I finally managed to get all the photos from my trip uploaded to the gallery. There are some I want to show here, the rest can be found from my gallery.

I spent my Xmas Eve in the hotel poolside, enjoying a complimentary dinner and cheap entertainment before going to sleep early. The place looked actually quite nice in all its glory:

Of course, being in a tourist joint, I immediately made some new “friends” to pose and take pictures for me:

For a few photos they wanted a donation to one of their temples, showing that “all the others” had given a thousand rupees or more. Being a selfish capitalist, I opted to donate a mere 300 without feeling sorry for it. I like to decide how much money I give and who it goes to, but sometimes we have to make concessions.

Further down my explorations I found I nice cliff at the end of a road, north from Calangute beach:

The altitude of the place doesn’t show at all, but the view was really spectacular. Sandy beaches were located on both sides of the cliff and the whole area was really quiet in the morning time.

Next I took a couple of extra turns before reaching Charpora fort on top of the next cliff. Not much to see there, but the view was again worth the climb:

The previous cliff is just behind my left shoulder here. The photo was taken by a drink salesman whose prices were 400% over MRP, the maximum retail price defined by the Indian Government. He still had a business case there since the climb is quite steep and heavy, and at least I had to go for refreshing drinks after that.

Seems like I am still missing some of the photos, so I conclude this post with this photo from our diving site:

This is the east end of Grande Island, a popular SCUBA diving place among people visiting Goa. I have done all of my nine dives around this island, but hope to expand my horizons beyond that.

I’ll try to find the missing photos tonight and post some highlights from them as soon as possible. Stay tuned.

Tags: diving, holiday, hotels, natural beauty, people in india, photos, travel