Day 48 -Palolem beach to Panaji - Saturday 3rd December 2011

Up and checked out by 11am, we said goodbye to Palolem and jumped on the bus to Panaji - the capital of Goa. Today was the feast of St Francis Xavier which takes place once a year on this very day! The festival is to commemorate the death of St Francis Xavier, who is the patron saint of Goa, and in honour of this a big festival takes place in Old Goa.

Once in Panaji, we made our way over to the Mayfair hotel and checked in and then promptly dropped off our bags and headed back to the bus stop to get the bus to Old Goa for the feast - quick turnaround!

The bus was packed to the brim with revellers heading to the action but luckily only took 10 minutes. Once off the bus, we were in the heart of the action and about a million Indians! The festival is a mesh of stalls selling literally everything - from food to clothes to booze to cheap tat! The amount of people and noise and smells was a bit overwhelming at first but once we had acclimatised it seemed to be just to be like Notting hill carnival - just without the carnival parade bit. We stopped off for a traditional Goan spicy sausage (like chorizo) wrapped in a pao (like a crispy bun), very yummy albeit quite spicy, before working our way into the crowds.

Then the most surreal thing happened………..we were walking, well more like being pushed along by the crowd, and were so hot and sweaty (it was about 39 without the heat of the people), surrounded by Indians haggling, when suddenly out of nowhere boomed at top volume "Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas day…….."! We'd nearly forgotten that Xmas was under a month away. Then once we started to look around we noticed the Xmas stalls selling decorations and Xmas trees! We looked at each other and laughed - we couldn't be any further away from feeling Christmassy if we tried!

After a few hours of walking around, looking at the Churches, laughing at the drunk Indians celebrating, eating yet more food and buying even more tat, we decided to head back to the hotel.

We got on the overfilled bus and chugged back to the main town.

We headed to the Upper House restaurant for a drink and then headed home for a well needed shower - our feet were actually black!!

Day 49 - Panaji - Sunday 4th December 2011

The next day we decided to spend the day strolling round the city and suburbs. Panaji is by far the most European of all of the towns we've been to in India - women wear western clothes and people are affectionate in public, heaven forbid! I even got my shoulders out today and wore a vest - something I haven't, apart from at the beach, since being in India! The town is lovely, the streets reasonably clean and there is hardly any beeping! There are churches everywhere and for a minute you can almost imagine you are somewhere in Europe rather than India. We literally spent the whole day walking and at one point got completely lost in some villages outside of the town.

Adam has it in his head that we're hiring a scotty (moped) when we get to our next stop, Mandrem - this is something I am highly dubious about given the accidents and horrendous driving I've seen thus far in India. However, if Mandrem is anything like Panaji I might be persuaded - even the driving seems more relaxed here!