[Worldtrippers home] [Crystal home]
Today’s stop was our second and final port in India. Goa is the smallest of India’s states. It is also the second richest and boasts the best quality of life in the country. Our ship docked in Mormugao, Goa’s main port.
India is admittedly not high on Gail’s list of desired destinations. She is not fond of the heat, humidity and crowds. (We booked this itinerary more for the Maldives and Seychelles Islands, still to come.)
So we opted not to purchase a multi-hour excursion. Instead, we just walked off the ship and did a small exploration of Mormugao. We were joined by another lecturer, Bruce Nocita, and his wife Heather. We discovered there’s not much here as far as tourist infrastructure, but the nature and vegetation are quite lovely.
The cultural high point was passing through immigration again. We had to show our e-visas three times to different folks to get out of the cruise terminal. When we returned, we had to show them two more times to get back into the cruise terminal. The last immigration officer finally took our paperwork from us and kept it. This marked our final departure from Indian soil.
As we passed through the immigration tent to reboard the ship, the officers were all eating lunch. They each had a lunchbox of vegetable biryani (spiced rice) that had been catered from somewhere. Gail kept remarking how good the food smelled. An officer told her to find him when we were done with immigration. He ended up giving her an entire lunchbox of the biryani. Back aboard ship, the four of us shared it for lunch. It was delicious!
