After doing a yoga class next door, I checked out of my hut and had breakfast. I found a taxi for INR700 to take me to my hotel in Panaji, which took about an hour. I managed to get straight into my room at the Casa Paradiso even though it was before the official check-in time.
I took a little lie down so as to avoid the hottest part of the day before taking a brief walk around Panaji. The heart of the area appeared to be the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, which looked very imposing in white up flights of steps.
Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Panaji.
After my brief exploration of Panaji I took a motorcycle taxi to Old Goa. Part of the ride was along a very long causeway built by the Portuguese. For a relatively small area, Old Goa was packed with grand buildings. It wasn’t a white elephant though, as the population at that time was supposedly larger than Lisbon or London. It was an important place but it just goes to show that superpowers come and go … as Portugal ain’t no superpower no more!
I started my visit of Old Goa at the Church of St Cajetan.
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- Church of St Cajetan in Old Goa.
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- Ceiling in Church of St Cajetan in Old Goa.
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- Main altar in Church of St Cajetan in Old Goa.
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- Carvings in one of the side altars of Church of St Cajetan in Old Goa.
I then moved to the area that had several sights within spitting distance of each other: Se Cathedral, the pitiful Museum of Christian Arts, and the Basilica Bom Jesus where St Francis Xavier’s body was kept in a crystal coffin. His next exposition is next year; I don’t think there will be much to see … not much that is pretty anyway.
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- Se Cathedral in Old Goa.
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- Inside Se Cathedral in Old Goa.
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- Inside Se Cathedral in Old Goa.
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- Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- Pulpit of the Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- St Francis Xavier in Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- Courtyard in Basilica Bom Jesus in Old Goa.
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- This woman was taking the garlands away, not putting them on. But why not … there are so many, it’s just going to rot away. Might as well take them home to put on Mother Mary, Jesus or Ganesh.
While at the Se Cathedral, I saw a man wearing a cap with CLEAR Communications and its logo. That’s the NZ company I worked for some years ago and naturally thought he was from NZ! I chatted to him and found that he was from Kazakhstan and bought the cap in his home town. Used cast-offs do travel the world these days; I remember eating off newspaper from around the world while in Yemen.
I returned to Panaji by motorcycle taxi and rested for the rest of the day as I still wasn’t feeling that well. As Goan evenings are cool, I had been fine without AC. But in a concrete building with few windows, I tried doing without but I couldn’t. But it was too cold with AC so that night I tried sleeping with my longjohns and fleecey T-shirt. I soon realised that my fever had become worse and it was playing havoc with my sense of temperature.