Day 3: Palolem to Ansi
The next morning, we decided to have breakfast before we checked out from the hotel. What this invariably means that, as per tradition, we had a late start to day 3 too! Also, last nights partying had left a lasting impression on our minds, we couldn’t possibly leave the place without going to the beach one last time. But this time we decided to capture a different kind of extremely abundant natural beauty.
We could only get on the road by 11:20AM. NH 17 was a pleasure to ride on once again. We passed through many small Goa villages before we finally came to the Goa-Karnataka border. Surojit stopped to take a picture of:
Seeing riding-gear-clad bikers the police came and asked about our ride. We told them in detail about the cause. They were very happy to realize that ‘bikers do ride for social causes’. Soon after our first awareness session we reached Karwar. To our right we saw the vast blue expanse of the Arabian sea. It was a beautiful and serene sight. We stopped to click a few pictures.
In no time, we were on our way to Anshi. The road to Anshi was a beautiful little road. It was much smoother than the national highway. There was barely any traffic to speak of. We soon hit a ghat section with lots of narrow twists and turns.
On the way, we came across little bridge arching across a small waterfall.
All of us took the opportunity to grab a bite.
The Ghat section continued on till a point when the road abruptly ended and was replaced by muddy path full of potholes. This carried on for a couple of kilometers.
Soon we reached the national park. It seemed we were the only visitors there. The park has a compound of tents and dormitories that tourists can stay in for a price. We traveled back to last village that we had crossed en route just before entering the National Park and had some absolutely delicious and homely food at one of the homesteads in the village. This was an extremely welcome change from the Goa routine till then. There was no cell phone coverage (only BSNL, this would be the trend even later on) and no electricity so we used local coin boxes to notify family and friends of our progress. Here are a few pics of our accommodation for the night.
These are tents which are built over a concrete slab so as to keep the wildlife out. There was no electricity supply in the forest resort so the only lights we would have was an battery powered LED lamp charged using solar power. Insides of the tents were quite liveable though since we had access to chairs, table, a king-size double bed and an attached bathroom! Thankfully these people had installed solar water heaters so we wouldn’t have trouble taking a bath the next morning had we decided to start early (highly unlikely looking at the track record).
After lunch we took off for a small hike in the forest.
When it was about to get dark, we turned around to head back to our compound and tried our hand the skillful art of night photography.
Since there was no electricity there and nothing around to visit at night, we all had an early dinner at around 8:30PM and all of us retired to our tents. Since it was the middle of the jungle, the night was especially chilly so we had no trouble going to sleep so early.
The last 2 days have been slightly low on distances covered but the next few days will be involve much higher distances. Day 4 log to be uploaded pretty soon :).
Antz Travelz !! 