different bungalows which allowed us to get a sense of what types of amenities you can get for $12 a night. We picked a bungalow that had a hammock out front and was set a little back from the beach in a quiet palm tree cove. Weirdly though they were BYOTP (and TP costs a whopping 12 cents a roll) and the owner tried to sell Noah drugs.  After the first night of mosquito attacks, we switched to a beach front bungalow with a thick mattress and a lovely mosquito net.

On the last day we finally hit our perfect stride. We woke up, went on a jog down the beach, stopped at a vendor for a samosa and chai snack, took showers, ate a potato bhaji breakfast, went for a dip before the sun got too intense, ate fish in a beach-facing restaurant, drank fresh squeezed lime juice in seltzer, read on our bungalow porch, went kayaking, strolled out to the far end for sunset, and then ate an Indian supper after the sun went down.