Friday, December 7th - Tuesday, December 10th
Arrival, wedding, and sightseeing in Mumbai
Tuesday, December 11th
After saying temporary good byes to Anshu's and Renuka's families, we caught a brief 40 minute flight south to Goa. Arriving there in the afternoon, we spent the rest of the day checking out the beach near our hotel, then eating at a restaurant right on the beach.
Wednesday, December 12th
Anshu and Renuka had to visit a temple to Shiva to introduce Renuka into Anshu's family, so Andrea and I caught a tour bus at about 9 in the morning and spent most of the day on a tour of Goa.
1st stop: Dona Paula, which was the location of a famous scene from a movie or something. Nice view overlooking the water and coastline.
2nd stop: Basilica of Bom Jesus where the body of St. Francis Xavier is kept. His body can be viewed within his crypt, and is brought out and displayed every 10 years for a few weeks to demonstrate the miracle that it hasn't decomposed.
3rd stop: Mangueshi, Temple to the god Shiva. Shiva is known as the Destroyer, but is also the god of dancing and music.
4th stop: Shri Santadurga Temple in Kavale.
5th stop: Ancestral Goa, which is a total tourist trap that does a cheezy job of displaying what life was like for the early Portuguese settlers of Goa. Also has some footprint supposedly from BigFoot and a huge stone sculpture that was completed in 30 days or something.. Boring.
6th stop: Silver Sands Beach. Very nice looking beach, but basically the same as the one all along the coast by our hotel. At this point is was about 3 in the afternoon and we discovered that the tour was going to last well into the evening, which was too long for us. We ditched it and caught a cab back to the hotel after a few minutes of shopping.
For supper that evening we had the hotel restaurant get each of us a nice big lobster. That was one of the best meals I have ever had!
After supper we headed to a bar where we had several drinks, met some interesting foreigners from all over, and danced a bit. We heard about a huge party (apparently there is one every night in Goa) that was starting around 2am, so we hopped into a taxi for an exciting cross country ride to a crazy rave party out in the middle of nowhere. That was quite an interesting experience, though we only stayed around for 15 minutes or so (which was enough time to be offered various drugs a few times). It wasn't really our crowd since we are neither hippies nor gypsies.
Thursday, December 13th
We spent the morning doing some shopping for souvenirs. There were lots of vendors from northern India and Tibet that had some really cool things that they sold us for probably about five times what they were worth. The afternoon was spent playing in the waves of the Arabian Sea and lounging around in sun chairs. Not too shabby.
Friday, December 14th
Got up early in the morning to catch a plane to Mumbai where we spent most of the day until we caught a plane to Delhi in the evening. While we were in Bombay, we hung out with Anshu and Renuka's families, and Renuka's mom gave Andrea a pair of earrings and a necklace and me a really nice tie as gifts for visiting and coming to the wedding. They were all so friendly!