Boat ride from Baga beach to Anjuna Beach, Goa

I had a lucky chance to go to Anjuna beach the other day. Hubby's ex-boss was in the country and wanted to treat us to breakfast in Anjuna. I am always ready to go to a beach destination and what better place to have breakfast than at a beach shack overlooking the waves break on the rocks!!!

  

After parking the car in front of someone's residence / restaurant, we legged it to the beach. It is nearing the end of tourist season, so the beach was not overly crowded. It was a lovely morning, clear blue sky and not too hot a day. I deal weather to slip into flip flops, a pair of disreputable shorts and a tank top; and don't forget that floppy hat! Thought of a sumptuous breakfast was surely a friding force!

There were sailing boats waiting for passengers! Tourists were swimming, walking or simply lounging on the beach.

 

We waited for the boat to arrive back from Anjuna. Surprising to know that there is a regular shuttle service from Baga beach to Anjuna beach and back. On land it is a longer route. If you want to go directly to the beach, this is the best option. You will be reaching from the sea!!!

After a 10 min. wait, the motor boat came, unloaded its passengers and we got in. It had a capacity of 12; life jackets available for all, so it is quite safe even for those who fear water. I was not going to take any chances, so donned my life jacket and buckled up well. It was a delightful sight to see so many boats of all sizes anchored on the waters.

 

Co-passengers taking in the view; all going to Anjuna on various errands!

 

 

Basically we go along the land towards north. We pass the hillocks along the edge of water. noticed some trails; love to explore them; that is for another day!

Reached Anjuna beach in 15min. and walked up to a beach shack and ordered our food.

It happened to be wednesday. So, Anjuna flee market is on in full swing. It is a weekly bazaar, spread over several acres (detailed description in a previous blog). While waiting for my breakfast order, I took a quick look at a few stalls around.

Cannot ignore this gentleman doing business having a nap. Cannot blame him, as it was a warm day and sitting in the shade is surely a temptation!
After a leisurely meal, we headed back the same way back to Baga beach. The boat ride cost Rs.100 per head per ride. Quite reasonable for an enjoyable ride and beautiful scenery. 
I shall do it again! If you happen to be in Goa, don't miss this small pleasure.

Gajar / carrot chutney

Did I mention that I love Gajar the desi carrots? I did? ok, I cannot love it enough! When they are in season, I buy them by the kilo, and use them in anything and most everything! Here is a chutney variety for you. If you slight sweetening in your food, you will love it. I quite enjoy the natural sweet taste of gajar in any recipe. So it is...

Ingredients:

Gajar / carrot - 1/2 kg

Dry red chilies - 4 nos.

Tamarind - size of a small lime

Oil - 2 tbs. for frying, and 2 tbs for garnishing

Cumin, black gram lentils, and mustard seeds - 1 tsp. each

Garlic pods - 6 nos.

Salt - to taste

Curry leaves - a handful

Method: 

Clean and scrape off the skin from Gajar. Cut them into small pieces. The smaller the pieces, faster they cook. 

Clean and soak tamarind in a cup of water. Heat 1 tbs.oil in a frying pan, add mustard, cumin, black gram to. it. when start splutter, add a few curry leaves, garlic pods, and red chilies. take the pan off the flame, when they are fried. Let it coll down a bit before putting in the mixer / blender jar. Add salt to it and grind it to a powder.  

Now add the tamarind without water. Grind it together.

Pour 1 tbs. of oil in to the pan and when hot put gajar pieces. Cover the pan and let it cook on a low flame.

Stir it once or twice. When the vegetable is almost cooked, take it off the flame and let it cool for a few minutes. Add the cooked gajar to the mixer and run it for a few seconds. The idea is to grind the chutney to a coarse paste. If the pieces are chunky, grind it for a few more seconds. 
Take the chutney into a serving bowl or jar.
Heat remaining oil, add cumin, black gram, mustard seeds; add curry leaves and red chillies. When fried, pout it over the chutney and mix. 
Chutney ready to eat eat with rice, roti or bread. It is so yummy, it can be eaten by itself.

Mapping through Art

 

According to Ms. Rani Sarin who conducted the workshop on 'Mapping through art', we all  travel with maps.Some are universal such as the constellations and the shape of continents and some as particular as the local roads we are familiar with.As we navigate 'our life's way', we are all creating our private maps. Like memory, geography is associative. We carry a personal atlas in our heads.

Ms. Rani Sarin - Workshop facilitator

Ms. Sarin explained that a map is simply a visual record of meanderings, both mental and physical. Here are some ideas for things you could consider mapping: 

A garden

A grocery store

Your home

A school

An idea

How you got here

Your activities

Your vacation

Your day

A story you are reading

 An Island

A dog's live

Ms. Mirium who runs Gallery Gitanjali, Goa

A book on mapping

The attendees

 

Workshop in progress

Some visitors watching the attendees at work and interacting with them

We can display our experiences, the places we saw and things we did through maps. A map is a JOURNEY through space and time. The maps can be either through space or time; or a mixture of space and time. For example, you may have lived in one locality when you were one year old, and then the family moved to a different area when you were three, and so on. you can make a map of all the places that you lived in your live, with the help of pictures of those places and a route map also. You may add a photo of yourself at that age. 

The maps should ideally be colourful and self explanatory. It can be a mixture of collage, sketching, painting, text and symbols. 

Though the time allotted was three hours, it was not enough to learn and then make a map. It was an interesting learning experience though.

Avial, My style

Avial is a vegetable stew in raw coconut and curd gravy. I love Avial because it is mild, full of flavor and has assorted vegetables. 

Hubby made a big bowl of curd last night. Well, how do we use it before it starts to get sour? Brilliant idea, Make Avial. I then rummaged / foraged in the fridges and came up with a not so traditional mix of veggies. This my style of Avial, so they are all welcome. Hey, I am in luck! Found a quarter of a small coconut in the deep freeze, left over from last week. 

There were different recipes on the internet for avial. I went with ingredients and the result is as follows: 

Ingredients:
Curd - 1 cup
Coconut - 2 tbs.
Dry red chillies - 2 nos.
Curry leaves - 6 - 8 nos.
Cumin and Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp each
Oil for garnishing - 2 tbs.
Green chillies - 2 nos. small
Salt - to taste
Rice flour - 1 tbs.

Assorted veggies:
Drumsticks - 1 nos. cut into 2.5" pieces
Potatoes - 2 nos.
carrots - 2 nos.
French beans - 20 nos.

You can also add yam, raw plantain etc. Since I didnot have them, I did without.

Method:
Cut the vegetables lengthwise. In a thick bottomed dish, pour enough water to cover the vegetables, adding half a tea spoon of salt: cook until water comes to a is boil and the veggies are cooked but still retain their shape. Drain the water and keep the vegetable stock aside for the gravy.
Grate coconut and grind it along with chopped green chillies.
Mix it to the cooked vegetables. The coconut gets cooked partially in the heat.
Stir the rice flour in the vegetable stock and bring it to a boil. It begins to thicken. Take it off the stove and mix to the cooked vegetables. Let it rest for a few minutes or until the mixture is cooled down. 
Whisk the curd for a smooth paste and stir it into the curry. Adjust the thickness of the curry by adding some water to get the desired consistency.
Heat oil in a frying pan and add cumin and mustard seeds, when they begin to splutter, add curry leaves and red chillies. Pour this over the curry. 
Avial is ready to eat!
Mine came out very tasty. Try it and tell me what you think of it.  

Radish and Ginger chutney

There was fresh ginger at home. Wanted to make ginger chutney. But I was not in the mood for a strong ginger flavour. So, to tone it down, I thought of using raw coconut. Then I found this radish waiting to be consumed. it too joined the list. Here is a radish, ginger and raw coconut chutney. it is spicy (thanks to ginger and radish) and quirky!

 

Ingredients:

Radish - 1 no.

ginger - 1" pieces 2 nos.

Raw coconut - 1 cup grated or 1/2 cup pieces

Green chillies - 3 nos. small 

red chillies - 2 nos.

Tamarind - a few flakes

Coriander - a small bunch

Curry leaves - 2 twigs

Cumin and Mustard seeds - 1 tsp each

salt - to taste

Oil - 3 tbsp.

Method:
Clean and cut radish into small pieces. Grate or cut coconut into small pieces. Clean and soak tamarind in half cup of water. Chop ginger finely.
Heat 1 tbs of oil in a pan. Add cumin and mustard seeds when the oil is hot. When they start to splutter, add ginger pieces. Fry for a few min. and drain the fried stuff into a mixer chutney jar. Add salt to it and grind to a powder. Now add coconut to it and grind.
Add soaked tamarind and grind until all the ingredients are mashed to a smooth paste. If needed, pour the tamarind soaked water to loosen the mixture.
In the same pan in the remaining oil, add radish pieces. and fry until they are almost cooked. Add the fried radish to the jar and also the finely chopped coriander. Run the mixer for half a minute or until some of the radish remains coarse. 
Take the chutney into a bowl. Heat remaining oil and fry remaining cumin and mustard, dry red chillies, curry leaves and pour it over the chutney.
The ingredients are an odd combination, but the chutney came out quite tasty and quirky!
You can eat it with rice or roti.

Recycled vest into a tote bag

I am very impressed with all the recycle ideas I see on the internet. I do a fair amount sewing, but not much refashion or recycling of old or used stuff. Lately I have been taking a stern look at my wardrobe and several items did not make the cut, so had to be relegated either to be given away or refashion them.

This was one vest I used to wear a lot at home during winters. Ever since I moved to Goa, there is no winter and definitely no need for the extra layer. So it was hanging in the wardrobe for some time now, thinking when i need it, it will come useful. The other day, I decided the time has come for it to be discarded. I love the embroidery on the front and bright coloured flowers. I wanted to try my hand at recycling it and quickly turned it into a tote bag. 

 

All I did was to measure the length of the bag and cut out the rest from the top. Double folded it half inch and stitched the raw edges.

Attached the front flaps together.

Stitched up the bottom. Sides are already joined.

Closed the armhole opening part way, and left the rest open.

The bag is ready. It needed handles. I had this orange cotton material cut up from another tunic. Folder and stitched them to form belts. Attached them to the bag equidistant from the center.

I am quite happy with the end result. Looks pretty and very useful. Plastic has its uses, but I try to avoid using plastic / polythene bags as much as possible.

Trek to Savari Waterfalls

 The trek to Savari waterfalls has the best scenic beauty.The landscape is rustic and enchanting; especially the sunlight through the foliage; The movement of water through the rocks; the brown, black and beige coloured dry leaves on the forest floor; the same coloured leaves in the crystal clear water, the trees which are 100s of feet tall trying touch the sky or wanting the sun?; the fallen trees on the ground, in the river, on the rocks, oftentimes on other trees, as if cradled in the laps for ever (?), suspended in pace and time; There was a tree in particular, which grew upto 60'-70' in height, abruptly bent at 60 degrees, and grew another 30', and went over another tree, and kept growing tall / long(?), entwined with another tree, mind you, all this at an angle or horizontally, and passed another 20'-30' and got tangled up among other trees. The last we could see, it crossed diagonally across the river below. We could not trace its journey beyong this point. God knows where all it went! First time for me to see a tree which behaved like a giant creeper! The tree must have been easily 300'.  

It was a perfect trek, as far as I am concerned; the location of Savari waterfalls (in Rivona), was far enough to get away from the city, sumptuous breakfast in the midst of Mr. Patil's spice farm, Great weather, neither hot not humid, with a slight cool breeze in the forest, terrific group of trekkers for company, thick jungles, irrigation canals, paddy fields, bright sunlight, mountains and valleys covered with vegetation, the black rocks in the river bed, finally the very high waterfalls, the backwaters of Salaulim dam, a great picnic lunch by none other than Mr. Patil and his team, and many more attractions.

Most of trek was connected to the water in one form or other. Initially it was walking along or on the embankment of a irrigation channel, a few times crossing it, and then along the Savari river (?) and crossing it several times. there was not much water in the river as most of it was diverted to irrigation for the fields; second half of the trek was in the river basin. May be you are conjuring images of sand covered river bed and knee deep in water? no, this river bed was different; it was completely strewn with black Basalt rocks the size of a 3' - 5' in diameter; sometimes going round them, other times climbing them. if you are not sure footed, it is a bit risky. 

The sumptuous breakfast of Dosas, spicy tomato chutney, pea curry, and Raagi floor cakes and hot tea! Have you ever seen a lone leaf jetting out of a cut-off banana stump? 

walking beside a fresh water irrigation canal

 

The twisted trees, what a spectacle!

Check dam diverting water for irrigation to fields

Forest department collecting Rs.20 from trekkers for carrying cameras. phone cameras are exempt!

 

crisscrossing through Goa / Karnataka border

I love the roots of the trees which grow horizontally and form natural steps (for people) and stop the soil erosion during monsoons!

Natural beauty

whereever you turn!

Ideal surroundings for wildlife photographer!

Could not stop screaming due to ihe ice cold water from the waterfall

Part of Netravali wildlife sanctuary

The back waters and the verdant meadows of Salaulim dam reservoir idyllic surroundings for both cattle and humans for their midday meals!