Adventures of Goaaa…

Hi friends! I know, it is shocking to see me, time and again updating my blog, right? This time I will chase my laziness miles away from me and write whenever I can. I have promised my hubby that I will take my passion one step above my laziness, so, here I am! 😊 I believe that one must try till the end and not give up. So, I will try and try, until I succeed. Moreover, the Bullet Journal has helped me to a greater extent in planning and organising. It’s been about a week or ten days since I started using it, and believe me it has sorted so many tiny things for me and made my life easier.

This is not the first time I am writing about Goa. I have written about it last year as well. It might not make sense to people who haven’t gone to Goa, but, believe me, once you go and get the hang of the peace and serenity there, you will run back, like how we do. It feels so nice and rejuvenated. We make it a point to go to Goa once a year to unwind. We have found a hotel that is located well away from the crowd, in a residential area, which makes our holiday even more special, because the place is like a home away from home. I have dedicated a post to Jasminn by Mango in my blog. The hospitality at this place is something which I haven’t seen anywhere else.

This time we took a bus to Goa from Mysore. It was a super long journey. What I have to mention here is, one should never take a Paulo Travels bus. We have taken Neeta Travels before; it wasn’t too great, but it wasn’t this bad either! Everything seemed fine until we reached Bangalore. When the bus stopped at Paulo Travels office, they just randomly told us to get off the bus with our luggage and move to another bus. The bus was one size smaller than the previous one and there was lot of confusion with respect to seats, as the seat numbers were different from the ones allotted to us at the time of booking. So, with all the confusion we left Bangalore at say 9.30 pm. They did not stop for dinner until 10.30 pm. When we asked them, they told us they will, after going out of Bangalore City. At about 11.15 pm they stopped for dinner. I am sure, most of you will agree with me, 11.15 at night is not the time to have dinner. Everyone in the bus was angry. They did not stop at any proper place in the morning to freshen up. In fact, at about 7.30 am, when we were about to enter Goa, the guy just randomly said, ‘there is an open space for bathroom, whoever wants to go can go.’ Are you serious? You are asking a bus full of people especially women to go to an open area. I thought, they might be kidding, but unfortunately, they weren’t. I am going to report this anyways 😊 Somehow, we managed to reach by 10 am.

Apart from the great bus adventure, we had more adventures waiting for us. We wanted to relax completely on the first day. We wanted to take it easy. So, we randomly sprawled around trying to recover from the lonnnnnngggggggggg bus journey. The hotel has a shuttle to the beach every hour. After relaxing and making up for the lost sleep, we went to the beach in the shuttle at 5pm. The last shuttle back to the hotel was at 6pm. The shuttle was to the Betalbatim Beach. We did not want to be bound by the short time frame. So, we decided to walk back. It was a good half an hour walk. We spent about two hours in the beach. While Mayur went around clicking pictures of the beautiful sunset, I sat in one of the shacks and wrote. Probably, one of my stories coming up will have the plot I outlined in Goa. We left the beach at around 7 pm. I guess, it was a little late. Though, it is that way very safe in Goa, we were scared. The main thing that freaks you out there is that the roads are pitch black. No lights at all. Though it was a scary walk, we enjoyed it. I freak out faster than Mayur. I guess, it is natural. Being a girl and seeing how things are nowadays, I scared Mayur as well. After we reached safely we thought about the entire thing and laughed out loudly.

After an adventurous evening we wound up our day with a relaxed candle light dinner. The next day we decided to take it easy in the morning as well because it was too hot outside. We decided to go later in the evening. We had heard about the Sunset Beach before. We always thought all the beaches located near Betalbatim Beach are famous for sunset. We were, however, wrong. We realised on this visit that there is a beach called Sunset Beach, which is located next to Benaulim Beach. As I stated earlier, all these beaches are located next to each other. The Sunset Beach had a beauty of its own. It was very calm and silent. The sand was silvery and soft. It was absolutely empty. There were people, but on the other side. The side from which we got in, there was absolutely nothing. We loved it to the core. We walked in the water, hand in hand and just enjoyed the tranquillity and peace. It is at this beach that my husband clicked the picture of sunset through my eye! You can find that picture on his Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/mayur_sarma . From there we went to Dominos for Dinner.

Both the beaches which I mentioned above, Betalbatim and Sunset are located near the hotel. The sunset is the same at both these places, since the beaches are located near each other. Betalbatim Beach has a lot of people especially foreigners, but Sunset Beach is quiet and has very few people. If you want a silent, be to yourself beach then Sunset Beach is the one.

If I continue writing, I might end up writing a book. So, I will stop it at this and get back with another post in two days summing up our Goa Adventures. Hope you enjoy reading this.

Cheers!!!

Note: I hold the Copyright to all the pictures published here.. The eye picture is clicked by Mayur and the rest are captured by me!

My Review on Jasminn By Mango (Hotel), Goa

Hey friends! The title itself suggests that it is a hotel review this time. This is something which I’ve been waiting to write. When we first went to Goa in November 2015, we were searching for a hotel to stay at. We weren’t sure which one to take a chance with. We were four of us (mom, sister, hubby and me). We were going to spend the entire day outdoors. So, we didn’t want to stay at a place which is super expensive as we would not make use of any of the facilities (we were going to be back at the hotel for sleep only). I was browsing through a list of hotels on trip advisor and that is when I found Jasminn by Mango Hotels situated at Salcette, the southern part of Goa. The hotel matched our requirement and we decided to take a chance. We went for it.

We were really scared about how the hotel would turn out to be, since we had had a very funny experience the same year at Chennai. We were very particular about the hygiene and stuff. The road leading us to the hotel creeped us out further. It seemed very isolated. After we reached we realised that the hotel was quite appreciable. It looked very appealing. We were hoping that the rooms were neat and clean too. Believe me, it, really, was well maintained. We weren’t there the entire time, so we weren’t exposed much to their service, but, whatever time we spent, we felt the service was pretty good. We had a very nice and pleasant stay.

The next time when my husband and I planned our Goa trip we decided to stay at Jasminn. This was in February 2016. This time were going to stay for a week. We decided to negotiate for a good meal plan as we were sure we wouldn’t go anyway far at night as we had taken the bus to Goa. We hired the two-wheeler at the hotel for commuting. We spent a reasonable amount of time in the hotel as well; that is when we realised that their service was also very good, be it room service or housekeeping. The lunch and dinner at the Café attached to the hotel was delicious (though we found the breakfast to be very ordinary). We still remember the guy, Shriram who served us daily at the restaurant. He was so enthusiastic about his work that we were really impressed. He saw us daily for about six days and then, on the seventh day he got the chef to make Gajar ka Halwa for us as he realised that we were tired of their dessert options (it was either ice cream or gulab jamun). The other person about whom we have to mention here is the Guest Service Leader at Jasminn, Sherry. She made sure our stay was very comfortable and pleasant.

The third time we planned to go to Goa (that is, this year in January) we were sure about Jasminn. We were in for a shock when we realised that the hotel was full. We requested them to somehow provide us a room for a week. We, then, got in touch with Sherry. She, promptly, provided us with the best. This time our trip was more for relaxation, so we spent a considerable amount of time in the hotel. We made use of most of the facilities provided. We used the swimming pool and the activity centre (I guess, we were the first ones to use it). Sherry made sure that our stay with them for a week was a very pleasant one.

After being here three times, I can very confidently say that if you’re visiting Goa, do not hesitate to stay here. The location is amazing. It is very calm and peaceful. It is located in the interiors, which mostly houses the Goan residents. There is no commotion around you.

I would like to give a four-star rating for this place.

Planning to go to Goa anytime soon? Go ahead and book your stay here.

I will be back soon…

Till then, Cheers!!!