Palolem – The Perfect Beach?

I am infrequently delighted with my room choices.  On this trip, only Ahmedabad was an exception.  I spend hours pouring over accommodation options, checking out the reviews and where possible cross-checking with other sources.  We are driven to keep to the ‘budget’. But I always hope that we will stay in the room we booked.  Rooms, are carefully photographed from all the right angles. Sandwiched between general images of the local area, they often bear no resemblance to what you actually get.  To be fair for a lot of this trip we have either had captivating views (the guys three stories up on a wall they were building in Amritsar is one which stays with you) or no view at all.  Curtains are opened to find frosted glass or barred windows. Or the Air conditioning unit taking up the space where the window and its view should be. 

In Palolem, we would be seeing the beach directly from our open glass-fronted beach shack.  I had carefully researched the operation and was confident that I had nailed it this time, in the same way I had in Agra all those weeks ago.

It had been raining and our beautiful beachfront, beach hut looked out on a muddy road.  It was however the road to the beach, but daily thunderstorms had maintained its potholed muddy appearance.  This was not a beach hut looking out to sea but a beach hut a few steps from a restaurant where you could get a table which looked out to sea.

This was an accommodation of broken promises.  The free luxury toiletries, the coffee machine and the electric kettle never did make an appearance, the desk we hoped for as illustrated in the photos turned out to be a shelf with a plastic chair.  

One thing you can’t knock is the skill of spinning an excellent ‘yarns’ on hotel booking sites.  None of them are necessarily a lie. Hooked in with no recourse.  You just have to roll with it and laugh.

The overnight bus from Hampi had deposited us at the side of the N66 and after our walk in the dark, we had to wait until 8.30 before we could get a coffee.  We didn’t realise it at the time, but Restaurant ‘Cuba’ became our home for the next four days.  Positioned on the stunning beach with a wide menu of delicious food at a fraction above the prices we had become accustomed to. Free sun beds and a minute or so walk from our hut … with the muddy lane views.  There are huts on the beach. This area is famous for them. Perhaps my overexuberance with the budget had in fact filtered out the room I was really looking for.

We hired a scooter for two days. Exploring the beaches to the immediate north and south of us.  A Greek salad in a beachside restaurant on Turtle Beach. A delicious bowl of vegetable noodles on Agonda Beach.  We let our little scooter introduce us to all sorts of local hideouts and their restaurants.  We decided that of all the places we visited Cavelossim Beach to the north and Talpona Beach to the south of us warranted further investigation should we find ourselves in this area on our return journey.

I was inexplicably ill twice, whilst at Palolem.  Both times the symptoms were of food poisoning.  The first incident I put down to being an unfortunate dirty glass, or dehydration and made a plan to drink more fluids. The second time, I succumbed to the ‘call’ of the Carbonara and suffered badly for it.  

Resolving to return to the strict veg diet I had previously maintained since arriving in the country we never ventured from ‘Cuba’ again for nourishment.

The sunsets here are wonderful.  After the first night’s electrical storm and rain on the second afternoon, the weather improved, the sea calmed, and the following full-on sunny days appeared to dry out the muddy lane. Just in time for us to move on.