When my wife and I were deciding to go on a short trip, after many different considerations we landed on a popular Indian holiday destination: Goa. Goa is famous for two things – cheap alcohol and the sea beaches. Since neither of us drink, and the month we decided to go in sees very rough seas (see what I did there?), we had to decide on some non-obvious ways to make the trip fun. Here's what we ended up doing:

Nature trail through ChorĂ£o Island

ChorĂ£o is the largest island in Goa and can be reached by taking a ferry from Ribandar. We covered these activities/spots on that trail:

  • A boat ride on the Mandovi River through the mangroves
  • Visit to the world's first (and one of only two) Devaki-Krishna temple
  • Visit to the Chapel of St. Jerome, one of the rare circular chapels
  • We had our breakfast in the middle of a paddy field at Chudamani Baug (one of my finest breakfast experiences)
  • Learned how to make a quite good Kokam sharbat

Divar Island exploration

Divar is the second-largest island in Goa and can be reached similarly to ChorĂ£o, via a ferry from Ribandar.

  • Another boat ride through a different part of the river. This gave us a real close-up look at some of the crocodiles that populate these waters
  • Visited a church and a couple of temples
  • Saw the ruins of a temple's well — the actual temple hasn't been found yet
  • Had some awesome evening snacks at a local place, which introduced me to my new favorite bread-type called the "Goan bun"

Heritage Goa tour

This one covered the mainland and took us through the history of Goa.

  • A visit to "Big Foot" walked us through what lifestyle and culture used to be like in Goa before modern times
  • And the nearby "Casa Araujo Alvares" gave us a glimpse of how a well-off Portuguese lawyer used to live back in the colonisation days
  • My favorite part of this trip was our visit to the "Naval Aviation Museum", where there are a bunch of decommissioned real aircraft (both planes and helicopters) on display. It also walks us through the history of the Indian Navy (more specifically, the part of it that rules the sky)

For now, that’s the snapshot of our Goa trip. I might revisit these stories and expand on them in the future, but this feels like the perfect place to pause.