Another night on a bus bought us to famous Goa. We decided to spend Christmas on the beach!
Of course Christmas is the most expensive time of the year to be in Goa, so we had to fight longer than usual to find accommodation for a reasonable price. This time we changed our strategy: we rented a motorbike first (was already a challenge to step behind senseless tourist prices), we left our luggage in Arambol city and drove around. After a few hours we found what we considered a good deal, considering that we were looking for something special for Christmas time. We were surprised by how easily prices were dropping after talking for a few minutes to hotel managers: it seems that 2013 won't be a good year for Indian tourism. We found a hut on a tree, few meters from the beach for something like 10 dollars. As now usual we were asked not to talk about the price we got for the room.

Being in Goa was simply like being in Russia, every sign, menu, commercial, special offer and so on was written in Cyrillic, and about 90% of tourist were from Russia. The rest being mostly from Israel. So we were nearly the only western Europeans around!

We spent our Goan stay by chilling on the beach, bargaining lime juice for breakfast, bargaining souvenirs for lunch and bargaining fish's prices for dinner.
The price of every single good or service is doubled (at least!), most likely to compensate 2013's leak of business.

We kept with our self-cooking habit: menu this time was fresh prawns with lemon and ginger..on the beach of course, freshly bought from local fishermen. It took us 2 hours to prepare and clean the prawns, about 30 minutes to light fire by strong wind condition...3 minutes for cooking ad 30 seconds for eating. So we decided that it was good idea to go to restaurant for Christmas's night. Menu: Red snapper cooked tandoori style. De-li-cious!!

After one week in Goa, and 3 weeks in India, my friend Phil had to fly back home....to become an happy dad!! I want to catch this opportunity to thank him for the great time we had together on the road, and to wish him and his wife all the best for this new upcoming challenge! See you in Switzerland!!