Festival Ready & Vix's Adventures In Goa - Part 4

The sun's shining, the first of the festival tickets have arrived and it's time to dust off my headbands and embrace the day-glo.

Our 50 year-old weeping willow was a casualty of the storms that battered Britain in April and it's due to be chopped up tomorrow (rain permitting). In the meantime it does make for a somewhat picturesque backdrop.

Ready for the final instalment of our Goa trip?

 Much as we love Arambol we knew the last week would fly by if we stayed put, so we packed our bags and moved on. Don't you find that time goes much more slowly if you move around from place to place?

Our first stop was Anjuna, famous for a weekly flea market and (in the 1990s) for being the epicentre of Goan rave culture. Although the market's as popular as ever the alternative party scene has long gone and at the end of the tourist season Anjuna goes back to being the sleepy village it once was before the beautiful set discovered it.

The beach isn't any great shakes by Goan standards but the traditional village architecture is stunning.

Anjuna Village Church

The £6 a night guest house we stayed in backed on to the forest and was constantly under attack by marauding monkeys.

After three nights in Anjuna we moved on to Candolim, slap bang in the middle of package tourist central and somewhere we'd not visited in years.

From December through until mid-March you can hardly see the sand for sunbeds and you're constantly hassled to buy crap from hawkers or visit a beach shack, but at the end of the tourist season it's a totally different story.

We caught a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) from Anjuna with no plans and knocked on a few doors until we found someone willing to rent us a cheap room. It only took a couple of minutes to find a quiet village house just behind this cricket pitch for a little under £4 a night.

Our favourite place in Candolim used to be Bob's Inn, a hippy hang-out since 1957. We hadn't visited in years but were recognised immediately and showered with free drinks, nibbles, fruit from the garden and fresh flowers for my hair. It's packed with antiques, curios and trinkets bought from the local flea markets and a hoarder's paradise.

Bob's Inn hit the headlines in 1996 after it was rumoured that one of the regulars, Jungly Barry, was actually Lord Lucan. There's a shrine to him (and some of the other deceased hippy regulars) in the bar.

It's crazy to think that there's a branch of Domino's only a few yards away from this serene water buffalo.

Thanks for your lovely comments about our trip pictures.

I'm working on a post answering any Goa-related questions you've asked (please feel free to ask more) and I'll try to get it up later this week.

Floral headband and psychedelic maxi skirt (made by me), neon fringed tube top (50p, Cancer Research), Shiva pendant (50p, car boot sale)

Hope you've had a brilliant weekend and the sun's shone for you.

See you soon.