Escape from Palolem

Escape from Palolem...and all the 'nothing' that has been done on the beach of Palolem over the past 2 1/2 weeks. How easy it is to fall into days that are defined by how long you can stay in bed, depending on how hot the room becomes, where you shall eat, and what time the first beer is. I made a list the day Andrew left of all the things I would do to keep myself occupied over the 2 1/2 weeks of his absence. I was going scuba diving, going to have an auyrvedic massage, write to lots of friends and family, buy some gifts, walk to the next beach, attend a 'headphone' party
and lots more. I managed to make some lovely friends, bought a couple of gifts and had two massages but very, very little else. I did actually manage a private yoga lesson on the roof of 'Wavelet Beach Resort' as the sun rose the morning Andrew flew in, with Janine, a wonderful Swiss woman. So after one more day at the beach, to allow Andrew time to wind down after his Melbourne visit, we packed up and hit the road, heading north towards the state of Maharashtra.
We managed to squeeze in a spot of evening fishing out on a boat and the curse of Paddy's fishing rod continues with a 100% failure rate. We did catch an eel on the hand line however. The first day we got as far as Agonda, a beach about 10km north of Palolem. Many of the bars and huts had disappeared ahead of the monsoon but we found a great hut on the northern end of the beach, and some good characters to have a few beers with at the bar including Ging'(er) from Jersey.

Some navigational confusion caused us to somehow arrived in Old Goa which we had visited with Paul some weeks back, and even more disturbingly we nearly found ourselves back in Belgaum. We'd inadvertently stayed there twice during our trek out to Hampi with Paul. With some local help we redirected and set our destination for the first big day of driving in weeks, for Kolhapur, just west of the Karnataka Plateau.

Over the state border in Karnatica we were stopped at a police checkpoint where they were searching vehicles ahead of the elections. 'Oh my God!' said the officer in a good natured way when he saw how much stuff was in the back. 'What is this Sir?' he asked when he found our not-very-well-hidden bottle of Cashew Fenny (Goan local spirit) in the fridge. It is not allowed to be taken from the state. They confiscated our booze making Amelia very unhappy (we'd only just bought it) and an elder policeman who took hold of it, very happy. 'Oh dear, Madam is very angry', said the police officer and they felt it was safer to hand us back the bottle, much to the old guy's dismay. In the end it was all good and everyone took some photos, shook hands and we were on our way again.

It turns out Kolhapur was experiencing some political rallies and if we had more time we would have loved to stay there longer. We spoilt ourselves and stayed the night at Hotel Shalini Palace, the old Maharaja of Kolhapur's Palace.

Today's owner also prides himself as a maker of fine wines and so we thought we aught to try a bottle with dinner. We chose a middle of the range (going by price) bottle, it was supposed to be a pinot noir but was so awful that we left more than half the bottle.

We traveled north/north east over the next two days, accidentally taking a tour of the outskirts of the 2.5 mill populated city of Pune. We were looking for a 'ring road' to avoid the center. The city looked really interesting but we were on a mission to get as far north as we could, towards the Ajanta caves. The highway between these
cities is excellent. There are frequent toll booths, a couple of which we were waved though for free being 'guests' of the men who were taking money.